The Coinbase exchange has been hit by a wave of criticism from the community after announcing plans for cooperation with US government agencies.

Last Friday, The Block reported that the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange plans to license its blockchain analytics software so that it can be used by US federal agencies, in particular the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

A Coinbase spokeswoman told Decrypt that “this tool offers only simplified data access, and in no way provides access to any Coinbase internal or client data.” However, the cryptocurrency community reacted negatively to exchange plans.

Casa Technical Director Jameson Lopp tweeted:

Cryptocurrency trader Josh Rager, citing analytics service Whale Alert, wrote that 6,000 BTC were withdrawn from Coinbase. He noted:

These notes are just the tip of the iceberg of criticism voiced by community representatives regarding Coinbase. TFTC podcast co-author Matt Odell tweeted to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and asked, “Why do you hate your customers so much?” Crypto Lark also expressed his opinion:

Coinbase is not the first time to incur criticism of the cryptocurrency community. In April 2018, Wikileaks called for a boycott of Coinbase after the exchange blocked without notice the official Wikileaks store, which sells various souvenirs: clothes, accessories, phone cases, stickers, posters, books and “cryptocotics”.

In addition, at the beginning of last year, the community negatively perceived the news about the acquisition of the Neutrino startup by the exchange, starting a campaign under the hashtag #DeleteCoinbase. A negative attitude towards Coinbase was formed due to the decision to store private key backups in cloud services and the addition of XRP to Coinbase Pro, but it is assumed that the purchase of Neutrino was the last straw.