I'm finding the "positive sum" language around coins really misleading.

It's literally the opposite. If the way users make money from their content is when other users buy it, it's literally zero sum, financially. Not everyone can be making money, unless external capital is being injected from a another source (which is losing money).

So Merkel raised over $100M, so there's definitely external capital being injected. The Coinbase play is harder for me to understand because they have a fiduciary duty to the public shareholders. So if they are injecting capital for rewards, they are definitely expecting to make more on fees meaning it's actually negative sum for users, right?