In 2022, Coinbase received 66% more requests from global law enforcement agencies as compared to 2021. The crypto exchange received 12,320 requests from law enforcement or government agencies, with 5,304 coming from the United States.

These findings were a part of the latest Transparency Report published by Coinbase on 12 December. The report covered one year of data from 1 October, 2021 to 30 September, 2022.

When talking about what they aimed to accomplish with the transparency report, Coinbase stated,

“Our goal with these reports is to provide customers with data about requests for their information that we receive from government agencies and law enforcement. We also intend to provide some insight into law enforcement and regulatory trends around the world.”

Coinbase to pursue bad actors

Regulatory bodies from all over the world are requesting more information from cryptocurrency exchanges. Coinbase said that it continued to pursue bad actors who engaged in prohibited activity or otherwise abused its products.

Source: Coinbase

Following the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain issued the highest number of requests at 1,740, 1,668 and 1,304 requests respectively.

Source: Coinbase

Six countries increased their number of requests by over 100%. These included Spain (940%), Belgium (400%), Italy (281%), The Netherlands (163%), Austria (141%), and Ireland (118%).

With regards to concerns over user privacy, the company stated,

“We carefully review law enforcement and agency requests before providing data to ensure we are honoring our customers’ rights over their personal information.”

According to the exchange, while it does provide user data to agencies in certain circumstances, it doesn’t give those agencies direct access to said user data.

21 countries file requests for the first time

Nearly 57% of requests from outside the US saw a surge of around 6%. Besides, 21 countries sent requests for the first time in 2022, including 11 that sent more than one request. The latter included Andorra (2), Argentina (2), Brazil (5), Bulgaria (3), China (12), Croatia (3), Czech Republic (104), Liechtenstein (4), Serbia (5), Slovakia (6) and Taiwan (6).

According to the report, roughly 95% of all law enforcement requests were for criminal investigations, with the rest mainly around civil or administrative purposes.