Decentralized AI and the Next Wave of Crypto: A Conversation with Coinbase

Step inside the mind of Jonathan King (aka JK), Principal Investor at Coinbase Ventures, as he shares rare, forward-looking insights on how Coinbase Ventures is championing the convergence of crypto and AI. Hosted by Richard Carthon and Joshua Kriger on The Edge of Show, this episode unveils Coinbase's thesis-driven investment approach, the launch of its Base Ecosystem Fund, and their vision of agent-powered on-chain experiences. JK doesn't hold back as he breaks down real-world AI agent use cases, decentralized compute networks, and what's hot—and what’s not—in today’s Web3 landscape. From crypto-native robo-advisors to the future of stablecoin-powered commerce, this is a must-listen for investors, founders, and anyone looking to get ahead in the evolving world of blockchain and AI.

Key Topics Covered:

• Coinbase Ventures’ Evolution: From a 2018 blog post to a 500+ portfolio powerhouse, JK outlines the venture arm’s strategic growth and AI investment thesis.
• Crypto Meets AI Agents: JK envisions a world where AI agents understand your crypto history and act autonomously on-chain.
• Decentralized AI Stack: A practical view on when blockchain really adds value to AI—and when it doesn’t.
• BASE Ecosystem Fund: How Coinbase is democratizing Web3 startup funding through Echo and Base-native groups.
• Founder Traits: JK highlights what makes standout founders: AI/crypto fluency, narrative strength, and lean execution.

Episode Highlights:

"We published a thesis last September about the intersection of crypto AI... AI agents will be primary drivers of economic activity." — Jonathan King

"Imagine an AI wallet that just knows your tokens, knows your habits, and can swap and transact for you." — Richard Carthon

"Coinbase Ventures isn’t just strategic. We're thesis-driven and hands-on in early stage investing." — Jonathan King

"The BASE Ecosystem Fund opens a new channel to fund crypto builders via Echo." — Jonathan King

"The best founders aren’t just technical—they can tell the story and get buy-in." — Jonathan King

People and Resources Mentioned:

• Jonathan King (JK)
• Coinbase Ventures
• BASE Ecosystem
• Emily Choi
• Sapien
• Moonwell
• Venice AI
• Vanna Network
• Echo
• Legion

About Our Guest:

Jonathan King (JK) is a Principal Investor at Coinbase Ventures, where he leads strategic investments in early-stage crypto and AI startups. With over a decade of experience in product engineering, strategy, and marketing, JK authored Coinbase Ventures' AI thesis and helps manage a portfolio of 500+ startups. A thought leader in AI agents and decentralized technologies, JK is helping shape the future of Web3 infrastructure and user experience.

Guest Contacts:

• LinkedIn
• Website
• Twitter

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Transcript:
Richard Carthon : All right, welcome to The Edge of Show. I'm your host, Richard Carthon, and I'm here with my co-host, Joshua Krieger. We feature a variety of top-notch guests and other hosts as well. It's another production of The Edge of Company, a quickly-growing media ecosystem empowering the pioneers of Web3 tech and culture. It is responsible for other groundbreaking endeavors like the OuterEdge Innovation Festival in LA and Riyadh.
Josh Kriger: Today's show features Jonathan King, a.k.a. J.K., a principal investor at Coinbase Ventures, where he's helping shape the future of Web3 by backing the builders of the next generation infrastructure and developer tools. With over a decade of experience across product engineering, strategy and marketing, J.K. now leads Coinbase's charge in the convergence of crypto and AI. including authoring their flagship thesis on the space. He's got a front row seat to where the tech is heading and he's here to break it all down for us. Coinbase is one of the world's leading cryptocurrency platforms, known for making crypto accessible to the mainstream while also backing innovations through Coinbase Ventures, as if all of you didn't already know that. And from retail trading to institutional custody to supporting the Web3 builder ecosystem, Coinbase plays a key role in shaping the crypto economy infrastructure. So JK, it's great to have you on the show and someone with my same initials. So there we go. Yes. Good to see you again, Josh. And thanks for having me, guys. So a funny backstory, one of my other business partners in this venture and previous also has the initials JK. So at one point, we had like some kind of small company called JK squared. So yeah, good initials, I have to say.
Jonathan King (JK): See, I went to JK because when I like the first job I had out of undergrad, there was like multiple Jonathans. And so I needed to differentiate myself. And now it sounded like I need to do it again. So we'll see what I come up with next.
Josh Kriger: We've had our own sort of name challenges. At one point, we had a lot of Josh's in the company, which got really confusing. So I feel you there. But you know, look, it's such a thrill to have you on the show and to break down what's going on with Coinbase Ventures. You guys have been prolific in this space. Can you give us a little bit of the backstory and the history of how things got going and what your thesis has been, maybe touch on how it's evolving?
Jonathan King (JK): Coinbase Ventures was founded back in 2018. It actually started from a blog post that was written by our COO, Emily Choi, in which she announced our mandate to go invest into very exceptional founders that essentially aligned with Coinbase's mission to increase economic freedom. And now, you know, building the on-chain economy. So back then, 2018, there wasn't a dedicated team. It was a very small lean operation. And essentially we were like kind of indexing across the top founders in the space at the time, which was very few. And like the ultimate goal was like, how do we grow to pie? How do we kind of grow the ecosystem? Coinbase shouldn't be the only large crypto company based in the U.S. that's kind of building this kind of on-chain economy. And so that's what we kind of optimized for. Fast forward to 2020, as you guys may recall, with the emergence of different like DeFi protocols like Uniswap and other kind of smart contract applications, we wanted to kind of build on some of like those early successes. And so I hired a dedicated team and started writing somewhat like larger checks. still with an ecosystem index type of approach in terms of the investments, but also kind of like a sleeve for very thesis driven, higher conviction bets. And then going into 2023 to now, fully dedicated team. And what we're doing now is kind of like taking an approach where we're doubling down into the early stage. So pre-seed through series A is simply our sweet spot, very thesis driven. So like doing things around, like let's say crypto AI having a point of view on things related to stable coins and payments. And we're also carved out with the launch of BASE, we carved out the BASE ecosystem fund. And so the BASE ecosystem fund, we're investing into pre-seed and seed builders on top of BASE. And so all of that across that journey since the initial founding, we so far have about 500 plus investments across the crypto and on-chain landscape. And we're looking forward to continuing that journey ahead.
Josh Kriger: Um, just a quick follow up question there. And then I know, Rachel wanted to get into some of the different areas. I was just curious, with with Coinbase Ventures, obviously, there's a close connection to Coinbase. Are the investment decisions entirely independent? Or does there have to be some sort of strategic value for Coinbase in terms of the projects that you decide to, you know, support?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, great question. So it's funny, it's very topical. So last week, I was actually doing a guest lecture at Georgia Tech about, you know, corporate venture capital. And so typically, when you think about like corporate venture capital, it's like three different models. There's like the fully strategic where there has to be some type of attached partnership distribution angle to in order to move forward that investment. You have some corporate VCs that are just purely financial. They act more like a traditional VC, and they're just optimizing for financial returns. And then you have a hybrid mixture of the two. And so I would say Coinbase Ventures falls more on the hybrid approach. So majority of our core early stage investments, they are driven by, like I said, very thesis driven, independent investment thinking. And then as we get into more later stage investments, that's where we see, you know, working very close with like our corp dev team on like those strategic opportunities, where there is some type of partnership, distribution, or a much broader alliance coming into play. So yeah, I kind of, you know, I like the model. And it gives us, you know, like a lot of flexibility to go broad and like, look at various different opportunities. With the like, kind of mandate to the yes, we want to drive a financial return. But if there's an opportunity where we can be strategic and accelerate Coinbase's product roadmap or provide some value to that company, we have the flexibility to do that as well.
Richard Carthon : Yeah, that's really awesome. And you broke down a couple of different things that Coinbase Ventures has gone to focus on since 2018, which, you know, coming in 18, you just came off of the ICO boom to then what has gone into, you know, DeFi summer and into several other themes that have come across. But right now, one of the biggest players in the space is convergence of crypto and AI with, you know, crypto, with AI agents and several other things that have come out. So for Coinbase Ventures, like what has been some of the focus around that specific area?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, so we actually published a thesis last September about the intersection of crypto AI. And I would say our main belief is that when you take blockchain's decentralized technology and combine that with AI's ability to, let's say, mimic human reasoning as well as learn from data, that's going to be transformative to how humans and machines interact within the digital economy. We kind of like have three core beliefs that was like really underpinning that thesis. One is like, OK, to your point, AI agents. Right. So we think AI agents operating on top of crypto rail. So let's say stable coins and self-custody wallets, they're going to be the primary drivers of economic activity, both on and off chain over the long term. we think with the rise of things like chat GPT, and we're starting to see this today within crypto, let's say like an equivalent would be like a Venice AI, for example, where generative AI and natural language will become like the primary interaction modality for kind of crypto applications. And then lastly, I think like the probably the area that I'm very excited about is, you know, if you look at like in the web to space and developments around like these kind of software developer agents, for example, the Devins, the cursors, the replits of the world. At some point, we're going to see like AI is going to create the majority of source code. And eventually, that's going to become like the majority of smart contract code. And so I think like when that happens, that really leads to like this Cambrian explosion of like on chain apps and experiences. that haven't even been conceived of. So very exciting. This is like the best time that we feel like to kind of invest in the space. It's still very early. It's very nascent. Some things feel very experimental, but we're overall like kind of like excited about the momentum that we're seeing from builders at the intersection of crypto and AI.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. Is there anything about AI projects that you're just like too vanilla not scalable, you know, not exciting, like just to sort of cover the flip side of the types of things that are coming out that feel a little bit too copy paste in your mind?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, so I think like early on, probably back in 2023, when we were initially seeing a lot of the projects building within the crypto AI space, things around like just saying, okay, well, we're gonna like decentralize every aspect of the AI stack, And our belief is that you don't necessarily need crypto for every layer or every challenge of the existing AI stack. You use crypto for what it's good for. Verifiability, transparency, censorship resistance, decentralization, et cetera. And then AI, on the other hand, could bring more advanced capabilities to on-chain applications. We started to think about, I think like some of the things was like very early on, like decentralized computing, right? I think like using crypto economic incentives for supply, like infusing supply side of GPUs, for example, right? Well, that's a great, but again, the question becomes, well, when does the demand actually materialize? And I think fast forward to now, we're now starting to see that demand in some of these companies, like decentralized compute providers that are able to compute to compete with some of the hyperscalers, but it's still like relatively early. So that's how I've been thinking about it. Like we don't necessarily need to embed crypto into every aspect of the AI stack, but we should kind of lean into what crypto is strong for and also on the vice versa, like leveraging AI to augment crypto as well.
Richard Carthon : Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it kind of goes into my next question, and where I think we spend a little bit more time on this, because one of the things that I've been asked, even more frequently is like, okay, you have the rise of like chat GBT, deep seek all these other players that are out here, you know, what is the purpose of the intersection of AI and blockchain? And why would that be better than one of these other already existing competitors that are out there? And where do you see the opportunity for these startups who are building and trying to blend the two together? So it's more real world instead of just like, you know, all this and bringing things on chain.
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah. So that's, that's a really good question. I think, you know, like going back to the thesis, how do you kind of see like this intersection is really in like two segments. One I would say is what you're referring to as more decentralized AI, right? So it's like, how do you take the AI stack and, you know, can you kind of augment it to inherit like the properties of modern, like peer-to-peer blockchain networks? So again, censorship resistance, verifiability, transparency, privacy, even. So if I use your example like chat GPT or like the emergence of deep seek, you know, deep seek. That was like a, you know, crazy moment over the last couple of weeks. Like this very advanced powerful model like there was questions about, you know, how much did it cost to like train that model, etc. But one of the issues with DeepSeek is like when you asked us certain questions, some of those responses that you received from DeepSeek were actually censored, right? Or there were concerns about that data flowing back to like the operating company of DeepSeek. What I was impressed by was if you look at some of the alternative chat applications that are being built on top of CryptoRail, so Venice AI, what Eric Voorhees is developing, he was able to embed the same deep-seek model, but it's completely private. Any type of input that you put into that chat box, that stays locally on your machine. It never goes off to some kind of third-party server. Um, you can, it was completely kind of censorship resistance. So you got real responsive, you did a side by side comparison of like certain questions between the vanilla deep sea versus the model being uploaded to Venice, you got a very different response. And so I think that's where again, going back to my point, it's like, let's lean into like the attributes of crypto that makes it very effective. at least as we're thinking about decentralizing the AI stack. And then on the other end, which we can get into, of course, it's really around the emergence of on-chain AI and agents starting to transact, using crypto-economic rails, wallets, using things around stable coins, et cetera. And that's probably the area I'm probably most excited about as we go into this next phase of the crypto-AI intersection.
Richard Carthon : Yeah, just to follow on that. I'm excited about that, too, where I think so just to speak to that for people aren't necessarily as deep into this like crypto meets AI side. Basically, imagine going into like a chatbot and being like, hey, I have Bitcoin and ultimately I'm trying to buy this like Solana meme coin, help me get it. And in the background, the AI agents are doing all the extra steps that makes crypto as hard and challenging as it is for most people to be in here to do everything so that the end result is there. And having these models, I can do it pretty seamlessly. So it's almost like, in my head, the way I try to explain it is like, imagine AI meets DeFi meets wallets. It just makes it super simple. So that's kind of how I kind of approach explaining it.
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, I mean, you're spot on. To me, it's like AI agents kind of transacting on-chain. It's like the next level of automation, essentially. I'm writing a new piece specifically on the emergence of on-chain AI, and one of the things I always liken it to is this idea of on-chain betterment, or on-chain wealth front, where the robo-advisor is actually an agent on the back end. And so as a user, I'm going to trust this agent with some type of economic value. Let's say if I'm depositing USDC, And that agent's objective function is just to go source the best sources of yield on-chain. I want you to grow this pie. I want you to execute trades on my behalf. I want to be able to say, type into a chat box, you know, swap x for y. And to your point, like an agent executes that. And so like, we kind of enter in this phase where, you know, not only are we abstracting, like some of the complexities of crypto, but we're also like reducing the cognitive load to be able to effectively transact within crypto by leveraging some of like these new AI primitives.
Josh Kriger: Let's take a pause to shout out one of our favorite partners. VR, AR, quantum computing, and more, ZuberLawler offers expert guidance in capital raising, IP transactions, M&A, litigation, and compliance. Visit ZuberLawler.com, that's Z-U-B-E-R-L-A-W-L-E-R.com for cutting edge legal solutions. So, Jonathan, you talked a lot about the different areas that you guys look at from AI to other sort of on-chain activities. I would love to know some of the projects that you all have backed and that have recently launched that we should keep our eyes out for.
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, great question. So like I mentioned before, like, you know, we kind of think about like this crypto AI stack into two segments, but you know, two related interconnected segments. So like decentralized AI, which is more so decentralizing the AI stack, right, verifiability, censorship, resistance, transparency, etc. And then on chain AI is like kind of bringing AI into crypto. So on the decentralized AI side, some of the projects that we backed is one, Vanna Network. And so the way Vanna Network works, they essentially are helping users to aggregate their own personal private data to train AI models. And so what happens is that as some of these AI models are used, then there's attribution back to the user, right? And so you can imagine if like an AI model becomes really successful, that creates a really nice firewall effect and incentive for the users, right? So users are now incentivized to provide their data in training AI models. I think that one is really interesting. In their live, they actually just launched a new foundational model called Collective One that's essentially the first kind of user-owned foundational model. It has trained on 7 billion parameters, 1 million users uploaded their data into that model. Their goal was to get to 100 million users over time. That's one to watch. Another one, I think you had them on the podcast recently, it's Sapien and Rowan, and we think highly of them and what they're doing. Again, this whole incentive structure to hire more data labelers in order to be able to fine-tune and ultimately normalize data so that way it can be trained. As we move up the stack into more of the on-chain AI and application side, I think one of the trends that we've been seeing is existing portfolio companies that we have invested into the past are now moving more into the AI space and incorporating AI mechanisms into their protocols. One of our portfolio companies, Moonwell, led by Luke Youngblood, he developed this agent called Mari. And what that agent is doing is just helping users within the Moonwell front end find the best sources of yield. It's a borrow-lend protocol. So we think that that's interesting. And there's a couple of more that are in the queue that gets more into the lanes of natural language interfaces for transacting on-chain. agent powered vaults, for example. So pretty exciting stuff. And I think those are the things that I'm starting to see that's very novel. Again, a lot of the projects that have launched has been more on like the infrastructure side, but there are some promising green shoes that should be released over the next kind of like three to six months that pushes more into like that on-chain AI application vertical.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Really enjoyed our conversation with SAPI and I'm glad you gave them a shout out. I think what they're doing is really exciting in terms of this ability to reward on-chain participation and creating knowledge in a meaningful way for real expertise. So what I've seen personally is these more niche use cases become where it's at. I heard recently about a teenager that created an AI application where you can sort of take a picture of your plate of food and it had all the macros and calories estimated for you and everything like that. Not a blockchain use case, but it's a good example of sort of applying AI in a very specific way to solve a very big pain point in a way that wasn't possible before. I think there's infinite possibilities for doing that on chain with the combination of blockchain and AI.
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, and I also, you know, I guess to add on to that, I also think like, you know, agents and agents in commerce, right? And so agents being able to better transact with humans or better transact with other agents. One of the things that, you know, I'm very excited about is like, you know, Coinbase, like our Coinbase developer platform team, they have been building towards this agent kit offering, which is now live, which essentially equips any agent with a self custodial wallet, right? So that way wallets can begin, those agents can begin accepting USDC, and they can begin executing transactions on chain. So that's a promising area, right? If you think about commerce today, very manual, it has to be intent driven, you have to know what you're looking for to now you kind of move into the space where it's like very hyper personalized, and kind of on demand, and that will be powered by agents. And so That's an area I think is going to be really exciting. And that infrastructure, like I mentioned, is being built out today to facilitate this new wave of commerce.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I love that. But I think there's a broader conversation here around sort of mindset when it comes specifically to investing in AI. So many moving parts. Trends come and go really quickly. We saw Deep Seek was like an aha moment for us that, you know, today's filet mignon, maybe tomorrow's chopped liver, right? So I guess, like, how do you sort of look at and plus, like, let's not forget the regulatory ambiguity around AI and blockchain combined together. Yeah, it gets pretty muddy pretty quickly. How do you sort of invest in that landscape? How do you decide what sort of has enough meat on the bones to sort of get through that regulatory sort of ambiguity?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, so I think there's, there's a couple of things there, right, in terms of how we think about like our mindset as we're investing into this space. So I would say more broadly, it's like our general approach is really to kind of, you know, evaluate each investment based on his merits, taking like first principles thinking. So we're looking at things around like founder, you know, kind of market fit. So one thing that I'm always impressed upon founders as I'm talking to them, especially if they're building at the intersection of crypto AI, is I want to see a crypto native and AI native founding team. That is the ideal skill set, especially if you're building a decentralized AI stack. Do you understand model architectures? Do you understand compute infrastructure? And then how do you bring in someone that has more of like the crypto skill set to kind of think about like what the economic incentive should be. So that's like probably I would say the first layer of like what we're assessing. The next is just kind of thinking about the product a little bit more holistically. And going back to my earlier comments about decentralized computing, right? So if you look at a lot of the projects, they were doing really well in terms of being able to incentivize the supply. But at what point do we start seeing the demand, right? And so that's where we started to think about, OK, what does the long-term growth and demand potential look like for this specific opportunity? And then everything else becomes like, you know, what if you ship like you show me the product, let me play around with it, even if it's like just a just a prototype. I want to kind of like get get in and like really test like some of the core assumptions so that's more generally I would say like the framework that we apply. across the founders. Now, as it relates to the regulatory aspect, you're right. That's a risk that we readily call out, that we do need regulatory clarity. And we think that the momentum is there. The founders, essentially, they want to understand what are the rules of the road. They don't want to necessarily encounter roadblocks. And I think that's what we've had for such a long time. But I think we're more so excited and optimistic about the momentum that we're seeing across both the pro-crypto as well as pro-AI policies. And I think that's going to be a net positive for founders building in this space long term.
Richard Carthon : I agree. You brought up a point that really went into the founding, the founding team, right, and making sure that they're both crypto native and that they're also AI native. But I want to dive into that a little bit more, but I have to do it by taking first a step back and like speaking directly to you, JK, because you come from a very impressive background going through product engineering strategy and now investing. So with you, like having worn so many hats, how's it helped shape your perspective? on what makes a great founder and a great team? And what are some of those common blind spots that you see from technical founders as they go into the world of either trying to raise investment or building out a product? Well, well, thank you for the kind words.
Jonathan King (JK): I appreciate it. Yeah, I think like, you know, you're right. So I have had several roles, you know, in my previous background, cross product, engineering, and, you know, later on, it's like more corporate strategies type of work. I'd say like the common thread across like my background is that I always sought out like the whiteboard or greenfield opportunities where it was like time to build something completely net new. It was emerging technology. It was a foreign concept. It was something that I had to do a lot of explaining myself, like understanding the narrative and being able to effectively communicate that value prop to my stakeholders. I always worked in industries where technology adoption was a laggard. I came from the energy industry, went into oil and gas construction, which was an even larger laggard when it comes to technology adoption. As a product operator, not only was it I had to focus on the execution side of things, but I also had to focus on you know, thinking about how do I effectively communicate this, this value prop to my audience, right? Like, what is, what are, what are the things, the key attributes of my message that is going to resonate with them, right, to be, to effectively convert them into buyers? And so those are the things that I kind of look for in founders. Yes, there's a, there's a level of like, like, hustling grit that I think is, like, absolutely critical. But I think for some of the best founders, not only are they able to effectively execute and go from zero to one, but some of the best founders I know, like, they're able to also communicate the story. They're able to tell the narrative. They're able to get, like, buy-in from the users that they want to appeal to. And so those founders typically have, like, a view of, like, what's the long-term North Star? Right? Am I delivering value? Will customers actually buy in and actually pay for this service that I'm offering? If not, how do I effectively iterate very quickly? And while they're kind of being visionary and thinking long term, they're still kind of like putting together like those pragmatic steps in order to get to that in-state vision. And so those are the things that I typically look for in founders, like given my background. In terms of some of the pitfalls, I think you kind of mentioned it, right? Sometimes I see the technical co-founders. I love diving into the tech. I'm still a product guy at heart. The tech is, you know, the tech itself is not the all of the story, right? You have to be able to communicate, okay, how are you thinking about value capture for this technology, right? Who do you think are the buyers for this technology? And so that's why sometimes we like to see teams augment themselves and not only a technical co-founder, but also more of like the business GTM co-founder. And I think that makes them a little bit more well-rounded and effective over time.
Josh Kriger: No, I can resonate with a lot of that. And, you know, don't envy your job completely though. It is pretty cool to be able to sort of make such a big impact in the industry with the broad nature of what you guys do. And we talked a little bit, well, we talked a lot about AI and that intersection, but there's a lot of other aspects of our industry that there's actually like a pretty, sustainable debate about whether or not there's there's growth or there's shrinkage, right, like metaverse gaming, um, you know, the evolution of the Bitcoin ecosystem, you know, regulated products, real world assets, you know, the future of stable coins, you mentioned a little bit earlier, These are some of the trends that are sort of out there in the ether, but there's not necessarily one point of view around conviction that this makes sense. Like we've had with the age of DeFi in previous years where it was all about gaming. What are your thoughts on these other areas at the current moment? Are there any that you're more bullish on, more bearish on among the ones I mentioned?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, I think, like, among the ones that you mentioned, my view is, like, you know, since, like, I would say, over the last couple of years, one thing I appreciate about crypto is that, you know, we have begun to evolve beyond just, like, kind of the speculative side of the industry and focusing more on, like, utility, right, and building out the applications. And that's mainly because the infrastructure has advanced to the point where we can build out some really amazing, like, applications on-chain. So for us, I think the areas that, in addition to crypto AI, stable coins and payments continues to be top of mind. Not only for Coinbase Ventures, but Coinbase more broadly. We need to get payments down to one second, one cent, and allow anyone to be able to transact and transact across borders. Um, the other area that we've been looking into is mainly things around like the next frontier of DeFi. And so this is what I call like the more retail friendly DeFi applications. They're mobile friendly, they look like the Betterment Wealthfront UX in the front, but powered by the Morpho or Moonwell vaults on the back end, right? And kind of giving people exposure to those savings and like yield generation opportunities. And then I would say the fourth category is just really like consumer apps in general. And so to your point, I mean, one of the biggest success cases that we've seen that's happened over the course of last year, and that was Polymarket, right? And like the rise of prediction market and you know, even post-election, like their volumes are still up and trending well. It's like people are, you know, pacing wagers on like the sports markets today. So I think we're seeing like some positive green shoots, but like my, I guess like advice would be to founders like continue to focus on the utility side of, of crypto and really pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished on chain, given like the maturity of the infrastructure that's now available.
Richard Carthon : Definitely. And I think you put a ton of really good trends to keep in mind. And for everyone listening, go back and think about how can you continue to evolve what you're working on more in that direction and to get in front of it. But with that in mind, Coinbase Ventures has been working on quite a few different things right now. And I know you have some pretty cool, exciting projects and collaborations you've been cooking up. What's some of the ones that you can either share that you have on your radar that you're able to share with us today?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, I think like the most recent one is like one of the things that you know another trend that we saw evolve is like really like the new fundraising models for on-chain startups. So this is where I'm referring to like the platforms like an Echo or Legion which are built entirely on on-chain and allow like on the Echo side, they allow KYC accredited investors to participate, you can make your wallet is built on top of base, and you can get access to some of these like more crypto for projects. And so one of those recent things that we announced is through our base ecosystem fund, we launched a base ecosystem group, on Echo. So first of its kind, and essentially what we're doing is now giving another opportunity for base ecosystem fund founders within our portfolio to have additional avenues for raising capital, right? And primarily raising capital for their community. We are democratizing access to our pipeline, making it available to the broader community to invest on the same terms that was presented to us. And so I think it's just a really exciting opportunity going forward, especially as we think about, again, applications coming on chain and getting very creative in terms of how do we fund the next generation of on-chain startups.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, I think that's true community building, right? We have, we've had like this really archaic hierarchy model to investing in our space where, you know, the big guys get the lion's share and everyone else sort of gets whatever's left over if there's anything left over. And that's actually the legacy of an industry that's all about egalitarianism. So I love that you guys are opening those channels up to the community. So that's really awesome. We're gonna sort of move to another segment, get to know you better, but let's fast forward five years ahead. You're sort of a thinker, writer in this space. What's one bold prediction you have for the crypto AI space that might sound crazy today, but you think might have a real shot of coming through? Coming true. Coming true.
Jonathan King (JK): No, Josh, I'm an optimist, man. So I have a lot of predictions that I hope come true. But I think the thing that I've been really leaning into, again, and it's going back to the AI agent trend, I think In the next five years, everyone transacting in crypto will have their own personal AI agent. And this AI agent will be able to understand all of your prior transaction history. It's going to understand the protocols that you've interacted with. It's going to understand the tokens that you've held. You're going to be able to chat with it and ask it questions. And this thing is going to do unimaginable like kind of things on Shane on your behalf right and I think like that's like the state that we're entering to it's like hyper personalized um agentic experiences in a sense and so that's probably the area that I've been leaning into right right now we've just in the early innings of like agents that's just like okay there's just like pure trade or pure research analysts but I think like over time as agents begin ingesting some of like actual user-owned data that's what's going to unlock like those next level of like agentic experiences and that's something I'm like super excited about over the long term.
Josh Kriger: Nice, nice. That sounds pretty exciting to me too. And yeah, really appreciate all your insights on the space, where it's going, shedding some light on how Coinbase Ventures works and opportunities there. Our next segment is sort of a fun shout out area where we give you a chance to sort of Illuminate someone maybe in your organization, your world that doesn't always get as much of the limelight as they should. Who comes to mind? Or that you just appreciate a lot for what they bring to the table.
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, I think, you know, as much as I talk about like Coinbase Ventures and like, you know, the number of investments that we have, like I said, we have like this 500 plus portfolio. I want to give like a shout out to our portfolio operations team, right? Like, yes, we're myself, the investment team, we're upfront, we are, you know, kind of making the deals and getting a note of founders, but, you know, they are managing like some of the outcomes for those founders, and they do it effectively well, right? 500 plus portfolio companies, a team of two. So that's who I would say, like, I want to make sure that they get, you know, well appreciated for all of the efforts that they are extending to make like our Oregon Egg success.
Josh Kriger: Thanks for the shout out. That was great. So our last segment of the day is going to be Edge Quick Hitters. You're used to putting founders on the spot. So we're going to put you on the spot. I'm sure you'll be fine. So edge quick hitters are a fun quick way to get to know you a little bit better. There are 10 questions. We're looking for just a single short or a few word response, but feel free to expand if you get the urge. You up for it? Let's do it. All right. Question one. What is the first thing you remember ever purchasing in your life?
Jonathan King (JK): Probably with sneakers. I was a big sneaker head growing up. So I think when I got my first job at like, what, age 15, I was actually working at a shoe store. It was famous footwear. So yeah, the first purchase that I made when I got my first paycheck was a pair of sneakers.
Josh Kriger: Nice, nice. One of my first jobs was actually a furniture store. But learning how to sell anything is good practice for life, right? What is the first thing you remember ever selling in your life?
Jonathan King (JK): Oh, easy. I was a gamer, so trying to negotiate, reselling my old used games to GameStop, if anyone recalls how that used to go. So that's where I learned like a little bit of the negotiation skills to try to maximize my take-home earnings. Wasn't as successful, but yeah, that was like my first instance of selling something.
Richard Carthon : Yeah, it's amazing how you get a brand new $50 game and then they try to buy it back for $5 just next day. Next day is ridiculous. Um, well, what is one of the most recent things that you purchased?
Jonathan King (JK): Oh, most recent thing. Actually, yeah. So right before Christmas, I'm a watch guy. And I love like collecting watches. And so I was if you've ever seen like the Rolex Batman, it's like this nice kind of black and blue color. I waited for it to buy that watch for about three years. I've been on the list for about three years. And I got the opportunity to purchase it just before Christmas. So it was a very special kind of purchase for me.
Richard Carthon : Nice. Oh yeah, I'm sure anyone who sees and recognizes it's going to know that's a very special one. So congrats on that one. What is one of the most recent things that you have sold?
Jonathan King (JK): Um, I don't know if, like, I've sold anything major. I mean, I guess, like, two years ago, we sold our home, like, when we used to live in Pearland in Texas. So in Houston, we were just talking about that in the city of Houston. So we moved back to Atlanta back in 2019 and kind of rented our house out for a few years. And then, yeah, we sold that. That was our first one we ever bought. And we sold it two years ago.
Richard Carthon : Congrats.
Josh Kriger: Nice. And what is your most prized possession? Oh, um,
Jonathan King (JK): I guess, like, life, good health, you know? I'm generally, like, an optimistic, you know, guy. You know, I would say, like, my wife. I don't possess my wife, but, you know, then she is, I guess, higher in the priority of things that I value. But yeah, I would say, like, you know, just life and good health, good energy, and to be in the seat that I'm in.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, happy wife, happy life, right? Yeah. No, I'm definitely on a major, major health kick lately. And yeah, I just realized, like, life can beat you down, you got to take care of yourself, you know, so right on there. And if you could buy anything in the world, digital physical service experience is currently for sale, what would it be?
Jonathan King (JK): Oh, so I guess my wife and I, we both love to travel. And last year, we had the chance to go to Lake Como in Italy. And I was like, for the first time, I felt like if I ever wanted to move somewhere, that would be the place. And so I would go buy a villa in Lake Como, if I could relocate there. And especially, if there ever was a crypto scene in Lake Como, there isn't, trust me, I ask. But yeah, that would be the most ideal thing. We would love to live abroad.
Josh Kriger: You know, you could start the trend for sure.
Richard Carthon : Go be a trendsetter. Awesome. If you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
Jonathan King (JK): Positive energy. Best advice I've ever gotten in my career is just don't be a jerk to people. And if someone opens the door for you, leave it open for the next person to follow you in. So mentorship, giving back, those are the traits that I would pass on for sure.
Richard Carthon : Awesome. Yeah. It's always incredible when you can have someone help you get to where you're trying to go. And there's nothing more beautiful than bringing someone else up with you to keep the trend going. On the flip side, if you could eliminate one of your personality traits for the next generation, what would it be?
Jonathan King (JK): Oh. You know, I was just talking to my cons person about this, is that, you know, my anxiety and being, like, you know, wanting everything to be perfect and just do everything so exceptionally well, like that type of, and just probably, like, just having a balanced view, right? And things will just, things will be okay, living a little bit more in the present, not always just so focused on, like, the future and what's next, but just enjoying the moment for what it is, living in the present, et cetera. That would be the thing. that I would take away.
Richard Carthon : Yeah, that's a good one.
Josh Kriger: Nice. So two more questions. What did you do just before joining us on the podcast? I was prepping for the podcast.
Jonathan King (JK): Um, but no, no, actually earlier today. So typically on Thursdays, we have like our investment committee meeting. So I actually had a deal that I was presenting to our team. So that's what I pretty much spent my most of my day doing.
Josh Kriger: Nice, nice. And what are you going to do next after the podcast?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, I'm actually going on up to Georgia Tech's campus right after this to speak on like a FinTech panel. So I'll be kind of representing like kind of Coinbase Ventures talking about like some of the latest and greatest things that are happening in the crypto industry.
Richard Carthon : That's awesome. Well, good luck with that. And I'm sure the young minds will be very happy to hear it. We always like to finish with a bonus question. And so being a sneakerhead, now we have a sneakerhead on here, got to ask the question. What do you think is the best drop of all time? The best drop of all time.
Jonathan King (JK): Chicago AJ1s, man. That's the classic. It's the OG sneaker, especially if you get your hands on the 85s, the originals, right? It's the classic. Every time they re-release it, I'm going to buy a pair. But yeah, those are the classic. And I would say that's the well-respected pair in the sneaker industry.
Richard Carthon : Got it. Well, everybody heard it here first. If you can get your hands on a pair of that, find a way. Let's do it.
Josh Kriger: JK, this has been so much fun, my friend. Where can listeners go to learn more about you and what's up with Coinbase Ventures?
Jonathan King (JK): Yeah, so you can definitely follow us on Twitter. So like our at CV Ventures account on Twitter, you can follow myself as well, where I'm posting a lot of like our latest thesis content. So at Jonathan King VC. And then lastly, you can follow the Coinbase Ventures newsletter on paragraph as well.
Richard Carthon : Awesome.
Josh Kriger: Awesome. Well, thanks. Thanks so much for sharing this show with us today. This was super insightful. Loved having you on. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it. Thanks, J.K.

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