A Coinbase email newsletter sent to customers on 10 May has led to a furious backlash and a boycott of the exchange by the Pepe community.
Many Coinbase customers are now claiming they are moving to Gemini instead. At the time of writing, ‘DELETECOINBASE‘ is now trending on Twitter with 51.6k tweets and rising.
It follows Coinbase’s emailed newsletter referring to the PEPE meme as a ‘hate symbol’ used by alt-right groups.
The mail details a 2016 Anti-Defamation League move to put the frog image in its online hate symbol database.
It’s fair to say it has since not gone down too well with the PEPE community. Many Pepe holders and fans quickly took to Twitter to unleash their outrage at Coinbase.
Coinbase users have now gone as far as to delete their accounts with the crypto exchange.
One Twitter user wrote: “@Matt_Furie created Pepe as a peaceful character, some people on the internet at one point took it and used image for bad things. Matt fought really hard to take control back and restore Pepe image as it was intended A PEACEFUL character.
“Honk-Kong later used it during protests as a symbol of hope and democracy. Now everyone views Pepe as a funny, good intended meme to bring joy and laughter to everyone, not mean things. Why Coinbase decides to drag it into the mud is questionable.”
Pepe fan fury
So far, there has been no response from Coinbase on Twitter.
The backlash has occurred just as the Gemini crypto exchange listed the memecoin for trading on 9 May.
Their description of the token was more bland: “$pepe continues the tradition of giving the control of money back to the people. We’re not here to tell you what money is. We’ll leave that up to you. We’re here to empower you with greater choice, independence, and opportunity, as we continue on our mission to unlock the next era of financial, creative, and personal freedom.”
