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April 23, 2018, 11:22:54 PM |
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Coinbase Crypto Exchange Closes WikiLeaks Shop Account
The irony of Coinbase closing WikiLeaks account wasn’t lost on crypto guru Andreas Antonopoulos. Antonopoulos tweeted “We have come full circle. Many people’s interest in bitcoin started when Wikileaks was out under an extrajudicial embargo by VISA, MC, PayPal, and banks. Now Coinbase has repeated history. Oops.”
Many Twitter users have said they will close their Coinbase accounts in protest at the action taken against WikiLeaks. The notice received by WikiLeaks states that Coinbase is a Money Services Business (MSB) which means they must conform to FinCEN regulations. Coinbase stated that the WikiLeaks account has breached their terms of service but didn’t provide details of the misuse. Maybe one of the FinCEN regulations states funds must not be used to spy on US computer networks. Interestingly Coinbase has not seized the WikiLeaks funds on behalf of the US government. Many tweets have followed up by pushing for decentralized exchanges as soon as possible to prevent what they see as abuse of power by existing exchanges.
WikiLeaks was founded by Australian computer programmer Julian Assange in 2006. He began hacking in 1987 and is known to have gained access to computer systems at the Pentagon, US Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin, Panasonic, and Nortel. The Nortel hack lead to his first brush with the law in 1996. He pleaded guilty to the hack and was given a lenient punishment of having to repay Nortel A$2,100 in damages. One of the reasons given for the lenient penalty was his disrupted childhood having attended no less than 37 different schools.
The sole aim of WikiLeaks was to release confidential documents to the world that Assange and his team thought the public should be aware of. It wasn’t until WikiLeaks started publishing the classified documents obtained by Chelsea Manning in 2010 that most of the world took much interest in the website. In the same year, an international arrest warrant was issued by Sweden for Assange in relation to allegations of sexual assault and rape.
Assange surrendered to British police but was released on bail pending an extradition hearing. He believed he would ultimately be extradited to the US where he could face the death penalty for espionage. He skipped bail and has remained at the Embassy of Ecuador in London ever since, even though Swedish prosecutors dropped the charges against him in May 2017.
Originally published at cryptodisrupt.com
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