Coinbase

Since 2020, Coinbase has published annual transparency reports detailing government and law enforcement requests for customer information. The 2025 report (covering October 2024-September 2025) disclosed 12,716 requests, a 19% increase year-over-year, with approximately 53% from outside the United States. The reports provide customers with data about requests received and offer insight into global law enforcement and regulatory trends around the world.

A data breach occurred December 26, 2024 but wasn't detected until May 11, 2025. Overseas support personnel were bribed to access internal systems and steal customer information including names, Social Security numbers, bank details, and transaction histories. The breach affected 69,461 customers. Coinbase recorded $355 million in costs across Q2-Q3 2025. TaskUs, which provided customer service personnel since 2017, laid off 226 staff in India connected to the breach.

Coinbase donated $1M to Trump's 2025 inauguration fund (December 2024) and over $75M to Fairshake PAC for pro-crypto candidates. CEO Brian Armstrong met with Trump twice after the election. The SEC dismissed its lawsuit against Coinbase one month after SEC chair Gensler resigned.

Coinbase launched the Base mainnet on August 9, 2023, an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on the open-source OP Stack in collaboration with Optimism. In October 2023, Base open-sourced its code repositories, smart contracts, and web properties (base.org, docs.base.org, bridge.base.org) to increase transparency and allow public contributions. Base grew to become the largest Layer 2 network by total value locked. Coinbase also offered up to $1M in bug bounties through HackerOne and outlined a decentralization roadmap including fault proofs and diverse client software for censorship resistance.

On June 6, 2023, the SEC filed suit against Coinbase alleging it violated federal securities laws by operating as an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearing agency, and by offering unregistered securities through its staking program. In March 2024, a federal court rejected nearly all of Coinbase's challenges. However, after Coinbase donated over $75M to Fairshake PAC supporting pro-crypto candidates and $1M to Trump's 2025 inauguration fund, the SEC dropped the case on February 21, 2025 under the new Trump-appointed SEC leadership, raising regulatory capture concerns.

Coinbase conducted major workforce reductions: 1,100 employees (18% of workforce) in June 2022 and 950 employees (20% of remaining workforce) in January 2023. CEO Brian Armstrong stated they 'grew too quickly' during the bull market. The technology and development division saw a 24% headcount reduction. Restructuring costs were $149-163 million in Q1 2023.

New York state regulators levied a $50 million fine against Coinbase for failing to build and maintain a functional compliance program to prevent money laundering. Regulators found significant deficiencies in Coinbase's anti-money laundering controls and know-your-customer procedures.

Coinbase developed and sold its blockchain analytics tool (Coinbase Analytics, later renamed Coinbase Tracer) to multiple US government agencies. ICE signed a $1.37M contract in September 2021 gaining access to multi-hop analysis, Lightning network investigation, historical geo-tracking data, and transaction demixing across 12 blockchains. DHS contracted for $455K-$1.4M. The Secret Service signed two contracts worth up to $183,750 each. The tool was built on technology from Neutrino, a company Coinbase acquired in 2019. Coinbase claimed the tool only used publicly available blockchain data, not proprietary customer data.

CEO Brian Armstrong wrote a blog post in September 2020 declaring Coinbase a 'Mission Focused Company,' discouraging employee discussion of political and social issues at work. He stated it 'would go against our principles of inclusion and belonging to be more of an activist company on issues outside of our core mission.' The company offered severance packages; 60 employees (5% of company) left. A November 2020 NYT article cited 23 current and former staff with complaints, including allegations Black employees were paid 7% less than white colleagues and women were paid 8% less than men.

In February 2019, Coinbase acquired Neutrino for $13.5 million, a blockchain intelligence startup. Neutrino's CEO Giancarlo Russo, CTO Alberto Ornaghi, and CRO Marco Valleri were previously executives at Hacking Team, an Italian company that sold surveillance spyware to authoritarian regimes including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia. After significant user backlash including a #DeleteCoinbase campaign, CEO Brian Armstrong expressed regret and the controversial Hacking Team-linked employees were removed from their roles.