Why Did Coinbase Close Down Merchant Account Of Gab Founder Andrew Torba?

According to a recent Tweet from the official Twitter account of social media platform Gab.com, the Coinbase merchant account of its founder has been taken off the exchange and banned.

Coinbase is one of the top cryptocurrency exchanges in the market and rumours of the company terminating this account has been afloat for over a month now. The founder of the social media platform in question is a man named Andrew Torba and reports of his business account being closed down had surfaced in December. Now, a confirmation comes from the Twitter handle of the platform he runs.

However, this prompts a crucial question that must first be cleared out. Why did Coinbase discontinue and effectively ban Torba’s account on the exchange? Well, it seems that Gab’s dicey reputation in the media industry may be a major reason why.

The Gab social media platform is known for allowing people who are barred from using more popular social media networks because of their hate speech tendencies. This makes Gab quite non-conformist with regard to censure against those who indulge in hate speech. Most mainstream social media platforms usually have quite strict rules in place to make sure that posts or comments that amount to hate speech are taken down.

Those who make such posts also find their accounts blocked in most of these cases. But Gab has never really been like that. This has hampered the company’s ability to get payment processing partners as well because few firms would wish to associate itself with such a platform.

Considering how the social media age has ensured a sharp scrutiny of politically incorrect, ethically wrong content, companies have been, rightly so, quite vigilant in their choices of partnership.

According to the official website of Gab, it is a:

“social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online. All are welcome.”

Even though Andrew Torba has defended his platform, by saying that one person’s hate speech does not prove the whole platform is problematic, back when a mass shooter in Pittsburgh used it to post a message before the attack, most companies choose to play safe and keep a distance from it.

Coinbase had earlier closed an account connected to the Wikileaks foundation owing to a service violation. Naturally, this decision too does not seem to out of character for Coinbase standards.