As far as I know only interest you can earn on Coinbase is from staking coins - and Coinbase actually takes a portion of that profit for themselves.

I remember looking at all of these now defunct businesses wondering just how they could have such high interest rates on your coins. In what should be a surprise to no one it was too good to be true.

If someone offers a risk-free return way above the prevailing risk-free interest rate… there are some risks that aren’t being disclosed. Everybody forgot that for a little while.

"This Time It's Different"

Yes, Coinbase is an exchange

> Coinbase is an exchange

Not in the conventional sense. It’s a broker with a prop desk.

Coinbase has a prop desk?

> Coinbase has a prop desk?

Maybe [1], possibly not anymore [2].

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/coinbase-tested-group-to-specul...

[2] https://news.yahoo.com/coinbase-never-trades-against-custome...

It's not domiciled in North America. In fact, they refuse to tell anyone where their HQ is.

Coinbase is probably the most American of all the "American" cryptocurrency exchanges. It's also a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. Not sure where you get the picture that they refuse to tell anyone where the HQ is, it's famously a remote-first company but used to have their HQ in SF.

blockfi was based in jersey city also, it just wasnt public.

They're not "refusing to tell", they simply don't have one. It used to be in San Francisco but in May 2020 they switched to remote-first.

And they're incorporated in Delaware. Last I checked, Delaware was part of North America.

I have to ask out of curiosity... where on earth are you getting your information?

Are you thinking of Binance?

It looks like everyone in crypto has been doing wild and shady stuff, whilst Coinbase has built a respectable business in an industry that doesn't exist. Coinbase was being looked at as a shrinking fish in a growing pond, moving slowly whilst places like FTX ran rings around them, now it turns out FTX was just a straight up scam and loads of the money was actually wash trading, so Coinbase now looks like an expensive and slow business in an industry that doesn't actually exist.