Again this is not my intended post for the day, but situations and lives evolve. Anyway getting straight to my point...

You may recall my rant at Coinbase a few days ago after they withdrew staking payments on USDC? You may also recall that I looked into it a bit later and found that the reasons behind this were related to an EU framework called MiCA which has redefined crypto assets and most relevantly to this post, StableCoins as e-money. While I was still disappointed by the lack of transparency (hiding something in an obscure help page does not rate highly in my opinion) I thought fair enough because what they did could be described as forced compliance even though I thought they could find a workaround.

So, thus far, I have summarised what I covered in two earlier articles.

Then yesterday when I was checking my portfolio I suddenly came across what could be called an internal advertisement for Coinbase One, their subscription package and one of the perks of joining is that they offer staking on USDC!

Woah! Wait a minute. Let me say that again.

They offer staking on USDC!

WTF!

If they took the easy way out by withdrawing staking on their free platform why is it still available on their paid one. MiCA defined e-money is still e-money whatever platform it is on and the same rules apply. Seems to me that if it is still stakeable then maybe they are staking it and creaming off 100% of the profits instead of sharing it with clients. I could of course be wrong, but given Coinbase's track history of greed it is not as far-fetched as it seems.

I was immediately reminded of what the biggest UK bank did during the financial crisis to try to rebuild client trust and attract new members. Out of all of the UK banks, RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) were the one most pilloried and subsequently sanctioned. It got into so much trouble that it was literally hours from collapsing, due to lack of liquidity, before a massive governmental bailout.

So once the first storm had passed they launched the Customer Charter which were effectively the Ten Commandments of the bank's commitment to the customer. Sounds good so far.They must have felt good about it because they spent millions designing and printing huge posters that went up in the windows of every branch in they Uk.

Internally they also changed their values to "We aim to be number one in customer service, advocacy and trust", which in itself is digestible. Number one means still shit, so long as we are better than everybody else, and such advocacy and trust was all too often lacking even among staff as they circled the wagons and centralised everything, initially through Lean and then later through Determined to Lead.

In the end such programmes are very faddish and come and go with each new CEO who has to be seen as doing something different.

However, back to the Customer Charter, which seemed like an earnest pledge to the customer, it also appeared with altered branding in another bank. And in my hometown the branches were only about 50 metres apart.

What was going on?

The average man on the street may not have realised that RBS is actually The RBS Group and it comprises of 4 Banks; The Royal the Bank of Scotland, The Royal Bank of Ulster, National Westminster (NatWest) and Coutts so they saw each bank as separate entities. Furthermore, the average person saw RBS as a "bad bank" and because there was no negative media about it, NatWest was seen as a "good bank".

Until the posters went up. Then the wheels started turning in people's brains and the connections where made. NatWest were one and the same monster. RBS has shot itself in the foot - just like Co(i)nbase have now.

(Incidentally a bit more than a decade later RBS has disappeared from the high street as everything has been rebranded under the NatWest name)

So as with the bank there is a clear double standard and level of corporate hypocrisy.

The bottom line is this if StableCoins are e-money and there are regulations to be complied to, then they apply across the board and it doesn't matter what platform it is on.

Wake up Coinbase.

Finally, and it is a genuine question, and also a response to PVM :) , if I am so dissatisfied with Coinbase why am I still with them? Good question. Comes down to two things, bearing in mind how badly Celsius burned me, at least my assets are insured and secondly to move things to another platform they will take a huge chunk out of my portfolio and so I am sticking.

Is Coinbase One worth it. Well at £1.99 a month it might be - less commission on trades and with my USDC staking at a higher rate than the subscription. But then what happens when they withdraw staking. It is a question I need to look into before making a decision. 

Thirdly, I could add but less importantly, I find sophisticated graphics full of candles too complicated to read and the interface as a whole more clunky. I know that is down to me and not them, but if I find it overwhelming and am not going to read it properly I am f**ked. At least Coinbase offers a very simple line graphic to follow.

And so as always it is time for my final salutation. Please stay safe and well my friends.