[__tmg]

Decentralisation was (and still is) the point of Bitcoin; any additional perks (e.g. anonymity) are emergent. Here's a quote from the original paper:

>Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

[simplemath]

The irony being of course is that Coinbase is literally a financial instution

but given confirmation time inherent to the network, I don't see a way around doing something similar to what coinbase have done here (minus the egregious part where they hold your private key)