My hunch is that it has more to do with the amount of money you've taken from prominent/powerful/connected Rich Guys than how strictly large you are or how many you employ.

There's a lot of hidden soft power in the USA amongst the ultra-wealthy, I've come to learn.

(Note that this is not a criticism specifically against Coinbase, per se; more an indictment of the lack of equal protection under the law in the USA in general. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.)

Arthur Andersen and their ~85,000 employees would like a word.

After rubber stamping the squandering of California's energy market into a complete fraud of a company. I think that's a very high bar to cross, requiring damaging a lot of rich people in the process to call attention to it, to be punished.

Backpage was pretty big when it was deep sixed by the Feds.

Did Backpage have institutional money behind it?

Wirecard did.