After a week of community discontent, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has decided to sever its business relationship with Neutrino employees who previously worked at the notorious Italian malware/software provider Hacking Team.Blaming “a gap in [Coinbase’s] diligence process,” CEO Brian Armstrong writes in a Medium post that Coinbase “did not properly evaluate everything from the perspective of our mission and values as a crypto company.”“We took some time to dig further into this over the past week, and together with the Neutrino team have come to an agreement: 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. We are thankful to the Neutrino team for engaging with us on this outcome.”Last week, Neutrino’s link to Hacking Team came to light thanks to Twitter commentators like Block Digest’s “Janine.” At least three individuals in Neutrino’s core team (CEO Giancarlo Russo, CRO Marco Valleri and CTO Alberto Ornaghi) had been principal employees of Hacking Team, as well as Luca Guerre, an intern-turned-software-engineer at the company.Coinbase did not disclose which team members would be let go, so there’s no information to indicate how many other Neutrino employees might be affected by the severance. Armstrong also offered no timeli...
