news about the crypto exchange – The Cryptonomist

Among the latest news on the crypto exchange Coinbase, it emerges that the platform is one of the best crypto financiers for lobbying in Washington.

Coinbase leads the list of the largest crypto financiers by lobbying

In 2022, crypto companies recorded record spending of $21.55 million on lobbying in Washington. From what emerges from OpenSecrets data, it appears that Coinbase is the crypto exchange that leads the list of top financiers.

Actual, Coinbase would have paid out as much as $3.4 million in 2022. Next in the ranking would be Blockchain Association with 1.9 million dollars, Crypto.com with 1.2 million dollars, Binance Holdings with $1.1 million, and Ripple with 1 million dollars.

Essentially, “lobbying” is the tool of political representation in which groups, organizations, individuals (or crypto-companies), bound together by common interests, legitimately influence institutions with the aim of influencing decisions to their own advantage.

These activities, also funded by crypto companies in 2022, do not take into account campaign contributions, election financing or political donations.

In this regard, the Supreme Court legitimized with the Citizens United case in 2021 the choice not to disclose details of donations to politicians. Since then, donors have been allowed to give money to politicians anonymously. This means that the amount is not included in this count, as it is difficult to calculate, but it does not rule out that the amounts paid for lobbying are many more.

Last year Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) turned out to be the biggest financierassigns almost 40 million dollars to fund political action committees and campaigns for the Democratic Party.

Given, after the FTX bankruptcy, the ruling on SBF’s lobbying activities is that they who received donations from FTX leaders must return everythingalthough it has already been used to pay third parties, including charities.

Coinbase and the theft of credentials from an employee without consequences

Recently, Coin base suffered a cyber security attack that targeted one of the employees. The platform’s cybersecurity controls then prevented the attacker from directly accessing the system, so there were no consequences of loss of funds or manipulation of customer data.

Essentially, several employees must have received a message that indicated an urgent need to log into the company account to read an important communication. An employee fell into the trap by entering a username and password.

This was revealed by Coinbase itself, which, claiming to believe in transparency, wanted to share the techniques and procedures used by the cyber attacker.

And indeed, cybercriminals allegedly gained access to internal systems and called the employee who had provided his credentials, claiming to be an IT manager.

The security team, after noticing strange activity on his account, alerted the employee-victim via internal messages, so that he, realizing the deception, then cut off communication with the attacker.

Coinbase suggested that everyone adopt multi-level protection, such as two-factor authentication (2FA), preferably via app or hardware key.

Coinbase (COIN) registers +16% in the last month, but it is not enough

Coinbase’s stock, COIN, just registered a price pump of +16% in the last 30 days. Specifically, COIN’s price was almost $60 last month, while it is worth today $65.20.

Good, but not great. Coinbase shares had touched a price of $81.46 on February 2ndso over the last 20 days there seems to have been another slight downtrend.

Coinbase not just crypto

And indeed, COIN was launched in April 2021 and was priced as high as $342and touched the same price only in November 2021, in the middle of the crypto bull run.

COIN’s price has since fallen. At the beginning of 2022, COIN was worth $252, while at the beginning of 2023 it is worth much less, $35 to be precise.

Despite this offering price, there are those who still have faith in the crypto platform, such as Cathie Woodas with its popular investment fund Ark Invest (ARKK) continues to show interest in Coinbase.

In fact, it recently emerged that the ARKK fund has allegedly bought COIN worth about 20 million dollars since the beginning of the year.

The platform’s response to the SEC’s claims about the betting service

Another news story in recent weeks about Coinbase, is its stance on the SEC’s allegations about the cryptocurrency betting service.

Recently, the US government agency revealed that the crypto staking service would be equivalent to an investment contract, and therefore a security, and for that it needs to be approved by the same agency.

Coin basehowever, it claims crypto staking is not a security at all and allowed Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Paul Grewal, to describe the reasons on Twitter.

Among other points, Grewal specified that crypto betting is not a security under both the US Securities Act and the Howey Test.

When it comes to the rewards of the crypto staking service, Grewal also reiterated that they come from the blockchain which puts tokens to work according to the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, which is absolutely not a financial contract.