‘We Screwed Up’: Coinbase Apologizes for PEPE Newsletter

Coinbase has come out with an apology for its recent newsletter suggesting Pepe the Frog was a “hate symbol.”

Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal issued the mea culpa shortly after #DeleteCoinbase trended on Twitter with hundreds of thousands of tweets, many of them from customers vowing to delete the app and close their accounts.

Grewal wrote on Twitter, “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.”

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

Grewal’s tweet had collected 200,000 views at the time of publication and was met with praise. One user proclaimed that pepe had been exonerated, and another said they had deep respect for Coinbase admitting that it was wrong.

“I very rarely see a corporation as large as Coinbase come out and flat out say ‘we got this wrong’ like this over virtue signaling & I have a deep level of respect for them & how they handled the backlash,” DeFi entrepreneur Tyler Scott Ward tweeted.

PEPE has pumped more than 2,700% in less than a month, but it’s down more than 60% since its all-time high

Other users thanked Coinbase for the apology and forgave them, but asked PEPE to be listed on the exchange. Binance listed the token last Friday, coinciding with record highs.

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