I see it the other way around. For Coinbase to succeed, Bitcoin necessarily needs to succeed. If Bitcoin succeeds the price of Bitcoin will increase by many orders of magnitude.

Right now I'd put Bitcoin's odds of success on par with an early stage startup.

The analogy was in reference to pg's investment in Coinbase while holding no Bitcoins themselves.

If Bitcoin succeeds, would you rather have owned the coins... or the banks and exchanges that constantly take a percentage of the flow?

I'm saying it's quite possible the coins themselves would be a better investment at this point.

Casino chips aren't going to significantly increase in value. If Bitcoin succeeds then Bitcoins will. If Bitcoin doesn't succeed, then neither will the "banks".

But building a decent and trusted infrastructure of "banks" will improve Bitcoin's chances of success. Just holding a given quantity of coins on your laptop will not.

Oh I agree completely. If you have a significant amount of Bitcoin you should do everything you can to make Bitcoin a sucess.