Whether it is a strategically genius move or not will depend on the eventual outcome. No tech company, especially one in the bitcoin/fintech sector, can pretend to be completely apolitical. So putting out public blog posts and setting strict policies that apply to employees may not fly well when the company or its leadership/executives themselves don't follow them down the line.
So it looks like those PACs reported contributions twice, once naming the actual contributor, and once naming Coinbase. I'm not sure why they'd do that - perhaps to head off FEC questions about deposits from Coinbase?
Regardless, those don't seem to be contributions directly from Coinbase, but rather artifacts of campaign finance reporting.
On an aside, there are some transactions that jump out e.g. line B of [1] where the PAC appears to have netted $5665 for 7.49 BTC in the closing days of 2017(!).
Looking further, it seems like their reporting occasionally exchanged BTC for ETH, and the contribution reported makes sense for latter. Still, for a moment it was fun to imagine that someone got a screaming deal on a heap of BTC the day after Christmas 2017
That's most likely from donations in Bitcoin. The PACs actually want real-world dollars, so sell any cryptocurrency recieved immediately. i that case, there's an entry for the "x.yyyzzz bitcoins were donated" part, and then one for "we sold x.yyyzzz via Coinbase for $n dollars". Overall, that translates to "we received $n dollars from $blah in the form of x.yyyzzz bitcoins", which presumably keeps the regulators happy.
Of course only time will tell. I'm simply predicting that it was a wise move.
Also the company is not claiming to be apolitical. They are saying they don't want employees individually engaging in politics while acting on behalf of the company.
I'm sure coinbase has plenty of political objectives. On some level business is politics. Especially a crypto company, which makes it even more important not to have your employees politically organizing in a way that could appear represents your companies politics with out any executive oversight.
The company just extended a massive bonus and exercise extension to any employee that thinks they can get a better job. This is basically an invitation for the most talented people to exit the building ASAP even if they agree strongly with the Founders’ politics. This isn’t genius: it’s a mass layoff.
