Activity tagged "Coinbase"

Posted:

As an active federal contractor, Coinbase is prohibited from making political contributions, including to super PACs. This makes $50 million that they have contributed in violation of pay-to-play laws for contractors.

Tweet by Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong We get the U.S. election results in 6 days, and no matter how you slice it, it will be the most pro-crypto congress ever. But we're not slowing down post-election. Today I'm announcing that @coinbase has committed another $25M to support Fairshake PAC, which they will use leading up to the 2026 midterms to elect pro-crypto candidates. We're also supporting @standwithcrypto in their stretch goal to reach 4m advocates by the 2026 midterms. The crypto voter is already a force to be reckoned with, but it will continue to grow. We're going to keep showing up to protect our customer's rights and help get sensible legislation passed in major markets around the world.

See my reporting on their previous violation, which is being reviewed by the FEC: https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/

Posted:

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal has responded to the news of the FEC complaint by suggesting I have some shadowy backers funding me.

Tweet thread by Paul Grewal (@iampaulgrewal): Seized crypto assets are not Congressionally appropriated funds, period. There is nothing new in the FEC complaint filed by a self-described crypto critic and Public Citizen’s research director, but it is notable that there is no minimum bar to file such a complaint, and this one – filed by individuals with no election law expertise and funded by who exactly? – appears to amount to a press release by another name. 1/4 @coinbase is proud of its hand-in-glove work with federal law enforcement. We remain committed to playing a trusted role for the U.S. Marshals Service’s cryptocurrency services requirement, which is funded by the sale of assets forfeited to the DOJ’s Assets Forfeiture Fund – not congressionally appropriated tax dollars.

He’s also complained that we accused Coinbase of having partisan bias in who they support, something we did not allege or imply. We single out the donation to the Congressional Leadership Fund and not its Democratic equivalent because only the former happened within the prohibited period.

Tweet thread by Paul Grewal (@iampaulgrewal): Seized crypto assets are not Congressionally appropriated funds, period. There is nothing new in the FEC complaint filed by a self-described crypto critic and Public Citizen’s research director, but it is notable that there is no minimum bar to file such a complaint, and this one – filed by individuals with no election law expertise and funded by who exactly? – appears to amount to a press release by another name. 1/4 @coinbase is proud of its hand-in-glove work with federal law enforcement. We remain committed to playing a trusted role for the U.S. Marshals Service’s cryptocurrency services requirement, which is funded by the sale of assets forfeited to the DOJ’s Assets Forfeiture Fund – not congressionally appropriated tax dollars. 2/4 It’s also worth noting that Coinbase has donated to Dem and GOP super PACs equally with $500K to House and Senate funds for each party, respectively, for 2024. White and Public Citizen appear to want to report a political bias which does not exist. 3/4 Very simply, the world view these researchers espouse in this document is not the law, as much as they wish it was. 4/4

These are the contributions at issue. Those highlighted in yellow were made during the prohibited time period (March 4, 2024–present).

The blue ones are the ones he claims to be upset we didn’t mention. They were made more than two months before the US Marshals published the contract that Coinbase would later apply for and win.

Individual contributions Viewing 11 filtered results for: "coinbase"<br>Contributor name Recipient State Employer Receipt date Amount [begin yellow highlight] COINBASE FAIRSHAKE CA 05/30/2024 $24,999,995.00 COINBASE, INC. COINBASE, INC. INNOVATION PAC (COINBASE INNOVATION PAC) CA 05/03/2024 $100.00 COINBASE CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND CA 03/20/2024 $500,000.00 [end yellow highlight] [begin blue highlight]  COINBASE INC. SENATE LEADERSHIP FUND CA 12/22/2023 $500,000.00 [end blue highlight] COINBASE PROTECT PROGRESS CA 12/22/2023 $1,500,000.00 [begin blue highlight]  COINBASE, INC. SMP CA 12/22/2023 $500,000.00 [end blue highlight]  COINBASE INC DEFEND AMERICAN JOBS CA 12/22/2023 $1,500,000.00 COINBASE, INC. COINBASE, INC. INNOVATION PAC (COINBASE INNOVATION PAC) CA 12/20/2023 $50.01 [begin blue highlight]  COINBASE, INC. HMP CA 12/20/2023 $500,000.00 [end blue highlight] COINBASE FAIRSHAKE CA 12/20/2023 $15,500,000.00 COINBASE FAIRSHAKE CA 11/03/2023 $5,000,000.00

(Note: that third, $100 contribution highlighted in yellow seems to be a permitted contribution made by an individual employee that has just been misattributed to Coinbase in the FEC data).

Posted:

Coinbase has tried to portray its “Stand With Crypto” PAC as having broad grassroots support among over a million “crypto advocates”, and boasts on its homepage of nearly $180 million raised by these advocates.

Its first quarterly FEC filing reveals it has had only $13,690 in contributions from seven people over the most recent three-month period. Two of them work for Stand With Crypto and two of them work for Coinbase.

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After my reporting about the falsified donations amount on the Stand With Crypto homepage, the PAC added a tooltip that acknowledges that $177.8 million of the “donations by crypto advocates” are actually the multi million dollar donations by a handful of big crypto companies and their executives.

However, they still claim that $1.48 million was raised by Stand With Crypto itself. Either they've raised 99% of their funds in the last 19 days, or they’re doing more funny business with the numbers they’re claiming.