Coinbase has seen increased requests for information from law enforcement over the past year, the cryptocurrency exchange has reported in its latest transparency report. The vast majority of the requests came from the United States and were related to criminal investigations.
Coinbase’s new transparency report covers the last four quarters, through September. In that period, the exchange received 12,320 information requests from law enforcement, an increase of nearly 66%. The United States received 5,304 applications, that is, 43%. The UK, Germany and Spain submitted between 1,000 and 2,000 applications each. These four countries accounted for 80% of the applications, while another 57 countries also submitted applications.
The 1,304 requests from Spain represent an increase of 940%. It is one of six countries that have more than doubled their requests in the last year. Twenty-one countries sent applications for the first time during the reference period, including the Czech Republic, which sent 104 of them.
According to the report, attributed to Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, Coinbase can challenge or ask the agencies to reduce their requests, as its legal team decides. The exchange does not provide law enforcement with direct access to information, but:
“Coinbase may produce certain customer information, such as name, recent login/logout IP address, and payment information; this type of information may be subject to requests by government and law enforcement agencies when a customer uses one of our applications or our website, as described in our privacy policy.”
“We also intend to provide anonymized or aggregated data that assists law enforcement and government agencies in their work, wherever possible to do so,” the report added.
Coinbase is proud to publish its fourth transparency report summarizing data requests for customer information we received from government agencies and law enforcement during the previous year. ⬇️ https://t.co/PGQ0gZ8qE5
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) December 12, 2022
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in an interview in early December that the exchange’s trading revenue has roughly halved over the past year. Coinbase has 108 million customers around the world.
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