Coinbase isn't even trying to hide this, /u/bdarmstrong wrote about their extremely high investment in "compliance" and that is what they want to build their expertise and staff around

At Coinbase, about 20% of our staff works on compliance in some form. There are many difficult and exciting problems to solve (especially from a data science and machine learning point of view) to measure and mitigate risk. If you’re an engineer or compliance/risk professional who is interested in helping build this bridge we’d love to speak with you. We’ve spent many years and millions of dollars working to become the best in the industry at compliance

https://medium.com/the-coinbase-blog/building-the-bridge-why-compliance-is-key-to-digital-currencys-success-7bfdd88a084c#.stmcizfx0

Coinbase's "compliance" is a representation of a criminal problem facing the general public with regard to the current financial industry. Thanks to corrupt protectionism and the revolving doors of politics, which we saw through "too big to fail" everyone is forced to pay a useless tax to line the pockets of these parasites. Remember that Fred Ehrsam, founder of Coinbase, was previously at Goldman Sachs, so it's no coincidence that Coinbase has the same exact business model.