I think since it’s not core to their business, they don’t have much motivation to build it themselves. I’ve never used Coinbase but I assume they have some third party integration for on- and off-ramps, which is basically what this is. 

I’d guess it was more like “we can pay someone to figure this out” but maybe even wanting to outsource suggests lightning is too hard.

k00b

That's was perhaps the good idea :-) At least we have it now...

JesseJames

lightning

Coinbase now support the Lightning Network powered by Lightspark

02b7622c79

Conbase was really like "We can't figure this out" and just outsourced it