Just-In: Coinbase Apologizes For Calling PEPE A “Hate Symbol”

Crypto News: Paul Grewal, the chief legal officer of Coinbase (COIN), has issued an apology late Thursday noon for a company newsletter that was sent out to its users outlining the Frog meme — which acts as the foundation for the PEPE cryptocurrency — as a hate symbol that is used by the “alt-rights group”.

Coinbase Responds To Controversy

At the time of writing, the tweet that Grewal had posted got viewed over 650,000 times and was hailed with praise. While some Twitter users were quick to point out that Coinbase’s apologies arrived much too late, others cheered the company’s decision to bow down to the authority of the meme.

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Late on Thursday morning, Grewal posted a tweet that read, “We screwed up and we are sorry.” He continued by saying that yesterday the team had discussed an overview of the “PEPE meme coin in order to present a factually accurate picture of a topic that is currently popular.” However, Paul apologized to the community and added that the email did not paint the whole picture of the coin and evolution of the meme.

We screwed up and we are sorry.

Yesterday we shared an overview of the $pepe meme coin to provide a fact-based picture of a trending topic. This did not provide the whole picture of the history of the meme and we apologize to the community.

— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) May 11, 2023

Coinbase’s Controversial Email

Customers of Coinbase received an email on Wednesday that referred to the Pepe meme as a hate symbol and that it had been adopted by members of the alt-right movement. Supporters and investors of the frog-themed memecoin were upset by the description of the token, which sparked calls for Coinbase to offer an apology and prompted users to terminate their accounts with the cryptocurrency exchange. The “BoycottCoinbase” hashtag trended on Twitter throughout the day.

I will be closing my personal and business accounts with @Coinbase and moving them to @Gemini.#PEPE IS NOT A SYMBOL OF HATE@brian_armstrong, the $PEPE community DEMANDS that you retract your vulgar statement about #PEPECOIN!!#DELETECOINBASE, SHORT $COIN 👎

— Kenobi (@OG_Kenobi_Hello) May 11, 2023

In the wake of this crypto news, the price of Pepe’s native cryptocurrency has gained by 0.11% in the past one hour and is currently exchanging hands at $0.00000143.

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