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I’d say the better thing for customers would be to pay the ransom demand and get the PII back. If they want to fund a reward scheme too, well great, but if it were my data, I’d care more about Coinbase limiting the breach of the data, not playing around with retaliatory rewards.

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There is no guarantee that an anonymous criminal is going to hold up their end of the agreement. Coinbase has no idea who they're negotiating with or where that data has been shared.

That, and they're reimbursing customers who were tricked.

In addition, paying the ransom would be an open invitation for everybody else to try the same attack, with the net result that all customers are less secure in the long run.

Limiting? The damage is already done.

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