Angry Bitcoin Fans Delete Coinbase Accounts to Protest Neutrino Acquisition

The battle cry #DeleteCoinbase is resounding across crypto Twitter as bitcoin users close their exchange accounts to protest a controversial acquisition by the exchange.

These users are upset with Coinbase for acquiring Neutrino because that blockchain analytics outfit's executive - CEO Giancarlo Russo, CTO Alberto Ornaghi, and CRO Marco Valleri - previously spearheaded projects for the startup Hacking Team, which sold spyware to several governments known for human rights abuses.

Further, even 500 would amount to a sliver of Coinbase's 13 million accounts.

Meltem Demirors, founder of Shiny Pony Ventures and chief strategy officer at the asset manager CoinShares, told CoinDesk she will no longer use Coinbase after this incident.

"This acquisition of Neutrino supports the idea of using bitcoin for surveillance capitalism."

Coinbase declined to comment by time of publication about the number of vocal users now leaving the platform.

Last month, Coinbase's director of engineering and product, Varun Srinivasan, told CoinDesk that Neutrino would allow Coinbase to expand cryptocurrency listings quickly while retaining data analysis services in-house.

In a statement to The Block, a Coinbase spokesperson said the company was aware of the Neutrino team's past but felt the significance of this business opportunity outweighed that consideration.

Italy's Ministry of Economic Development stated that Hacking Team's exports of surveillance technologies to countries like Egypt posed a clear risk to human rights abroad. Yet among those offended by Coinbase's affiliation with the Hacking Team veterans, many users are posting complaints on social media about difficulty closing their accounts.

It remains to be seen whether the controversy will make any meaningful dent in Coinbase's user base, given the platform's convenience for entry-level users and the hassle associated with switching providers - a source of customer inertia in financial services since long before cryptocurrency was invented.