Between data breach, ransom demand worth $ 20 million, and federal investigation in “verified users”, Coinbase has a approximate week

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  • CoinbaseThe largest exchange of cryptocurrencies in the world, and spends an approximate week. In the previous period Coinbase Join S&P 500 on May 19, the company announced that it had been subjected to data breach and refused to pay a 20 million dollars request ransom Among the Internet criminals who stole user data. The company is also facing a new SEC investigation looking at whether the company has erred in user numbers in previous disclosures.

Coinbase It will formally join the S&P 500 On Monday, his store returns to where it was at the beginning of the year after it had a blow to the customs tariffs in the past few months. But not everything is good in Coinbase.

Company It was revealed on its blog Thursday violating data, which may cost him between $ 180 million to $ 400 million to repair problems and pay customer. In the same disclosure, she said that Cybercrimins bribed Coinbase customer service agents to steal user data, then tried to blackmail the company from $ 20 million.

Coinbase said that the data violation has only affected “less than 1 % of Coinbase’s monthly transactions.” In the first quarter of 2024, the company I mentioned 8 million monthly users of transactionsLess than 1 % of it will be less than 80,000 people. The company said it had sent an email to all the affected customers on Thursday morning.

The company said it refused to pay a ransom of $ 20 million; Instead, “create a $ 20 million bonus fund to obtain information that leads to the arrest and condemnation of the attackers”, asks anyone with an email sending information to the security team in Coinbase.

Coinbase’s chief security officer, Philip Martin, He said luckJohn John Roberts On Thursday, all customer service agents at risk in India worked immediately. Coinbase is currently working with industry and law enforcement partners to recover assets, while pressing criminal charges against a “small group of informed” who allowed this to happen.

Martin told luck.

Since Coinbase works to follow the Internet criminals and make customers completely on the organized front, it also faces a new probe from the Securities and Exchange Committee, according to what he said New York Times. While SEC brought down a lawsuit against the company earlier this year regarding the company’s marketing of digital currencies for the public, Federal investigators are now looking into previous disclosures, Including the S-1 file to go to the public in 2021 This claimed that the company has more than 100 million “verified users.”

“Paul Ghroul luck In a statement that the SEC probe is merely an “investigation into the previous administration on a scale, we stopped reporting two and a half years ago,” adding the company is committed to working with the Supreme Education Council “to close this issue.”

As Grewal said, Coinbase stopped reporting “verified users”, which was based on the number of accounts with confirmed email addresses or phone numbers, in 2023. It is now focusing on other standards such as monthly transformers, which are about 8 million on the currency base.

It is worth noting that while SEC has dropped more than ten different investigations and lawsuits The goal of the encryption companies since President Donald Trump took office in January, and this investigation, which started under Biden’s management, continued under his successor, which he participates with, continued with him. Many of his encryption projects.

Brian Armstrong, who founded Coinbase in 2012, was an explicit critic of SEC for years. In 2021, when the Supreme Education Council said it would be achieved in Coinbase plans to present a lending program, Armstrong called the SEC “Smetchy” and “Timidation Tectics Behind Dors” actions In a series of tweets. And in a 2023 interview with DecipherArmstrong said that Coinbase met with 30 times over 18 months, but he said that the agency had refused to provide clear guidelines, the digital assets are securities.

“We have asked the Supreme Education Council to obtain reactions; everything we obtained was a lawsuit,” he said, adding that the government agency is working through an “organization by implementation” environment.

While Armstrong did not donate to any Trump’s campaigns through direct donations, Coinbase made an effort to support politicians who support encryption. Last year, The company donated $ 25 million to FerchakiSuper Pac supports pro -rental candidates. Armstrong donated one million dollars to the organization.

Despite these works with Internet criminals and organizers, Coinbase has a very good year. The company has reported $ 2.03 billion in the revenue of the first quarter, an increase of 24 % on an annual basis. Although these analysts’ expectations, the company attributed it to a “unconfirmed Macro environment” on the global trade policy.

The company is also enhancing its platform, especially through 2.9 billion dollars, the acquisition of the exchange options Dreibit Earlier this month.

This story was originally shown on Fortune.com



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