I don't think companies like Coinbase, Circle, or Kraken are rug pulls. USDC is a very interesting concept. Ethereum uses Proof of Work (which is an interesting game theory problem to solve itself), which does not energy consumption to secure their network.
It's still undeniable that most crypto projects exist primarily to get retail investors to buy in to allow VCs and other insiders to cash out on them. Not directly as a simple rugpull but a longer term slow bleed, using the leverage they hold in an ecosystem in the near term to manipulate it in a direction that's useful to them in the long term. a16z is massively guilty of this.
