Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s analytics arm, Coinbase Tracer, has signed a contract with the United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, giving the government agency access to a host of features and databases. 

Coinbase Tracer is allegedly meant for governments, financial institutions and crypto platforms and helps them trace any transactions made within its blockchain. According to their website, they “investigate illicit activities including money laundering and terrorist financing” as well as ‘screen risky crypto transactions to ensure regulatory compliance.”

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The deal was signed back in 2021 and was worth $1.37 million and was for a three-year period at the time. Tech Inquiry, a digital watchdog group, only recently obtained a copy recently. A stand-out feature of the deal has been the access to “historical geotracking data.” 

A spokesperson for the company told Coindesk that their data is “fully sourced from online, publicly available data,” and that it did not contain any “Coinbase user data.” The company also made two tweets clarifying their statements on the contract.

The deal lets the ICE track transactions across cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether, for a total of 12 different digital currencies. It includes features like “transaction demixing and shielded transaction analysis,” which are supposed to prevent users from money laundering or hiding a transaction. Another feature called “Multi-hop link analysis” would give the ICE insights into outgoing and incoming fund transfers. Though it remains unclear what “historical geo tracking data” means. 

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It’s not like this is the first deal Coinbase has made with government agencies. Last year in August, the company signed a separate agreement with the ICE, giving them licences to their analytics software. A much smaller contract, worth $290,000. Before that, in April last year, Coinbase sold the Secret Service software from its analytics arm for around $50,000 and another deal before that in 2020.