Why? As an employee I'm taking on nearly 0 risk. Maybe if they are paying me poorly I can see the argument where I'm "investing" more time/work into the company that I am being paid for and that difference should be made up with equity but otherwise this seems divorced from reality.
It's an investment by the employee. Coinbase is being cheap and it will come back to bite them. Odds are they don't care for the lifetime of the company since they're so tied to bitcoin's success.
I'm not sure how you are pricing things. FAANG stock comp is guaranteed money; You can sell it as soon as it vest for exactly the amount you signed for. Startup equity, not so much (there's no guarantee that a liquidity event will ever happen for starter).
Unless you are working in a lower tier market where stock comp isn't the norm.
You can argue that employees are fungible, but so is investor money, and frankly I'd rather take random money than random programmers.