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Coinbase also doesn't pretend to be decentralized and the bank analogy holds pretty well for them.

I'm not sure it's meaningful to say cryptocurrencies are decentralized. Decentralization is more of a social phenomenon than technical, e.g. cash is decentralized but socially we've found advantages to centralize.

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Cash is most certainly not decentralised, unless you are using some uncommon definition of 'cash'

How is cash not decentralized? I can pay anyone anywhere for anything and I don’t need any centralized infrastructure.

The issuance of gold is decentralized. The issuance of cash is centralized, unless you believe in counterfeiting. However, the transacting and storage of both cash and gold are decentralized.

The centralized issuing authority can decide overnight to make the cash worthless. This happened fairly recently in India, for example.

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