Imagine an open-source app (no one owns it) that allows you to put in all your personal data: address, birthday, height and weight, social security number. It must be completely decentralized, in the same way the internet is decentralized. It can’t be owned by the government, or a single corporation. The solution, Clippinger believes, is a global identity token - one that’s owned by you. How is it that you can walk into any casino and gamble away your life savings, but you can’t open a simple bitcoin investment account? After all, you’d think the ultimate Know Your Customer would be the customer standing outside, waiting to be known. “Yeah, they took their name down,” said the security guard.Ĭlippinger doesn’t blame Coinbase, but rather the KYC (Know Your Customers) laws that require this level of identity protection in the first place. “They’re not even listed in the directory,” Clippinger pointed out to the security guard, who had heard it all before. It was a five-minute walk, so Clippinger went to One Front Street, entered the lobby, and told the security guard he had an appointment with Coinbase. “The actual Coinbase offices are at One Front Street.” “That’s just the mailing address for Coinbase,” the employee told him. This could explain Coinbase’s poor Google business reviews: other investors had also visited the location, only to find a boarded-up window.Ĭlippinger went into the shop next door, where the employee had heard it all before. Clippinger marched over with photo ID and supporting documentation, only to find a boarded-up window with a paper sign. Google Maps showed Coinbase headquarters at 548 Market Street in San Francisco.
His frustration mounting, Clippinger found himself in San Francisco a few days later, and thought he’d just stop by the Coinbase offices to identify himself in person. Coinbase could also verify his identity by putting a small transaction on his Visa card, but Visa wouldn’t accept transactions that small.Ĭlippinger is an industry expert with his own Wikipedia page, a recognizable identity, but Coinbase wouldn’t recognize his identity. Unfortunately, he needed a bank account to verify the new Coinbase account, but his existing bank account was already associated with the existing Coinbase account, so that didn’t work. He spent the next several days cleaning up and locking down all his accounts – and just to be safe, he decided to open a new Coinbase account. The hackers had broken into his phone, email, and social accounts, but fortunately had been unable to penetrate his Coinbase account. After speaking at a recent blockchain conference, hackers broke into his email.Ĭlippinger didn’t realize it at first, until the FBI came to his house and asked why he was issuing death threats on Twitter.
When he’s not designing smart tokens at MIT Media Lab, starting a blockchain company to encourage people to switch to solar, or acting as an advisor to various ICOs, he’s speaking and lecturing on the blockchain circuit. John Clippinger is what we call “kind of a big deal.”