Behind Coinbase's acquisition of Echo: Cobie from entering the circle at $200 to gaining fame and fortune in 13 years.

The story of Crypto Assets OG Cobie: From student days to entrepreneurship and acquisition, witnessing the ups and downs of the crypto industry for 13 years (Previous summary: Coinbase: Why did we spend $400 million to acquire Echo?) (Background supplement: With the rise of Echo, Legion, and Buidlpad, the new generation of ICO platforms, what opportunities for participation are there?) On October 21, 2025, Coinbase announced the acquisition of the on-chain investment platform Echo for $375 million. Just a day earlier, Coinbase had spent $25 million to buy an NFT, solely to revive a podcast show. Two days, two transactions, totaling $400 million, all pointing to the same person: Jordan “Cobie” Fish. Who is Cobie? If you follow the English crypto circle, there are too many labels behind this name. 800,000 Twitter followers, founder of Echo, host of UpOnly crypto podcast, co-founder of Lido Finance… He is also the “whistleblower” who exposed Coinbase's insider trading with a single tweet. In the crypto world, he is one of the few OGs who has survived from 2012 to now and remains active at the forefront of the market. After the acquisition news was announced, Cobie wrote on X: “I really didn't expect Echo to be sold to Coinbase.” It sounds like a platitude, but those who frequently watch his social media know that this might be the truth. Because when he founded Echo two years ago, he also said: “I think there is a 95% chance it will fail.” A person who always talks about failure ultimately secured nearly $400 million in investment. As a regular investor in various crypto projects, Cobie doesn't seem to lack money. But the story didn't start that way. Like every crypto player with dreams of wealth, according to his own account, he entered the circle in 2012 as a student, buying some Bitcoin for $200. From an unknown student to a crypto OG, Cobie's journey is almost a microcosm of the 13-year history of the crypto industry: early idealism, the craze of ICOs, the rise of DeFi, and the collapse of FTX… he was present for all of it. The key is that he not only witnessed it but has also survived through the bull and bear cycles to this day. In an industry where everyone yearns for quick wealth, surviving long-term is an unattainable luck for most, and also a persistence that is extremely difficult to maintain. Entering the circle with $200, developing the drop to zero celebrity coin (2012-2014) In 2012, Jordan Fish was studying at the University of Bristol in the UK. As a computer science major, he bought his first batch of Bitcoin at a unit price of less than $10. According to his later account on Twitter, he entered the crypto industry with only $200 in capital. At a price of $10, this was roughly equivalent to 20 Bitcoins at the time. He also gave himself a nickname: CryptoCobain, which he later changed to Cobie. In 2013, Bitcoin rose from $13 to $1,000. In January of that year, Cobie found a job at a UK startup called CYOA as the technical director. Until a fortuitous opportunity arose, Cobie developed a “celebrity coin” that changed his trajectory. In 2011-2012, almost no mainstream Western media reported on Bitcoin; The Keiser Report was one of the few media programs that continuously discussed cryptocurrencies early on, playing an important role in shaping the early community's awareness. The host of this program was Max Keiser, who later became an advisor on Bitcoin to the President of El Salvador. At that time, Keiser had accurately predicted that Bitcoin would rise above $1,000 and, with his exaggerated performance style, such as tearing dollar bills on the show, became the “mad evangelist” of the crypto world. At that time, Keiser jokingly tweeted that if there was a coin called Max Keiser that could reach a market cap of $1 billion, he would appear naked on the show. Cobie and another partner, Luke Mitchell, took him seriously and created a coin called MAX (Maxcoin), which was a fork based on Bitcoin at the time, possibly the first celebrity coin to appear on television, predating this wave of presidents and celebrities issuing coins by more than a decade. On January 28, 2014, the 555th episode of The Keiser Report was titled “Launch of Maxcoin.” Keiser mined the Genesis Block of MAX in front of a global audience. On February 14, Valentine's Day, Maxcoin rose to $3.11, with a market cap of $8.5 million. Cobie and Luke were invited to Keiser's show to discuss the technical details. Then reality hit. Apart from Keiser advocating for the coin on the show, Maxcoin had no practical use. No merchants accepted it, and there were no application scenarios. Worse, in February 2014, Mt. Gox went bankrupt, and the entire crypto market crashed. By December 31, 2014, Maxcoin's closing price was $0.00666, a drop of 99.8%. The code stopped updating, and even Keiser himself no longer mentioned the coin. Meanwhile, Cobie continued to work at that tech company in the UK until April 2015. As a developer, he stated on Twitter that he had never held Maxcoin. By this time, Bitcoin had fallen from $1,000 to $200, and most of those who entered the market in 2013 might have forever left the crypto circle, but Cobie chose to stay in a different way. Growing in Web2, becoming a KOL on Twitter (2015-2020) In April 2015, Cobie left his position as technical director at CYOA and joined a programming education startup called Enki as the growth manager. At this time, the crypto market was dead silent. Bitcoin was fluctuating between $200 and $400, and most altcoins were at or near zero. Maxcoin had already been completely forgotten. Cobie could have, like most people, treated the past few years of issuing coins as a youthful adventure and then returned to a normal life. In fact, on the surface, it appeared that he did just that. In August 2017, he switched to Monzo, then the hottest fintech unicorn in the UK. This digital bank was promoting a pure mobile banking experience, attempting to disrupt traditional banking. That summer, Bitcoin had just broken through $2,000, and the ICO boom was brewing; by December 2017, Bitcoin would rise to nearly $20,000, plunging the entire crypto world into madness. But Cobie was still in the Monzo office. Outside the office, from 2017 to 2020, the crypto market experienced a complete bull-bear cycle. The craziness at the end of 2017…