It looks like everyone in crypto has been doing wild and shady stuff, whilst Coinbase has built a respectable business in an industry that doesn't exist. Coinbase was being looked at as a shrinking fish in a growing pond, moving slowly whilst places like FTX ran rings around them, now it turns out FTX was just a straight up scam and loads of the money was actually wash trading, so Coinbase now looks like an expensive and slow business in an industry that doesn't actually exist.

As far as I know only interest you can earn on Coinbase is from staking coins - and Coinbase actually takes a portion of that profit for themselves.

I remember looking at all of these now defunct businesses wondering just how they could have such high interest rates on your coins. In what should be a surprise to no one it was too good to be true.

Yes, Coinbase is an exchange

It's not domiciled in North America. In fact, they refuse to tell anyone where their HQ is.

EDIT: sorry, got confused. Ignore me.