[i336_]

I came here to say exactly this, and before doing so thought to ^F first. Heh.

The other two comments I see in this subthread are practical and pragmatic, but I also agree with your view as well. I would far prefer to pay the fees and have all transactions processed via the blockchain.

Although at the end of the day, pragmatism makes money...

[SadWebDeveloper]

The problem is that when you are putting money in Coinbase you are basically loosing your biggest asset on the btc network... trust; You have to fully trust that Coinbase won't transfer your btc's to another "internal" account.