Some people love Coinbase while others hate it. Personally I love it in the fact as it's a trusted place where I can onboard and offboard fiat currency. And while yes it's under the very prying eyes of the government it's at least nice to have a source I know I can count on. A lot of my operations have been done on coinbase and while a vast majority of it is in cold storage coinbase still acts as a hub for me and it's greatly improved in terms of crypto taxes.
To be fair if it wasn't for Coinbase I don't think we would have the adoption level of crypto like we have today. I also don't think we would have won a lot of the battles vs the SEC just like one I'm about to go over today. And sure Coinbase has it's bit of dark history as well but overall I have to say Coinbase has been a very positive impact for crypto adoption.
SEC Lawsuit
The SEC continues to try and attack crypto on all levels and failing at just about every step of the way including within the government which kind of still blows my mind.
A recent battle between the SEC and Coinbase was sent to an appeals court which ruled in favor of coinbase that confirmed that secondary sales of crypto on its platform do not violate the securities exchange act.
What is the securities exchange act?
Pardon the direct copy and past from Wikipedia
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (also called the Exchange Act, '34 Act, or 1934 Act) (Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 73–291, 48 Stat. 881, enacted June 6, 1934, codified at 15 U.S.C. § 78a et seq.) is a law governing the secondary trading of securities (stocks, bonds, and debentures) in the United States of America.[1] A landmark of wide-ranging legislation, the Act of '34 and related statutes form the basis of regulation of the financial markets and their participants in the United States. The 1934 Act also established the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),[2] the agency primarily responsible for enforcement of United States federal securities law.
Companies raise billions of dollars by issuing securities in what is known as the primary market. Contrasted with the Securities Act of 1933, which regulates these original issues, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 regulates the secondary trading of those securities between persons often unrelated to the issuer, frequently through brokers or dealers. Trillions of dollars are made and lost each year through trading in the secondary market.
This lawsuit mainly comes down to a class action lawsuit where people didn't do their own research, lost a bunch of money and then go out of their way to blame someone else and try and get their money back. It's classic and happens all the time but if you don't have the money to pay for the lawyers in these battles it can end up shutting a lot of companies down which is a huge issue with how the entire law is upheld in the USA. It's why if there's enough money involved you can get away with just about anything.
A Shift From CEX
What we are seeing outside of coinbase is a MAJOR shift and I mean major in terms of assets flooding off of CEX's Centralized exchanges and moved on to what are known as DEX's. Platforms such as Uniswap, Pancakeswap etc.
This shift we all knew was coming but things simply don't happen over night. A lot of that move did happen in the last bull run. However that being said it was a crazy mess of a system that was filled with bad actors. Now that the bear market had time to set in most of those bad actors have been flushed out and the ones that remain are the legitimate platforms that will now continue to scoop up more and more market share.
Uniswap for example just hit a milestone of hitting 2 trillion dollars in trading volume. Uniswap current supports a wide array of blockchains. What was once a single blockchain support for a lot of these DEX's has expanded. For example Uniswap now works with Ethereum, Polygon, optimism, Arbitrum, Celo, BNB, Base, Blast and avalanche.
To put this into comparison Uniswap took 46 months to hit their first 1 trillion. However in less then 24 months (including in there a bear market that lasted for the majority of that time frame) Uniswap was able to hit their next 1 trillion dollar milestone. This shows the progression and speed at was DEX's are now being adopted.