US Homeland Security Signed $1.3M Deal With Coinbase Exchange

The US Homeland security signed a $1.3 million deal with the Coinbase crypto exchange and this new deal is about 40 times bigger than the last so let’s read more in our latest Coinbase news today.

Coinbase will provide the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement branch with a new blockchain analytics software but the exchange also provided new software to the US Secret Service and the Inland Revenue. The Immigration and customs Enforcement branch from the US Homeland Security got a $1.36 million contract to the exchange giant for business application and development software as per the Federal Procurement Data system.

I missed this in procurement feed yesterday, but cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase has a new award with ICE which is either 15x or nearly 50x as large as its previous award, depending on how you count.

It is Coinbase's largest fed contract.https://t.co/B4IsabH4sw

1/2 pic.twitter.com/zAwJILS0X1

— Jack Poulson (@_jack_poulson) September 18, 2021

The new deal is the biggest federal contract for Coinbase crypto exchange just yet. The deal was signed on Thursday and it is worth around 40 times more than Coinbase’s last contract with the US Homeland Security branch. The ICE also paid Coinbase $29,000 for the forensic software and as per the document dating from August 3, the contract was given to the exchange on the basis that the company is the only vendor that can provide services required by the agency. Details as to what the ICE wants Coinbase’s software for is still uknown. The same document stated:

“This requirement is LAW ENFORCEMENT SENITIVE[sic], therefore minimal information will be provided publicly.”

ICE is not the first governemnt agency to request the services from coinbase. Coinbase announced that it wants to sell analytics tools to two US government branches: The Drug Enforcement Agency ad the Inland Revenue Service. The IRS also stated that it could use a few analytics tools to help catch the more tech-savvy tax dodgers including “Coinbase Analytics” known as Neutrino. Coinbase acquired it back in 2019 for $13.5 million and it was quite the controversial acquisition at the time since the Neutrino members were linked to an Italian organization dubbed HAckign Team that sold spyware to authoritarian regimes like Sudan, Venezuela, and Saudi ARabia.

Excuse me, I didn't miss it. The new Coinbase ICE award still isn't in https://t.co/LUVmSukVfa, so it must have been delayed by a day in its reporting.https://t.co/SS6HmznPKn

— Jack Poulson (@_jack_poulson) September 18, 2021

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expressed his regret for the purchase and sacked some of the more dubious members of the team. Coinbase sourced analytics software deals with the Secret Service and the IRs. Now the exchange is getting into million-dollar deals with the federal governemnt again.