😥Coinbase executive says customer data was resold by analytics vendors

In an alarming interview on Cheddar, Coinbase Director of Institutional Sales, Christine Sandler, suggested the company's controversial acquisition of blockchain intelligence service, Neutrino, may have been precipitated by a violation of customer data policies from previous Coinbase vendors. “It was important for us to migrate away from our current providers," Sandler said. "They were selling client data to outside sources and it was compelling for us to get control over that and have proprietary technology that we could leverage to keep the data safe and protect our clients." Coinbase has come under fire for the Neutrino acquisition thanks to its executives controversial history with the company, Hacking Team, an intelligence firm that had sold surveillance software to several authoritarian governments, and had been previously labeled an "enemy of the internet" by journalist advocacy group Reporters without Borders.

A source with knowledge of the situation explained there wasn't much of a choice for Coinbase, as almost all regulated crypto exchanges likely use one of several large blockchain analytics tools, including those from industry leaders Elliptic and Chainalysis. The source said that those firms had moved to a "give-get" data model, where Coinbase would only have been permitted to use the service in return for providing its own data. Coinbase "brought that capability in house so they weren’t in a situation where using a 3rd party tool was making it better" as a surveillance tech. The Neutrino tuck-in "legitimately increases privacy for Coinbase customers." These changes are recent, too, allegedly made only after Chainalysis closed its $30 million Series B from venture capital firm Accel in February.

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