Mark McLaughlin

when i started building echo 2 years ago, i knew it had 95% chance of failing. to be honest, i couldnt really imagine any other outcome, but i thought at least it may be a noble failure worth attempting. i certainly didn't think echo would be sold to coinbase, but, here we are: today coinbase bought echo for ~$375m. echo will remain a standalone platform under its current brand for now, but we will integrate sonar's public sale product into coinbase, and likely introduce new ways for founders to access investors, and for investors to access opportunities into coinbase itself. over the years i have chatted to brian a handful of times, and mostly to complain at him honestly. i have always respected how brian would listen to an outsider chat shit at him on the phone and take the feedback seriously. now, instead of complaining, i will have the opportunity try to do the work to make things better. crypto itself has moved on a long way since we started working on echo. i guess partially this is because of the election result. but, i feel energised by a lot of the cool things being built in crypto again: hyperliquid, zcash, stablecoin supercyle, and so on. feels like a good time to be on the field instead of an idiot with a twitter account yapping nonsense. well, i guess i still will be that. anyway, job's not finished. onwards. oh fuck yeah, before i go, the final season of up only (now "unc only" due to our severe old age) will commence when we figure out who the guests should be lol cobber