Is Coinbase Cashing out on Bitcoin Cash Fork?!

Who gets the free Bitcoin Cash?

So this morning BTC had its user activated hard fork (UAHF) and Bitcoin Cash began trading. If you were a holder of BTC before the fork, then your balance in the old BTC blockchain will be copied to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain and you should receive the same number of Bitcoin Cash that you were holding in BTC for free. That is unless you were holding Bitcoin in Coinbase or any of the other exchanges that had publically stated they will not be supporting the UAHF.

The problem I and many others are having with this though is that the fork did happen and whatever BTC balance Coinbase had resulted in them getting that many Bitcoin Cash coins for free. So what happens to all these free Bitcoin Cash coins?

It seems that Coinbase, unless they really don't like free money, just made a solid 16% or so on their entire BTC holdings (including all of your BTC) without doing anything!! Bitcoin Cash (BCH) currently is trading for about 16% of one BTC according to CoinMarketCap. Perhaps they just ignored the fork like some exchanges are claiming to have done, but why leave free money on the table?

I find it unlikely Coinbase would pass up this free money opportunity. I'd expect them instead to either dump the Bitcoin Cash on the market over the next weeks for a quick profit or sit on it in case it grows in value and popularity.

What are your thoughts and feelings about this? Luckily I moved my coin to a wallet prior to the fork, but I still find it all a bit ridiculous.

BTW I'm HODLing both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash!!