Coinbase’s recent email newsletter to its customers on May 10 has received strong criticism from the Pepe community, leading to widespread backlash.
Coinbase’s email to its customers, referring to the memecoin Pepe (PEPE) as a “hate symbol” associated with alt-right groups, has sparked considerable anger within the memecoin community.
A well-known crypto influencer, Borovik.eth, shared a screenshot of the May 10 email newsletter with his 96,000 followers. The email referenced a decision made by the Anti-Defamation League in 2016, where they categorized the frog-themed character as an online hate symbol, leading to controversy and discussion.
@Coinbase sent emails to people, including Borovik.eth, stating that $pepe, a cryptocurrency, is an alt-right hate symbol. This caused confusion and concern, as people questioned why Coinbase was making such claims. Borovik.eth shared a screenshot of the email on Twitter to express his confusion and seek clarification.
Fans and holders of the frog-themed memecoin were extremely angry about how Coinbase described the token, leading to widespread outrage. This caused many people to demand an apology from Coinbase, and some users even decided to delete their accounts with the crypto exchange in response to the situation.
A Twitter user named @Kenobi, who is a solidity developer and prefers to remain anonymous, stated that Pepe is not a symbol of hate. In response, he announced that he would be transferring his funds to the US-based cryptocurrency exchange Gemini. He concluded his tweet with the hashtag “#deletecoinbase.”
Kenobi, a Twitter user who is a solidity developer, declared that they will close both their personal and business accounts with Coinbase and transfer them to Gemini. They emphasized that Pepe is not a symbol of hate and demanded a retraction of Coinbase’s statement regarding PepeCoin. The tweet included the hashtag #deletecoinbase and mentioned shorting Coinbase’s stock, $COIN.
The hashtag “#deletecoinbase” has become popular on Twitter, appearing in the trending section. In the last two hours and continuing, there have been over 14,000 tweets containing the hashtag, as reported by Tweetbinder.
Since May 5, when Binance added Pepe as a tradable token, members of the crypto community on Twitter who hold Pepe have been requesting leaders of various cryptocurrency exchanges to also list the token.
Coinbase has not provided clear indications about whether it plans to include the Pepe token on its exchange.
In response to Cointelegraph’s inquiry, a Coinbase spokesperson stated via email that they had “nothing more to say” regarding the matter.
Gemini CEO Cameron Winkelvoss appeared to pay attention, as on May 9, his crypto exchange, which he owns with his brother Tyler Winkelvoss, listed the memecoin for trading. The token was introduced with a description that was more flexible and less restrictive.
Gemini’s summary of the Pepe token on its listing page. Source: cointelegraph
After news about Coinbase’s description of Pepe circulated on Twitter, the price of Pepe dropped by 2.6% in just a few hours. As of now, Pepe is being traded at a price of $0.00000184, which is a decline of 10.4% in the past 24 hours according to CoinGecko’s data.
