My experience day-to-day is that the world is strongly divided between those who care a lot about crypto and those who care effectively none. Barring the brief time around peak prices where it punched through to the zeitgeist (when your uber driver is asking about it), it doesn't seem like it's growing, from the perspective of social/cultural demand or narrative.

There is a plenty healthy subset of the world population keeping cryptocurrencies liquid. But this etrade offering represents, to me at least, a level of commoditization that outpaces the underlying demand. In part because coinbase captures that demand very effectively, hence their valuation. I expect etrade's gains here are going to be from capturing new funds from current customers, rather than actually winning the crypto buying customer experience, where coinbase reigns supreme.

Speaking of coinbase, if etrade had to copy one thing of theirs, i wish it were the UI.

Another thought: how much of crypto's valuation comes from the contrarian narrative that it's a rebellion against exactly the stodgy old guard that etrade represents? Gold's contrarian narrative has survived the commoditization of gold trading. Will crypto's? Whether buy into it because it's a get rich quick scheme or a genuine financial disruption, both of those stories rely on a narrative that it's different/exempt from wall street bullshit. can that narrative exist in a world where the primary interface with the market is wall street bullshit?

The idea of a goldbug hedging against the apocalypse by buying gold on etrade is very, very funny to me. Crypto's a little better positioned since etrade doesn't own the blockchain, but gold's safe from a power outage. Apples and oranges...

No idea tbh.