Coinbase has disabled a wallet used by the action group working to free imprisoned Silk Road creator, Ross Ulbricht.
Reports from members of the Free Ross campaign and other community sources allege that a wallet used to ‘pay lawyers’ was frozen after receiving a payment of 16.5 BTC ($40,200) on Thursday.
This was just to convert #bitcoin to USD to pay lawyers. Can you recommend the best alternate bitcoin exhange?
— Free_Ross (@Free_Ross) June 15, 2017
After the event was reported, community members were quick to offer assistance, with Abra’s John Light appearing to collude with Free Ross in order to resolve the situation.
The block marks the latest headache involving Coinbase and the law: the exchange and wallet provider’s battle with the U.S Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is still ongoing.
Suggestions of foul play soon surfaced in the press and from veteran Bitcoiner Brian Hoffmann, which centered around the fact Coinbase had only recently appointed a federal prosecutor, Kathryn Haun, to its board of directors.
Haun was involved in unveiling corrupt secret service agents’ involvement with Bitcoin, but had no direct involvement with Ulbricht’s sentencing, leading respondents to call Hoffmann’s allusion ‘extremely misleading.’
@brianchoffman Assuming this wasn't intentional, you should probably delete this. Extremely misleading
— Shlomo Klahr (@_SKlahr_) June 15, 2017
Coinbase meanwhile is facing trouble on several fronts, with its user base already alienated following widespread outages in recent weeks. The impact on traders included funds missing and slow transactions, leaving many unable to take advantage of market price swings.
Free Ross subsequently confirmed the receival of a further donation totalling 4 BTC ($9750).