Fwiw, Coinbase and Kraken both hold large amounts of staked ETH for their customers, and skim off a percentage of the staking rewards. They won't be able to access those profits until about six months after the merge. So they both have an interest in the PoS chain doing well.

Anyone in the community who's been paying attention has been well aware that staking was coming. The staking network has been running in parallel since December 2020, and about 12% of the current supply of ETH is deposited on it.