The San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase would have closed an account opened by the Wikileaks complaints site for its online store, citing violations of its Terms of Service.
The Wikileaks store is the whistleblower's product store, which sells shirts, phone cases, coffee mugs, posters and other branded paraphernalia. Users can pay for their items with a credit card or through a variety of cryptocurrencies. The exchange seems to have closed an account owned by the organization for the store, which could mean that it will not be able to charge through Coinbase and convert the money into dollars through the service.
A spokesperson for Coinbase declined to comment at the close of The Verge saying they did not "comment on individual accounts." Coinbase's TOS states that it can terminate accounts at its discretion, while its notice of termination says that the service is regulated by the US Treasury's Financial Crime Enforcement Network. UU., Designed to combat money laundering.
The change does not mean that the site can not accept cryptocurrencies: it simply can not do it through the Coinbase system. The move has angered the organization and its followers. On Twitter, the official account of Wikileaks called for a boycott of the exchange next week. Andreas Antonopoulos, the author of Mastering Bitcoin and Internet of Money noted on Twitter that this is a particularly ironic move: Bitcoin received a boost when Paypal, Visa and MasterCard cut donations to the site in 2010 , promoted as a payment method that could not be stopped. Antonopoulos noted that the move probably will not have much effect, since there are several exchanges beyond Coinbase.
