Email is _a bit_ similar, but the analogy doesn't work too well. While email might be a decentralized protocol, participation in the protocol requires quite a bit of technical effort. Whereas in crypto (e.g., Bitcoin) you can participate by just downloading a simple client and sending transactions via a nice little UI. In your example, Google actually provides a pretty huge value add by abstracting the complexities of participating in the email protocol away from the user. Crypto protocols (insofar as the assets provided by Coinbase) don't really get _that_ complex