Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong just helped bring viral grassroots journalist Nick Shirley onto the Coinbase-led Ethereum Layer 2 base.
Last week, Shirley exposed a multi-million dollar daycare scam in a video that went viral, garnering over 100 million impressions.
Shirley created and launched a verified creator coin on Base, named $thenickshirley, on December 28th, and Armstrong shared the new launch on X, saying, “Here we go, a good case study of how content can be better monetized on Base compared to other platforms. Other platforms coming soon.”
Shirley herself also responded to Armstrong, calling Bass and Zola “amazing”.
Given the unexpected activation and subsequent publicity sparked by Armstrong’s post, $thenickshirley grew explosively from launch, quickly increasing its market cap to $9 million, which is remarkable in today’s poor on-chain landscape.
However, today’s market conditions have caught up with $thenickshirley holders, with the token down 66% from yesterday’s highs and a market cap of $3 million. While it is normal for small-cap on-chain tokens to experience intense volatility, especially when Sniper holds a large supply, the token’s performance shows how little demand there will be for on-chain trading in December 2025.
$thenickshirley Chart – DexScreener
Despite the token’s underwhelming second day on the market, $thenickshirley currently boasts the highest on-chain trading volume of any non-ETH and CBTC token on Base, with $7.9 million in trading volume, outpacing leading Base tokens such as AERO and ZORA.
Shirley became a mainstream media sensation last week after documenting and videotaping an ongoing investigation into a child care fraud scheme in Minnesota. Shirley’s content has been a hot topic across all mainstream news outlets since his release, with his top video on X receiving over 118 million impressions in just three days.
