It seems like Coinbase has been having a rough few days in the crypto-verse with two organizations having grievances against the largest crypto-currency exchange based in the United States.
First to air their grievances against Coinbase was Wikileaks who announced that Coinbase had blocked its official Wikileaks shop without notice or explanation. The latter sells Wikileaks merchandise such as T-shirts, hoodies, stickers, posters, books, phone cases and other accessories with consumers having the option of paying using Bitcoin. Wikileakshop also sells cryptokitties.
Coinbase claims that the Wikileaks accounts has been engaging in activities that are in violation of the therms of service of the exchange.
Due to these actions by Coinbase, Wikileaks has since called for a global blockade of the exchange. Wikileaks has dubbed Coinbase as being an unfit member of the crypto community. This is a sentiment that has been dominating the Crypto-verse with many American traders complaining that the trading fees on the platform are ridiculously high.
Another organization that has been having issues with Coinbase, is Cheapair.com: a less stressful option to finding cheap airline tickets on the web. Cheapair has been crypto friendly by being the first travel agency world-wide to accept Bitcoin (BTC) as an alternate form of payment for flights. This was done back in 2013 by the organization and everything has been smooth sailing up until now.
However, Coinbase now informed the organization that it will no longer support ‘custodial’ solutions for merchants and are removing a number of the tools and features that Cheapair relies on to accept BTC from shoppers. Cheapair has now asked its costumers to recommend prefered alternatives away from Coinbase.
Perhaps what is happening in the back-end of things, is that Coinbase is trying to avoid repercussions down the line, when the SEC starts recommending on how cryptocurrency exchanges should be regulated. Every organization wants to stay afloat and within the laws of the jurisdiction which they are registered.
An option would be for Coinbase to switch base to a more crypto friendly country such as Lithuania, Estonia or Belarus.
[Photo source, coinbase.com]
