> Plus the direct listing is a giant middle finger to traditional banking and overall establishment, right?

Despite the narrative, Bitcoin isn’t really competing with traditional banking at all. It's additive. It has become another asset for banks to sell to people, collecting relatively high exchange fees in both directions on the trade.

This is more of an indication that Coinbase is now a traditional establishment banking institution. They’re also very centralized, given that they’re on the short list of exchanges and most users prefer to have Coinbase keep their coins instead of withdrawing to the Blockchain (for additional fees, which go to increasingly centralized miners).

Coinbase took the risk by being the first big entrant, but other big banks would be more than happy to sell you Bitcoin (for a fee, naturally) if they didn’t think it posed a large legal risk to the rest of their business. Coinbase has the benefit of not having another banking business, so they can go all-in on it.

Coinbase is the institution now. If crypto buy/sell becomes mainstream and the legal risk becomes smaller over time, other institutions will gladly sell you Bitcoin as part of their product lineup. If history is any indication, this will drive trading fees to $0, destroying Coinbase's current source of profit and unique position in the market. It will be interesting to see what they do to stay relevant as exchange fees dwindle.

>Despite the narrative, Bitcoin isn’t really competing with traditional banking at all. It's additive. It has become another asset for banks to sell to people, collecting relatively high exchange fees in both directions on the trade.

This is certainly the current narrative, and I think that you do a very good job at illustrating what CB's role plays in all this. However, most people that made money in crypto are leaving their assets in crypto, they are not giving it to banks or exchanges for custody. Even if they want to hold dollars, they do so in DAI or USDC (indirect bank deposit ATM). So while this is still a very small threat to the banking industry at the moment, the seed has been planted, we are still very very early. The current banking industry has almost 200 years in the making, it won't be undone in 5.

They still hired Goldman and Citi to advise on the listing.

yes, little middle finger at best.

If history is any guide, the start will come from the ruins when this boom crashes. First movers almost always get swept up in and crushed under the early part of the adoption curve.

crypto is already mainstream

Coinbase play within the rules of the current establishment.

And at the same time, they're influencing history. For better or worse, I guess we'll have to see.

Agreed, I personally view them as a bridge between the traditional brokerage model that more traditional investors can understand and use, and the crypto world that is looking to be separate from the traditional model.

Direct listing is kinda novel, nah ?

Slack and Spotify went the direct listing route, but indeed it’s pretty rare compared to IPOs.

Not really