This article is an example of the pure propaganda that 'mainstream financial media' participates in on-the-regular. Why that is I don't know. Symbiotic business interests I guess.
It's not that the information is incorrect. It probably is and it does tell us something about some of the big players around Coinbase.
But the whole bitcoin 'ecosystem' is essentially a collective criminal organization, with some players being closer to the dirty parts than others. (I'm leaving out everyday holders of bitcoin, just talking about insider types.) These big Coinbase players might not 'touch the poo' directly, but their hands still get stinky.
The price action in bitcoin is determined across a network of exchanges, most of which do not use real dollars (or other govt currency). They use crypto only for trading, including the fake 'stable-coin' tether.
Tether (the company who issues the currency tether) has been shown definitively to be running a scam and are completely dishonest.) They have issued $35Billion worth of their fake dollars. Until recently they were issuing on the order of $1B per week!
Tether is a sister company to the exchange Bitfinex with the same owners and management. So essentially the same company. They just signed an agreement with the New York Attorney General where they paid a fine of $18.5M (notice difference in scale). The agreement spells out exactly how they have been scamming people. This is based on information coming from the company itself. This is not FUD, just FACT. (interestingly since they signed this agreement ~10 days ago, they stopped issuing tether.)
One of the central players in this ongoing criminal operation who has been taken out is Crypto Capital Corp. They ran a shadow banking system for many of the big exchanges, including Bitfinex and Binance. The Feds seized $850M from CCC for money laundering, which precipitated a crisis for these entities and intensified the criminal activity of the many industry insiders connected through this shadow bank.
My guess is that Tether issued $35B in fake USDT (tether) almost exclusively without dollar collateral backing. (the original premise of tether was each would only be issued on receipt of a true USD by tether, and therefor each USDT was pegged to a USD, the peg holds for now but the dollar backing is not there, that's another story.)
Most of this $35B was issued over the last year when we have seen a huge rise in bitcoin price. The tether currency only has one purpose, to buy cryptocurrency. So this is a huge amount of liquidity introduced into the market. (Compare to the hype around Tesla's $1.5B bitcoin purchase.)
It is the price appreciation that drives this whole market, including the business of Coinbase, even though they do not deal with tether.
The OP article mentions none of this! Sure, it reveals some insiders, perhaps on the more legit side, but ignores the real engine of this speculative bubble/fraud.
It has the effect of 'white-washing' this dirty game.
It's really gross.