Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded Coinbase a contract to supply a “business application” and “application development software”.
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 contract signed on September 16 was for $1.36 million, about forty times larger than the prior agreement with the Department. It became the largest federal contract for a Bitcoin exchange.
In August, ICE paid Coinbase $29,000 for analytic software. In the relevant document the company was named “the sole provider capable of delivering the services required by the agency on reasonable terms,” according to The Block.
ICE is not the first government agency to use Coinbase’s services. In 2020 the company’s products attracted the interest of the DEA and the IRS. They planned to use Coinbase Analytics software, formerly known as Neutrino.
Coinbase acquired Neutrino in 2019. After the purchase the firm came under criticism — the founders of the Italian startup were involved with the Hacking Team project, which sold surveillance software to dictatorial regimes.
Subsequently Coinbase signed contracts with the United States Secret Service and the IRS.
As reported in October 2020, the IRS commissioned Chainalysis to track Monero transactions.
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