Ari Paul alleges Coinbase lost $25M of BlockTower funds in a security cover-up
The BlockTower Capital founder claims hacks affecting over a dozen institutions have produced more than $1B in concealed losses, with Coinbase yet to respond publicly.
Ari Paul does not mince words. The founder and Chief Investment Officer of BlockTower Capital took to social media on September 28 to accuse Coinbase of losing roughly $25 million of his firm’s money, and then covering it up.
The allegations, posted publicly, describe a pattern of security breaches affecting more than a dozen financial institutions, with total undisclosed losses Paul puts north of $1 billion.
What Paul actually said
Paul’s core accusation is that Coinbase lost approximately $25 million belonging to BlockTower Capital sometime in the past, concealed the incident, and that this loss is part of a broader coordinated pattern of hacks across institutional counterparties.
The reason he could not go further, Paul explained, is that active legal proceedings are tied to the matter.
As of September 29, no independent verification of these figures had emerged, and no credible third-party evidence had been published to corroborate the timeline or scope of the alleged breaches.
The news moving money, markets, and the world—before your day starts.
Daily. Free. Join 34,000+ readers across crypto, finance, and policy.
Coinbase’s response, or the absence of one
Coinbase’s customer support account reached out to Paul via direct message after the post went live. The company had not issued any public statement by September 29. No press release, no official comment to media, no on-record denial.
The story has circulated across crypto media platforms including The Block, Odaily, and Lookonchain, none of which have added independently sourced verification to Paul’s claims beyond reporting that he made them.
BlockTower, Paul, and why this matters
BlockTower Capital was founded in 2017 and operates in the institutional crypto asset management space.
The legal proceedings that restrict his disclosure also mean that the core facts of the allegation, the timeline, the mechanism of the loss, the alleged cover-up, and the identity of the other institutions involved, remain unverified and, for now, unverifiable through open sources.