Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, on the #deletecoinbase movement and Quadriga – details below.
[REITs]Q4 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
1. #deletecoinbase
Twitter is ablaze with #deletecoinbase. Coinbase has acquired a company that’s run by the former CTO/COO and other senior members of a spyware firm that helped oppressive regimes (such as Ethiopia, Sudan, Bahrain, Venezuela, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia) monitor journalists and activists who disagreed with them, in some cases leading to the regimes imprisoning or murdering these people. Coinbase doesn’t see a problem with employing those that did and possibly still do these things.
To make matters worse, on March 1st 2019 the Coinbase Head of Trading may have accidentally shared during a live interview that their 3rd party analysis vendor was found to be selling Coinbase client data. She revealed this while trying to explain why they needed to hire Neutrino (they were desperate to get the situation under control). There are now instances online of people encouraging others to withdraw funds from Coinbase to avoid possible freezing of accounts in the event of an investigation or class action stemming from this undisclosed data breach.
2. Quadriga
Quadriga has $190M worth of client funds missing after the 30-year-old CEO supposedly died unexpectedly; the co-founder is proven to have been to prison for credit/debit/identity theft prior to changing his name to hide his past, and Kraken blockchain analysis shows no trace/existence of there ever being a cold wallet. Kraken breaks down the clues of the case, analysis and theories via podcast and videos found here and offers a $100K reward for the best tips/leads so the FBI/RCMP can catch the thief (and the industry can be safer, stronger, and with fewer bad actors).
Between Quadriga and the Coinbase “scandals” its no wonder #deletecoinbase and other angry messages are filling up the cryptosphere.
