The world’s most valuable crypto exchange, Coinbase, recently disclosed that it had a significant number of requests from law enforcement agencies in the world’s largest economy, U.S, and other parts of the globe.
In its first-ever Transparency Report, Coinbase disclosed that it currently serves about 38 million customers globally, thus it collected 1,914 requests from global law enforcement and government agencies in H1,2020 that sought to get details on customers’ details and their financial data.
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Unsurprisingly, the United States leads the pack with 58% of such requests; others include law enforcement agencies from the United Kingdom, Germany, and France which filed for 441, 176, and 45 information requests, respectively.
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Why this matters: The leading American U.S crypto exchange believes that trust is optimized through transparency and honesty via releasing a Transparency Report that shares insights into how it handles legitimate government requests for some customers’ data.
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Coinbase believes that transparency reports like this should be encouraged, in spite of the opaque reporting seen by many startups, especially in financial services. It believes that it is important, not just for crypto companies, but for fintechs and banks at large to shed light on financial data sharing practices, and contribute to the understanding of industry trends in a meaningful way.
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Insights
- 58% of all requests come from US agencies.
- 90% of all requests come from three jurisdictions: the U.S., UK, and Germany.
- 16% of all U.S. requests come from state or local authorities.
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eidi