Coinbase is selling its blockchain analytics software to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service. Following criticisms from the crypto community, CEO Brian Armstrong defended Coinbase’s position.

Public records on the U.S. government’s websites reveal that the San Francisco-based crypto exchange Coinbase has signed a contract with the U.S. government for its blockchain analytics software. The records were first spotted by The Block.

The contract, awarded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was signed on May 9. It went into effect the next day with a tentative end date of May 11, 2024. The obligated amount is currently $49,000 and the potential award amount is $183,750. The contracting agency is the U.S. Secret Service, a federal agency that investigates monetary crimes such as fraud and counterfeiting; it was transferred from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security on March 1, 2003.

Coinbase’s contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service for its blockchain analytics software. Source: U.S. government’s website.

Following the news of Coinbase selling its analytics software to the U.S. Secret Service, many people took to Twitter to criticize the company’s action, with some urging others to “delete Coinbase,” saying that the company is “bad for bitcoin and crypto.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong quickly defended his company’s decision. “Blockchain analytics software is nothing new – has been around a long time – it uses publicly available data to try and track crypto transactions – usually to catch bad actors,” he tweeted.

Armstrong proceeded to explain that his company 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 we needed. So we realized at some point we would need to bring this capability in house,” the CEO described, elaborating:

Last month, it was reported that Coinbase wanted to sell its analytics software to two other U.S. government agencies: the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Meanwhile, the company is reportedly planning an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。