Rumors that Binance was under investigation by the US Justice Department shocked the cryptocurrency sector. The exchange, however, shot this down by releasing a report that highlighted its efforts to combat cybercrime. Coinbase used the same strategy and unveiled a fresh transparency report that clarified its requests from law authorities.
Over the past year, there has been a sharp increase in the number of demands for information from law enforcement. According to Binance, 47,000 inquiries came from these organizations. This led the exchange to increase the number of employees responsible for security and compliance by more than 500%. Additionally, CZ’s platform participated in nearly 70 workshops with international law enforcement on combating cybercrime. Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Philippines, Sweden, South Korea, Thailand, and the UK all hosted these sessions.
These requests were sent to Coinbase as well, but only up to 12,320. It should be emphasized that the majority of it originated in the United States and was concerned with criminal cases.
The United States accounted for 47% of these requests, as shown in the graph. It should be emphasized that the majority of requests from law enforcement were from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain.
Spanish regulators appeared to be very uncertain. Over the previous year, Coinbase received 940 percent more requests from the nation. It should be mentioned that roughly 7% of Spanish individuals had invested in cryptocurrencies.
Along with Spain, five other nations have increased their queries by double over the previous year.
Coinbase Receives Criminal Investigation-Related Requests
The vast majority of the information that these organizations were looking for—95.3 percent—was related to criminal activity, while just 4.7 percent was civil or administrative.
Although the cryptocurrency community was certain to become more skeptical about the type of information being provided, the exchange wrote,
“In every instance, we carefully review law enforcement and agency requests before providing data to ensure we are honoring our customers’ rights over their personal information. Depending on the nature and scope of the request, Coinbase may produce certain customer information, such as name, recent login/logout IP address, and payment information.”