Conbase
As far as I'm concerned Coinbase has essentially positioned (or rather entrenched) themselves within a position of real power in the United States crypto ecosystem. The Securities Exchange Commission has blatantly overplayed their hand and overextended their authority within this domain. It's honestly surreal to behold such an unexpected outcome. Ripple wins their lawsuit with an appeal essentially denied. Grayscale wins their lawsuit with prejudice, which in turn helps every single ETF applicant. It seems like everything is going crypto's way (at least in terms of key centralized agents making victorious landslides within the ecosystem.
Given what we've seen it seems almost inevitable that Coinbase will not only win their lawsuit against the SEC, but rather absolutely slay them even more badly than Ripple and Grayscale combined. Coinbase has done nothing but cross every 't' and dot every 'i' along the way. The have receipts, and they are going to bury the SEC in sheer embarrassment.
Spot Bitcoin ETF applicants are revealing.
In response to the SEC some time ago, many ETF applicants were advised to declare where the Bitcoin would be held that secures the ETF. Many of them, including Blackrock, named Coinbase as the trusted custodian that would be in charge of securing these assets.
There are a lot of problems with that. One it's also somewhat of a blatant centralized vector within crypto. Does Coinbase really need access to even more stake than they already have? What happens if the SEC denies the next round of applications based on this supposed security risk? It certainly could happen, although would almost certainly be a temporary setback.
What many have not considered is that the fact that so many institutions trust Coinbase with their livelihood that we simply must assume they have even more invisible legal protection lurking in the shadows. I mean let's face facts, a lot of very powerful people now have a very real financial incentive to make sure the SEC gets put in check as much as possible at this point.
Binance
Could Binance.US win their lawsuit against the SEC as well? It's certainly possible but I don't know. I suppose I just assume that the politics of it all will not end favorably for a foreign company who's been under constant scrutiny this entire time. I expect Binance will continue to be pushed to the fringe, but at the same time I feel as though CZ still has plenty of cards left to play going forward. He is fighting against dinosaurs after all.
How will actual decentralized networks fair through all this?
Ah well as always I expect the disintermediation of corrupt power structures to provide a lot of value to a completely corrupted and broken world. The problem is that every network seems to believe they are truly decentralized when in reality it is much more likely they fold like a house of cards in the face of real power and resistance.
The separation of chaff from the wheat will begin shortly after the EFT launches. I can't really see it working out any other way. This volume of legacy money entering the space can only be interpreted as a money attack. Do not be surprised if the narrative of the next bear market is riddled with brutal regulatory crackdowns. It's actually kind of surprising 2022 was mostly just our bad in this regard (3AC, UST, FTX). Regulators will be throwing their weight around hard soon enough and I'm guessing many are going to be in for a storm of rude awakenings.
Hostile takeovers?
I'm also still a firm believer that Hive itself will become the posterchild example for money attacks. We seem to be the original prototype for networks that were brutalized but managed to escape subjugation in the end. Other platforms will be forced to study Hive when what happened to us happens to them. Thus far the assumption is that it can't or won't happen, but I maintain that it will happen in droves. These rampant premines ensure it.
Hive was pretty lucky in that there was not a terrible fracturing within the community. Steem and Blurt are simply small splinters of the main chain. Steem got to keep the brand but they definitely didn't get to keep value. And that value is stored as community, infrastructure, and spirit, not some illiquid market cap that could be rug-pulled on the whim of a single user.
Bull market narratives
From what I can tell the new narratives of 2024 are shaping up to be decentralized exchanges, social media, and potentially gaming. It's about time that DEXes had their ascension, as nothing is more important than creating permissionless interoperability, especially within the face of impending Coinbase dominance at the center of all the money.
Conclusion
Is Coinbase invulnerable now? Not quite yet. They still have a few more battles to win. However after they embarrass the SEC with their treasure trove of compliance receipts in addition to taking on the responsibility of securing the value of multiple ETFs... well let's just say there's a reason they didn't decide to settle out of court. Brian Armstrong has taken the gloves off as CEO and is ready to take risks that would have been unthinkable just a few years back. The SEC is forcing everyone's hand, and it looks like they've been bluffing the whole time.