Put on your tin foil hats - some people claimed coinbase is jointly operated by NSA and other government organizations.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=373470.0Any thoughts? It's sad for crypto when even remotely secure and more influential website has to depend on governmental power for it to work.
It's a completely valid hypothesis.
I would not read to much into the makeup of the investors though. TPTB are terrified of the occupy-x type stuff and have been heaving buckets of taxpayer dollars into the surveillance state apparatus. Just about any two-bit company with a few guys who can surf the web can make gobs of money by doing basically nothing of any particular value. Shrewd investors have put money into a lot of these, and probably in most cases co-incidentally with the money pumped in by the state through the intelligence community investment wings. So it is hardly surprising to see a lot of these name co-mingled. Talk about your 'merger of state and corporate power'! What a witch's brew. Interesting times we live in here in the U.S.
Back to Coinbase, yes, it is interesting and potentially telling that they seem to get a free ride. But then so did Gox...until they didn't. I've always felt it an interesting hypothesis that Coinlabs were supposed to be the focus point (which Coinbase is accused of being in this thread) but something went wrong. That something may have been Karpeles figuring things out and getting cold feet. And subsequently being punished.
For my part it does not matter much. IMHO, Bitcoin is pretty useless for privacy anyway and probably always will be do to design deficiencies. Eventually something more promising will probably pop up, but most likely only when driven by a real need. In the mean time I need a way to capitalize on being an early-ish adopter. Coinbase is doing me right in this regard. If the NSA is to thank then...well...Thanks NSA.
