Coinbase, and Armstrong, have been a blight on the BItcoin community since about late 2013, one only comparable to MTGOX in overall severity. They really showed that they had their origins in Goldman Sachs from that point onward and that their cronyist playbook would predictably be used as they did in the Legacy fiat system to their advantage.
Their 'social activism' as its presented in that post includes trying to conflate BCash with Bitcoin to noobs who were unaware of the fork in order to bolster the price of a alt coin with no value or usecase just as mainstream attention (read: non-technical users) was being gained, and by extension they promoted Ver/Jihan/Bitmain's agenda and failed coup. If that dishonest behavior of their user's wasn't enough they would later report its users to the IRS and then, as released earlier this year [0] they are DIRECTLY offering Blockchain analytics to the IRS and DEA. And then ban Wikileaks account from their platform.
I regret to say that as a Community we never learned our lesson in the MANY pitfalls of allowing the growth of a cancerous central point of failure after Mt Gox, and that the path of 'least resistance' to on-board people into this tech had many (predictable) dire consequences. I've used centralized exchanges before, but it didn't feel as a enthralling as when I went to a meetup, spoke to like minded people in the Community and bought some in a p2p manner--its really a night and day experience contrast. Or simply got tipped by total strangers online for a project or an idea I wanted to explore as I had in the early days.
What were supposed to be training wheels to gradually create an ecosystem primarily driven to be a p2p currency, as was intended, became a crutch that atrophied and poisoned the general curiosity which denied it's users the rewards that often followed which made this really remarkable.
This neglect has allowed Coinbase as a single entity to now hold a large percentage of the total Bitcoin in existence, not including the large amounts that they hold custody of its user's who simply do not take possession of their funds.
To say Bitcoin can be a-political is grounded in the very ignorance that created the aforementioned consequences; it is by default the reaction to the perpetual failures of the politicizing of State-based currencies and the corruption of Central Banks. It's very Genesis Block states why it was created: as an alternative to the bailouts of 2008.
I honestly don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Coinbase represents the very worse, and the toxic nature of what YC can bring into existence. That sounds entirely scathing, and perhaps unwarranted to those unaware of the dire nature, but this is really no different than enabling how FAANG has created a business model that has pretty much them an extension of many countries Intelligence Agencies who directly sell their user's data/information to the highest bidder. The difference being that this Trojan horse was only possible because YC funded them in the early stages.
Who's to say they won't, or haven't already, created another?
0: https://decrypt.co/31485/coinbase-license-analytics-irs-dea