According to the United States directory for government contracts, USASpending.gov, the Secret Service paid $183,750 for a four-year contract with the crypto exchange that allows them to use its blockchain analytics service. The agency began using Coinbase Analytics on May 11 this year, and the contract expires on May 10, 2024. Earlier, the crypto exchange Coinbase had offered to license its analytics platform to both the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Coinbase faces pushback from its users.
The crypto exchange’s decision to provide its services to the DEA, IRS, and now the US Secret Service has met with pushback from Coinbase users. The users believe their privacy is in jeopardy due to these government agencies having the ability to view their on-chain activities. Earlier, the user of the crypto exchange Coinbase removed over $200 million worth of BTC after the news of the exchange offering services to the IRS and DEA. Coinbase is among the leading crypto exchanges that operate worldwide at the moment. The crypto exchange has been news several times for sharing users’ information with authorities in the United States.
Coinbase CEO clears the air around its analytics platform.
The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, cleared the air and speculations around its analytics platform in a series of tweets. The CEO does not think that this is particularly newsworthy. He tweeted that blockchain analytics software is nothing new and has been around for a long time. It uses publicly available data to try and track crypto transactions, usually to catch bad actors. He added that crypto exchanges that maintain connections into the existing financial system (i.e., ability to connect your bank account, do wires, etc., so you can convert fiat to crypto) need to follow AML laws, and this often includes utilizing blockchain analytics software for transaction monitoring. Blockchain analytics software is essentially just compiling publicly available data that is already out there on the blockchain, he concluded.
In the early days, Coinbase started off by using some of the existing blockchain analytics services out there. This worked out ok, but the issue with it was that we don’t like sharing data with third parties when we can avoid it, and they didn’t support all the features/chains…
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 12, 2020
