It's no secret that plenty of people are upset over Coinbase's decision to purchase Neutrino. The move has been received as controversial by the purists in the crypto community and to be honest, it's hard not to see the negatives here. I mean, one of the reasons why most got involved with cryptocurrencies is because we were trying to eliminate the custodianship and middlemen the legacy system is based on, but that particular detail is attached to the need of privacy.

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Neutrino = bad?

Actually that remains to be seen, but it's undeniable the background is very ugly. To make a very long story short, Neutrino's background, that is, the team behind Neutrino specialized in selling spyware before founding this firm, and if that doesn't speak volumes, then I don't know what does.

We have to be realistic about this however, and realize that transparency in this field is necessary for legislative clarity, but the idea of transparency has to go both ways. I mean, it was not that long ago that users of Facebook had no idea their data was being sold to the highest bidder, and the bitter taste such revelation left in our mouths is still lingering today.

Coinbase did Respond

As a matter of fact, they are defending themselves, but In my particular opinion the defense they put forth made them look bad, really bad. I mean, not only did they decide to acquire a questionable firm of questionable practices, but the reason why they did so is because they were already working with one.

Of course this requires a bit of interpretation, but I think the writing is on the walls:

As you might imagine the outrage is getting out of control a bit, and I can't really blame people. I mean, think about the whales out there who are for lack of better terms doxxed at this very moment. There are of course security concerns, but that is just one of the issues I see with this.

The question that remains unanswered, at least at the time I'm writing this is. When did they find out? When did Coinbase know of "the information leaks"? In my view if this was known and just tolerated, they are complicit in any ramifications, and that includes their user's safety.

If you are a twitter user, more so if you are browsing through what it's referred to as Crypto Twitter, you may have seen the tags calling for people to boycott Coinbase, to delete their accounts. It's probably because this is picking up steam that Coinbase actually responded, but I doubt this helped their case one bit.