Bitcoin Forum

Some people say that the anti-Coinbase sentiment on r/bitcoin is politically motivated because Brian Armstrong came strongly for big blocks and spoke extremely negatively against the core devs.

In my view, if that is the case it only reinforces my conviction that r/bitcoin is on the right side. Bitcoin is about monetary freedom, direct peer-to-peer exchange, and decentralized power. Coinbase is diametrically opposed to all these, it is about surveillance and censorship over what you can do with your money. It is about third-party control over your money. It is about centralized power, and this is particularly reinforced by their endorsement of big blocks and the centralization pressures that would come with that. Put simply, Coinbase is about turning Bitcoin into fiat money, and while all fiat exchanges suffer from this pressure, Coinbase embraces it with evil pleasure. I think many in the community were willing to overlook the faults of Coinbase as par for the course when dealing with the legacy system and government. But when they came out so ferociously against the core devs I think it shook everyone up and made us wonder, appropriately so, what this company is really all about.

MtGox was vital to Bitcoin's early adoption, it was a necessary evil. But make no mistake, it was evil, and the same is absolutely true of Coinbase. This necessary evil that Coinbase represents becomes addictive because of how easy it is to use, that is what draws in so many users who otherwise would be too intimidated by bitcoin. But just like MtGox which gave Bitcoin a very tarnished reputation, Coinbase has been slowly and surely corrupting the very soul of Bitcoin by hooking users into an addiction to the very things Bitcoin is designed to free us from and eroding Bitcoin's fungibility. I genuinely consider Coinbase to be one of the greatest threats to Bitcoin's long term success, and the threat is only larger precisely because of the crucial role they play in Bitcoin's early adoption. This is, again, no different than how MtGox was a threat to Bitcoin's long term success and its collapse set bitcoin back significantly. We as a community need to wean ourselves off of this addiction and promote, encourage, and help finance those companies and DAOs that offer fiat exchange services in ways that don't undermine bitcoin's basic integrity. (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4gzo20/seriously_coinbase_is_not_out_to_get_you_or_ruin/d2m6ame)