By In a move that Coinbase hopes might quell the backlash from their recent acquisition of Neutrino, Coinbase has announced that they are parting ways with several employees from the firm.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, announced via blog post yesterday (Monday) that Coinbase and Neutrino have made a decision to let go of any Neutrino employees who had previously worked for Hacking Team regardless of the fact if they still have any affiliation with the company or not.
At this time, it’s unclear just how many of Neutrino’s employees had worked for Hacking Team, but three executives listed on the blockchain startup’s website have received the axe, and they are CEO Giancarlo Russo, CTO Alberto Ornaghi, and CRO Marco Valleri.
This decision and the subsequent announcement came after the recent widespread backlash that Coinbase has received in light of their decision to acquire Neutrino which was revealed back on February 19th.
As reported by CoinBeat on Monday, a campaign surfaced encouraging Coinbase users to delete their accounts and has been blowing up on Twitter. This is because Neutrino’s upper management had in the past spearheaded projects for Hacking Team, a startup which has been linked to human rights abuse campaigns for various governments around the globe.
In Armstrong’s post on Monday he stated:
“We had a gap in our diligence process. While we looked hard at the technology and security of the Neutrino product, we did not properly evaluate everything from the perspective of our mission and values as a crypto company.”
Adding to this he came to a solution:
“Those who previously worked at Hacking Team (despite the fact that they have no current affiliation with Hacking Team), will transition out of Coinbase. This was not an easy decision, but their prior work does present a conflict with our mission.”
Will Armstrong’s decision to let the Neutrino employees go be enough to win back the favour for Coinbase which has been lost? Or is this another case of too little too late.
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