Coinbase appears to have a capacity problem. Users have pointed out for years that when Bitcoin and other crypto assets are especially volatile, the exchange sometimes goes offline without warning. These outages can prevent customers from buying or selling their crypto assets and are generally viewed unfavorably by traders. Between March and November, the exchange recorded nine different issues leading to various types of outages or connectivity problems, although direct customer impact is somewhat unclear in some of the instances. The issues seemingly range in their degree of severity. The main status update posted by Coinbase during such times is: …

Per an announcement on Friday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, is looking for public comments on rule-making that would stop banks from denying services to businesses based on sector. In the words of Comptroller Brian Brooks, “Blanket boycotts of entire industry sectors have to stop.” The OCC’s announcement points to political hot-button issues that banks have systematically denied services to, including oil and gas companies in Alaska as well as Planned Parenthood. Speaking to the media, Brooks noted the bipartisan nature of many of these bans: “These things are not politically partisan, but there are …

Digital asset security platform Fireblocks announced that it would be adding Fred Ehrsam to its board following a recent funding round. In a Wednesday statement, Fireblocks said that Ehrsam, co-founder of crypto exchange Coinbase, would be joining the firm as a board member after a $30 million funding round to expand its global operations. Ehrsam left Coinbase in 2017 and went on to co-found crypto investment firm Paradigm. “Fireblocks has become the go-to for any business looking to build new digital asset operations or scale existing ones,” said Ehrsam. “The extraordinary growth of the Fireblocks Network and its team in …

Amid a global race toward central bank digital currencies, also known as CBDCs, the United States needs to focus on the private sector, says Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks. “We have built private stablecoins in this country that already have a market cap in the tens of billions of dollars,” Brooks said in a U.S. House Committee on Financial Services hearing on Thursday. Formerly head of Coinbase’s legal department, Brooks currently leads the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, which is the Treasury office that regulates federal banks. “These things are transacting daily, they are …

The Tax Law Office of David W. Klasing, a boutique Californian tax firm, has issued a public release warning investors that the United States Internal Revenue Service is getting serious with Coinbase users. The firm’s dual-licensed tax lawyers and capital allowance specialists say they have been tracking an increase in IRS enforcement activity against Coinbase users who fail to comply with their tax and reporting requirements. Evaders can “end up facing serious civil and criminal trouble down the line,” the firm in its news release on Nov. 11, adding: “If you have failed to report holding Bitcoin or other virtual …

As part of his statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, acting Comptroller of the Currency, Brian Brooks, prepared a whole section on crypto assets, including specific mention of stablecoins. "Today, roughly 60 million Americans own some type of cryptocurrency, with a total market cap of nearly $430 billion," Brooks said, adding: "These figures clearly illustrate that this payment mechanism is now firmly entrenched in the financial mainstream. Cryptocurrency has become a popular mechanism for sending and receiving payments for goods and services because transactions post in real time and provide convenience and security." Brooks …

On Friday Coinbase Inc. announced the appointment of former Google Senior Legal Director Milana McCullagh as deputy general counsel for product and commercial legal. McCullagh, who worked for more than 13 years at Google, will work across functions at Coinbase on product legal support, helping the firm to streamline legal compliance for new product launches. McCullagh's appointment is part of both a Coinbase campaign to attract legal talent that started last year, as well as a broader industry-wide movement of top-tier attorneys joining crypto firms. Between August and October, Coinbase appointed former general counsel at Dyson Ltd., Katherine Minarik, as …

As technology titans in the United States capture a larger part of their industries and beyond, regulators and governments have become increasingly concerned about their extensive power and influence. Indeed, Facebook, Twitter and Google’s parent company Alphabet all appeared before a Congressional antitrust in July. The primary concern of the government is that these companies use their authority to stifle competition and manipulate users to maintain their leading position in the marketplace. The latest in a series of ongoing antitrust charges and investigations on corporate giants is the one being considered by the U.S. . The DOJ said in a …

With Bitcoin's price continuing to hold close to $13,000, one crypto wallet has moved more than $1 billion of the digital asset. According to on-chain data, a Bitcoin (BTC) wallet holder moved more than 88,857 BTC — worth roughly $1.15 billion — for a fee of only 0.00027847 BTC, or $3.58 at time of publication. The coins were confirmed in block 654,364 on Oct. 26. Data from analytics platform CrystalBlockchain appears to show that the user sent the coins from an address labeled as a Xapo Bitcoin wallet. Because Coinbase Custody acquired Xapo’s institutional business in 2019, it is possible …

Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of blockchain-based payments firm Ripple, disagrees with Coinbase’s new policy restricting its employees from engaging in political discussions at work. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong first announced the ‘apolitical’ policy in a blog post on Sep. 27. He encouraged Coinbase employees to not indulge in political discussion and keep their focus on the company’s mission of creating an open financial system for the world. Garlinghouse disagrees, telling CNBC that technology companies have an obligation to contribute to solving societal issues. Garlinghouse said that tech companies and platforms have made some societal problems worse, so they must also …

Less than a month after Brian Armstrong declared Coinbase should “be laser focused on achieving its mission,” he seemingly violated his own policy by tweeting a political post riddled with falsehoods... during business hours. In an Oct. 23 tweet from Armstrong’s personal account, the Coinbase CEO posted a link to a blog written by Rob Rhinehart on Kanye West’s presidential run with the tagline “epic post.” Rhinehart’s Twitter account is no longer available for unknown reasons, although its absence may be related to the inaccuracies and outright falsehoods contained in the post — even if it were written as satire, …

A cloud cryptocurrency software provider that aims to make automated trading simple says it now has over 70,000 active users and over 7,000 active trading bots, with almost 3 million deals completed successfully since its launch. TradeSanta’s software can be connected to seven major exchanges, including Binance, Huobi, OKEx and HitBTC. The company says setting up an account is simple, and trading bots can be set up in under two minutes. From here, long and short bots can be utilized to take advantage of bull and bear markets alike, and technical indicators can be relied upon to open trades at …