Crypto influencer Cobie has been the subject of heated debate across social media platforms due to his connection with two major exchanges. As Cobie said via his Twitter account, some members of Coinbase staff are accessing him of harming the company.
Two months ago, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) confirmed the arrest of Ishan Wahi, former product manager at Coinbase. In alleged cooperation with two other suspects, authorities in the country claimed that Wahi used his position at the exchange platform to conduct an “inside trading scheme”.
According to the DoJ, Wahi had access to privileged information regarding future cryptocurrency listings on Coinbase and allegedly used it for his financial benefit. In the official report from the authorities, Cobie’s investigation about an Ethereum address buying tokens just before they were listed to Coinbase was an important piece in a pre-liminal probe to gather evidence.
In that sense, Coinbase employees are claiming that the crypto influencer was responsible for the investigation as a way to suspiciously prompt up his commercial partnership with FTX. The exchange sponsors Cobie’s podcast “Up Only”.
Cobie called the accusations lies as he claims any information on alleged inside trading was disclosed “privately”. Cobie is well-known in the crypto space for being an early Bitcoin adopter and making profits across the year. Thus, his deal with FTX has been put into question.
However, Cobie clarified that their deal with the crypto exchange is “locked up”. Therefore, there is no way to break it without facing legal consequences.
In addition, part of the money is used to pay the team behind the podcast, promotions, and giveaways to early listeners. Cobie said:
For what is worth I don’t even think it’s a good argument that when you’re rich you should do everything for free and pay everyone out of your own pocket. It’s a business w costs, especially if we wanted to do it more frequently/professionally lol.
The crypto influencer claims that his relationship with FTX doesn’t prevent him from criticizing the company. The advisor for the Ethereum second-layer solution and lead at Coinbase Wallet Peter Jihoon Kim was very critical of Cobie.
Kim admitted that the listing process at Coinbase has flaws, but he rejected that there is “some spread systematic malic and corruption” at the exchange. The Coinbase employee claims the company has defended crypto and classified Cobie’s claims as “quite disingenuous”.
Cobie replied:
I found *repeated* potential insider trading and disclosed it privately to your CEO before disclosing another instance publicly on twitter over a month later. Guess what? It turned out to be real insider trading! So yea, there was systemic malice and abuse from within Coinbase. There was over a year of insider trading from the dude who wrote the posts on how they’re gonna make listings safer!! Sure, it’s not Coinbase “sanctioned” malice. I’m not saying CB is evil or encouraging it.
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