Coinbase Goes Gangster, Fires All Neutrino Hacking Team Employees In Light of Community Outburst

They say that all publicity is good publicity, but that clearly is not the case with Coinbase. While the acquisition of Neutrino should have been a cause for celebration, the unearthing of the history of their employees has proven to be more than what Coinbase users can bear. In a new announcement from CEO Brian Armstrong, it looks like the bad publicity was too much to be worth it.

The blog post stated that the employees that were formerly involved in the Hacking Team would not be included in their new partnership. Even though it looks like their time with the Hacking Team was in the past, but their current affiliation will not change the decision. Though most of the attention has been on the employees leading Neutrino, there are no details about how many other employees were involved as well.

Since the acquisition on February 19^th, there has been a massive social media demand for customers to boycott Coinbase by deleting their accounts. The Hacking Team is known for their continual and knowing support for governments that were using the support to abuse human rights.

In the Monday post, Armstrong blamed the issue on a

“gap in our diligence process.”

He explained that the Coinbase team worked hard to examine the technology and security of Neutrino. However, they did not evaluate everything that they should have, based on their mission and goals as a crypto exchange.

Attempting to correct the problem, he notified the public that the former Hacking Team members would “transition out” of the deal. Though the decision was difficult, the former work of those employees directly conflicts with the goals of Coinbase.

Now, it would be safe to assume that the crypto community would be happy with the action that Coinbase took. However, Jesse Powell is taking an objective view of the decisions that the company made. Though it is good that the exchange heard the cries of the community, the co-founder and CEO of Kraken accuses the company of “optics without action,” speaking on the continued relationship that the former employees will have.

ehh.. not quite. It's optics without action. No timeline on transitioning people out and they're keeping the software. What will be the continued relationship after they're officially not CB employees? No resolution on the conflicting statements about having done diligence vs not

— Jesse Powell (@jespow) March 5, 2019

Bringing to light the question of who exactly the employees are, Powell added that knowing when these members will be gone is better than just knowing they will be.

Ya, and how about *when*? Whole thing reads like "we were cool with it but you guys don't understand, plus all that murder stuff is in the past so, eventually we will help them transition out to be a contracted service provider instead of employees so you stop bothering us."

— Jesse Powell (@jespow) March 5, 2019

The full blog on this announcement can be viewed at https://blog.coinbase.com/living-up-to-our-values-and-the-neutrino-acquisition-ba98174cdcf6.