Coinbase Relaunches UpOnly Podcast with $25 Million NFT Purchase

Coinbase just made a famous joke offer to buy another season of the podcast UpOnly for $25 million. The hosts promised to release eight more episodes if a sponsor bought a unique Non-Fungible Token .

Curiously, the exchange actually overpaid UpOnly's asking price by $5 million. Despite not receiving any advertising rights or creative control over the program, Coinbase distracted the community from its ongoing technical difficulties.

Coinbase Renews UpOnly Podcast

UpOnly, a popular cryptocurrency podcast, ended a few months ago, but one of the co-hosts created a strange challenge : if someone bought an Non-Fungible Token worth $20 million, the show would return for a new season.

The offer has conditions like no sponsorship rights, editorial control, etc. for the show, but it will revive the podcast.

In a surprising turn of events, an unlikely buyer actually accepted the joke offer. Not only did Coinbase buy UpOnly’s Non-Fungible Token , but the popular exchange also paid $5 million over the asking price.

Since this happened, the crypto community has been in an uproar . Jordan Fish, co-host of UpOnly and the first creator of Non-Fungible Token, has briefly expressed his disbelief at Coinbase's acquisition.

Honestly, no one expected this to actually happen. We're not sure why Coinbase decided to spend $25 million on eight new episodes of UpOnly, but it seems like a PR stunt.

The podcast has stated that it reserves the right to ignore Coinbase's generosity, or even mock the company, during the broadcast. However, a new season will be released.

A big publicity stunt?

Still, as a PR stunt, it's a pretty creative one. Plus, a little context might help explain why Coinbase chose today to extend UpOnly.

The exchange encountered severe technical difficulties today as an AWS outage disrupted its premium trading platform and other services.

After several hours of work, the issues still persist. The company has even warned that some Base users may see their account balances as 0 for some Token, suggesting there are still serious bugs that have not been fixed.

Now, however, Coinbase has the crypto community talking about UpOnly instead of its serious infrastructure issues. Considering the exchange has billions of dollars in annual revenue , $25 million seems like a small price to pay to change the narrative.

Plus, they might even have a company representative as a guest on the new podcast.

Whatever Coinbase's motives, this UpOnly Non-Fungible Token is a genuinely funny event. Hopefully the hosts won't hold it against their new sponsor for reviving the canceled show.