Good Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Rest in Peace, Coinbase Wallet.
No, the app itself isn’t going away, but it is getting a new name.
On its X profile, its name is crossed out and replaced with a ‘TBA’ and a few question marks.
“There’s plenty of speculation about what it means, but I’m leaning toward ‘The Base App.’ That would fit the idea of Base unveiling a range of in-app experiences directly inside its wallet,” Bradley Park, a Seoul-based analyst with DNTV Research, told CoinDesk in an interview.
Base Creator Jesse Pollak was tapped to lead Coinbase’s Wallet team last October, which lends credence to Park’s theory.
In an interview on the sidelines of Devcon in Bangkok last year, Pollak played up the decentralization of Base. It could be that the wallet is due for a rebrand to highlight its decentralized nature and distance from Coinbase itself.
It’s not the first time Coinbase has re-branded its wallet. Originally it was launched as ‘Toshi’, and in 2018 that name was dropped in favor of Coinbase Wallet.
Ethereum’s ZK Upgrade Earns Institutional Praise from Cathie Wood
ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood says Ethereum is “proposing the right moves for scalability and privacy to maintain its lead in the institutional world,” as the Ethereum Foundation unveils a roadmap to bring zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) directly to its base layer.
While Wood acknowledged she does not grasp all the technical details, her endorsement highlights growing institutional confidence in Ethereum’s long-term vision.
The proposed upgrade would let validators verify cryptographic proofs of block validity rather than re-executing each transaction, dramatically reducing computational overhead. These proofs would be generated by block builders or third-party zk-prover networks and verified in under 10 seconds, using hardware that costs less than $100,000 and consumes no more than 10 kilowatts of power.
The plan would boost network throughput and decentralization, but comes with tradeoffs. Shifting the burden of computation from validators to provers could introduce liveness risks if those provers go offline or collude. The Ethereum Foundation aims to mitigate these risks through prover diversity, protocol hardening, and eventually enabling at-home participants to contribute to proving.
If successful, this would make Ethereum the first major blockchain to integrate ZKPs at the protocol layer, reinforcing its position as the dominant infrastructure for both decentralized applications and institutional adoption. Combined with cheaper data availability via blobs and advances in zk-rollups, Ethereum is positioning itself as the chain most ready for scale.
Market Movements:
BTC: Bitcoin rallied 1% to nearly $119K over the weekend amid triple-normal trading volumes, while BlackRock’s IBIT crossed $80 billion in crypto assets under management, signaling strong institutional demand despite a late-session profit-taking reversal.
ETH: Ethereum surged past $3,000 for the first time since February, rising 3% amid record institutional inflows and heightened trading volumes that signaled strong bullish momentum.
Gold: Gold climbed to $3,371 as central banks continue their historic accumulation spree, over 1,000 tonnes annually since 2022, fueling a bullish breakout above key technical levels and setting sights on $3,578 and beyond.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets opened lower Monday as investors reacted to President Trump’s surprise weekend announcement of 30% tariffs on the EU and Mexico starting August 1, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling 0.33%.