Monahan stated Coinbase was warned for months earlier than main exploits, but management nonetheless prioritizes onboarding customers over fixing vulnerabilities.
Crypto safety researcher Taylor Monahan has publicly slammed Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and accused the change’s management of prioritizing development over consumer security.
Safety failures tied to Coinbase Commerce resurfaced as Armstrong unveiled the corporate’s 2026 roadmap.
Outdated Wounds, New Roadmap
Responding to Armstrong’s tweet about Coinbase’s prime priorities for 2026, which targeted on increasing a world “every little thing change,” scaling stablecoins and funds, and bringing the world on-chain by means of Base, Monahan argued that consumer safety stays noticeably absent. She wrote,
“Brian nonetheless would not see consumer security to be a precedence for Coinbase. It prices them >$350m in 2025. It may’ve been prevented.”
Monahan claimed that Coinbase had been warned for “months and months and months” about critical safety points. Her frustration traces again to findings revealed by on-chain investigator ZachXBT in December 2024, which detailed a suspected exploit involving Coinbase Commerce.
Based on the investigation, a Coinbase Commerce contract noticed greater than $15.9 million in suspicious USDC outflows on Polygon over a 16-hour interval in April 2024, and funds had been later bridged to Ethereum, swapped into ETH, and break up throughout a number of wallets.
A menace actor utilizing the alias “Excite” allegedly flaunted management of the stolen funds in Telegram chats and on social media, whereas a portion of the property was later routed by means of mixers and playing platforms in an try and obscure their origin. The case raised questions on why Coinbase’s AML and transaction monitoring techniques did not flag the exercise in actual time, regardless of the scale, velocity, and sample of the outflows.
Monahan had amplified these issues on the time, criticizing the platform’s failure to deal with the difficulty. Now, greater than a yr later, the blockchain researcher says nothing elementary has modified. Reacting to Armstrong’s newest roadmap, she accused the change’s management of pushing for extra customers with out first fixing recognized vulnerabilities.
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“Actually over a yr later. And the precedence continues to be ‘deliver extra lambs to my slaughterhouse pls.'”
Dealing with of Safety Incidents
ZachXBT, for one, had repeatedly criticized Coinbase over account lockouts and an undisclosed knowledge breach that he says led to consumer losses. Final yr, he claimed that Coinbase locked him out of his account twice inside a month with out rationalization and failed to obviously inform customers a couple of breach that uncovered buyer knowledge.
The pseudonymous investigator additionally stated that he can’t suggest the platform because of ongoing transparency and safety points. His feedback add to previous criticism, together with claims that weak responses to scams and impersonation assaults contributed to tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in losses between late 2024 and early 2025.
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