> I heard the podcast and honestly didn't see it like this.

Are you at all involved in the Fintech or Bitcoin ecosystem? This is a critical component of why I view him as such, his co-founder is ex Goldman Sachs. He is backed by the SV VC Powerhouses that these 3 supposedly lambast, but have had dealings with in the past (Sequoia et al).

> I saw Armstrong as a driven guy that puts business first. I don't think the "non-woke" communication was intentional, it was forced. The guy wanted the company to move forward and saw himself discussing other things that were not important for the future of the company.

That means his optics worked, likely only on the uninitiated to this space because this was extremely political in nature, again look back to the Segwit/USAF wars we went through. It's all there, Armstrong sided with a bunch of conmen for his own personal gain and still has one of the largest BTC holdings. This was the equivalent of insider trading on top of racketeering.

> Where I felt it was a but empty was on the part where he talked about the mission. I felt like he's trying to find a reason for them to exist when in fact their success until today is from retail investors pumping Crypto. I don't think there's much good in the world coming from their actions.

This is a matter of interpretation, and depending on what period you're talking about in Coinbase's history it can vastly differ: initially they were onboarding many more into something seemingly too arcane for the average retail customer to grasp after the collapse of MTGOX this was necessary as most exchanges operated on too far of the fringes. What they did was simplify this for the layman, who couldn't understand the initial complexity of the tech: you use to have to run your own node on QT before webwallets/mobile wallets were a thing. This was daunting for me when I began, too, but I unlike most became obsessed what this tech's possibility ever since and it began my career into tech.

I won't go into why Bitcoin has helped many more than the average affluent HN tech worker will ever grasp here, but in short their ability to onboard many into this ecosystem allowed for immense upward mobility for generations that have been only marginalized and relegated to poverty in even developed nations due to inflation and higher costs of living and stagnant, if not negative/declining wages relative to expenses.

Coinbase many lists alts, most of which are pump and dump schemes for sure, but the fact remains that even in this current down-turn if you DCA into BTC for several years prior to 2021 you'd still be looking at really nice returns.

I'M MAKING IT VERY CLEAR I WANT TO SEE THE DEMISE OF COINBASE!

I wont bore you with the tech side either, frankly I think it's not worth my time and you can look at my post history of you want more context about why that is, but the short of it is Armstrong represents a point in which VC and it's expand and moat to IPO and cash model was institutionalized in what was before fertile ground for experimentation trying to move away from this model--BTC-e still remained the most reliable exchange until it was seized by the Feds outside of it's jurisdiction.

I swear, we can write like 50 movies of just the last 13 years of BTC history, but all anyone wants to focus on is Silkroad.