Discussion
In July 2024, I reported that Coinbase appeared to be violating campaign finance law by making contributions while holding federal contracts. I filed an FEC complaint alongside Public Citizen. The FEC hasn’t acted. Since, Coinbase has given $60M more and landed another federal contract.
https://www.washingtonsun.com/influence/coinbase-marshal-service-contract-political-contributions
@notthatkindofdoctor i go into it at https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/#coinbase%E2%80%99s-response, but the tl;dr is essentially that they’re arguing that in order to be a federal contractor, they must be paid with funds “appropriated by the Congress”, which they say the asset forfeiture fund (which they’re paid out of) is not. We filed a supplement to note that the AFF is itself a Congressional appropriation; to my knowledge they never responded to that point.
@molly0xfff Why does a gambling company have a federal contract?
@jackemled they provide cryptocurrency custody services to the US Marshals, which holds a significant amount of crypto seized as part of law enforcement action
@molly0xfff I would assume they would contract a bank to figure that out. I guess I still have too much confidence in the competence of the American government.
@jackemled banks largely weren’t doing this until recently, largely for regulatory reasons and accounting guidance from the SEC that would make it very expensive to do so
That sounds corrupt to me
Here’s that reporting: https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/
Coinbase responded to the initial complaint by arguing that, despite having received a federal contract, they were not a federal contractor — then insinuated I had secret funders and made lightly veiled legal threats against me.
“It’s bad enough when the laws are weak or there are loopholes in the law, but it’s almost worse when you have laws on the books that aren’t being enforced because the regulator is inadequate, and that’s the situation where we’re finding ourselves now,” said Eric Petry, counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program.
I track Coinbase’s (and its top executives’) campaign spending: https://influence.citationneeded.news/2026/companies/coinbase
They’ve spent $100 million+ since 2024 across super PACs, Trump campaign committees, and other individual candidates: https://influence.citationneeded.news/analysis/quidproquo#coinbase
@molly0xfff clearly these people are not paying enough tax.
This is bad but it will continue, and it will increase creating chaos and division (which is why they do it and bribe politicians to not do an thing about it) until they make it illegal altogether. Contributions, fine, but cap it at maybe $200 USD tax deductible, make helping your candidate just that, helping (not owning).
@molly0xfff
How are they being paid through a forfeiture fund, if that negates them being a contractor? They have a contract for whatever bullshit services or why would they be getting any money at all?