Date Received: 2021-01-31
Issue: Fraud or scam
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: Coinbase.com is a well-known cryptocurrency wallet and exchange, but with a checkered, shady past. Despite this, they remain the easiest and most popular way to purchase and sell cryptocurrencies. After reading this article ( XXXX XXXX XXXX ), I decided the safest thing to do for the funds I have with them is to move them out. If Coinbase has the ability to shutdown buying and selling wontonly and against the wishes of its customers, which is a market manipulation issue in of itself, then there's nothing stopping them from seizing my coins without notice or reason. On XX/XX/2021, at about XXXX XXXX PST, I withdrew my bitcoin holdings to the tune of XXXX XXXX or about {$1700.00} USD at the time. Coinbase said this would take 6 block confirmations ( or about an hour give or take ) for the transaction to complete. However it's important to note that transactions are broadcasted to the Bitcoin network even before any confirmations take place, meaning that receiving wallets will know when funds are incoming even though the transaction overall is still pending ( waiting for confirmations ). It's now been about 2 hours since Coinbase claims my bitcoin was " sent '' and yet my receiving wallet doesn't show the new transaction, block explorers ( which allow people to see transactions directly from blockchain data ) are showing no activity for the address used in the transaction, and Coinbase itself shows 0 confirmations ( which again take about 10 minutes each ). The images I provided were 4 expected confirmations after the coins were supposedly sent. At least 10+ blocks or confirmation periods have passed and yet my funds are still in Coinbase custody. My account has no restrictions. The transaction was not restricted in any way ; I have not been notified as much ( which is another red flag issue ). The bitcoin addresses I used are 100 % correct, so this is 100 % the fault Coinbase and their denial of expected service. I emailed Coinbase support with no response. I've posted to relevant social media, which their support reads and responds, with no response. Digging a little deeper on their subreddit ( XXXX ), I'm far from the only person experiencing these withdrawal games. Given their checkered past and known hostility towards the consumer, I fear the worst for my funds. Again, I'm not the only one in this boat. Please investigate this company thoroughly.
Company Response:
State: CA
Zip: 93036
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-31
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-30
Issue: Other transaction problem
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: Coinbase, the XXXX XXXX-based cryptocurrency trading platform with over 35 million customers, funded by the most famous and reputable names in XXXX XXXX, and a valuation of nearly $ XXXX, is locking customers out of their accounts with no explanation and either preventing access to their funds or outright stealing them. I am now the victim of this myself and did not discover the extent to which this is happening until now. To take advantage of the increasing value of Bitcoin amid the shrinking value of the dollar, I purchased $ XXXX in Bitcoin through the Coinbase.com cryptocurrency platform beginning on XX/XX/XXXX. I chose the Coinbase platform as I believed it would be the safest and most secure given the high-profile XXXX XXXX investors including XXXX XXXX and XXXX who were funding and leading it. Coinbase has a fairly rigorous sign up process that requires new users to provide proof-of-identification and financial background information. After supplying this I was approved and began transferring funds from my bank account to my Coinbase account to facilitate purchases. Bitcoin was about {$18000.00} at the time. I was a little nervous, but went ahead with my first Bitcoin purchase on XX/XX/XXXX. The price of Bitcoin started to rise almost immediately and my nervousness quickly changed into excitement as my investment looked like it would pay off significantly. With this excitement and confidence, I invested another $ XXXX over the next 9 days in order to get in before the price took off completely. On the night of XX/XX/XXXX, I began testing my XXXX XXXX cold storage cryptocurrency wallet by making a small withdrawal of my Bitcoin from my account on the Coinbase site directly to the XXXX. This is a totally normal and standard practice that most cryptocurrency holders view as essential. The saying is : Not your keys, Not your Crypto. This means that unless you hold your Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency assets on your own personal device ( s ), then you dont really own itthe holding entity owns it. Taking this to heart, I had planned on withdrawing all of my Bitcoin to my personal cold-storage wallet as soon as the 10-day holding period expired on each new Bitcoin purchase. The test withdrawals of small amounts were successful, so I planned on withdrawing the rest over the following days. On the following morning of XX/XX/XXXX, I attempted to login to my Coinbase account. After entering my login credentials and hitting the sign in button, an error message popped up saying, Your Account has been temporarily DisabledPlease contact customer support. Being a bit shocked and surprised by this, I retried the login several times to make sure I hadnt done something wrong. Same result every time. I then did what they suggested and opened a ticket with Coinbase customer support to find out what happened and regain access to my account and the funds within. At this point I was totally freaking out. The cryptocurrency world if rife with fraud and hackers trying to steal your assets if they can find the slightest vulnerability in your security. The reason I chose Coinbase was to ensure that my money and resources were protected to the greatest extent possible, and given the enormous amount of money under management, the status of the funding organization, and the huge number of users on the platform, I thought I was safe. And the truth is I was/am pretty safe from outside hackers and scammers. Coinbase is a very tight and secure platform from outside attacks. What I didnt understand on that day was that I was being defrauded and scammed by Coinbase itself. Upon submitting my Coinbase support ticket, I received an automated reply with my new support ticket/issue number and a note stating, Thank you for contacting Coinbase Support. Our team is working hard to answer customer inquiries in a timely manner, but you may experience longer response times. We appreciate your patience during this challenging time and hope you are staying safe. They werent kidding about the longer response times. After two weeks of submitting requests for an update or response, I received a follow up email from them on XX/XX/XXXX asking me questions about why I created the account, was I sharing my account with other people/third partys. I responded by indicating that the account was created for me exclusively and that I was the only person using it. After a few more days of back and forth, they said they would restore access to my account after I went through a reverification process which entailed submitting a picture of my drivers license and having my computer camera take a picture of my face. After the re-verification process on XX/XX/XXXX, my account was reinstated and I was able to log back in. At this point I was pretty relieved as I thought I was back on track and going to be able to get to my funds. Once back in, I could see that my Bitcoin was still there ; I had not been hacked. Thank XXXX! But after closer inspection, I noticed that despite the fact that my Bitcoin and funds were in the account, none of the account functions for buying or selling were available. At this point, I didnt care as I only wanted to safely withdraw my Bitcoin to my personal cold wallet, and it appeared that the withdraw function was still working. I went ahead and generated a withdrawal destination address on my XXXX cold storage wallet and entered it into the destination field in the Withdrawal function on my account page. Everything seemed fine. I initiated the withdrawal and it was submitted for execution. Within 30 seconds of my withdrawal submittal, I received an email from Coinbase saying that my withdrawal had been cancelled. Thinking I might have done something wrong, I tried again with the same result. This prompted me to create a new support ticket informing Coinbase that none of my account functions including Buying, Selling, Depositing or Withdrawing fiat funds or Cryptocurrencies were working despite the fact that I could now get back into my account. They responded back by saying that they would need to send to a specialist for review. After some back and forth over a couple more days, they essentially told me that I was no longer eligible to use the Coinbase platform and that they could not tell me why. My ability to Buy, Sell, Deposit or Withdraw Cryptocurries was permanently suspended. They said that I needed to sell all of my Bitcoin and I could withdraw the dollar amount to my linked Bank account. I double-checked my account to see if I could sell my Bitcoin and even that function was unavailable. I responded by saying that I did not want to sell my Bitcoin. Per the Coinbase User agreement, the crypto currencies in my account are my property, not that of Coinbase. They simply host my Bitcoin in the wallet/server space they provide and have no right to it whatsoever. Furthermore, selling my Bitcoin would subject me to either taxes on the gains or potential losses on the drop in price. I should be able to withdraw my Bitcoin at any time to either my own personal wallet or some other facility at my discretion. Again, this is my property, not theirs. When I asked to get instructions explaining how to withdraw and recover my Bitcoin, they simply sent me a link to a complaint form. They will not allow me to recover my Bitcoin which, per the user agreement, is my property, not that of Coinbase. I began looking online to see what I could do and found that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other people were either experiencing the exact same thing. There are countless users in XXXX forums suffering from the same fraud right now. Here is an example of a thread from XX/XX/XXXX : https : XXXX This is a massive fraud being perpetrated by Coinbase and the XXXX XXXX XXXX who run and fund this company. Please help us and investigate. Any other financial institution doing this to its customers would be put out of business, yet Coinbase is being celebrated and rocketed toward a public listing with a {$28.00} XXXX valuation. This is beyond disgusting. Please help me and expose this before they steal any more money or wreck any more people financially.
Company Response:
State: CA
Zip: 95128
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-30
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-30
Issue: Money was not available when promised
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: My account on Coinbase PRO has been blocked for 3 days now from the time of writing. Combined there is a little over {$100000.00} in my coinbase account that I no longer have access to. I was locked out because I sent an email asking them to check a transaction for me. Before they responded, I have figured out the issue on my own and re-emailed them in the same case number that " everything is fine, disregard the previous email ''. About an hour after those 2 emails, my access to my coinbase account has been taken away. I am day trading cryptocurrencies and as we speak, I am literally losing thousands of dollars due to their incompetence to re-open my account. I have submitted numerous case tickets that all went dark. I only received ONE email back that states the following : " Hi, We appreciate your patience while we work through a high number of support requests. According to our records, it appears that you were able to sign in to your account after requesting help from us. Since you were able to access your account, were letting you know that were resolving your issue and closing this inquiry. If your exact issue isnt fixed and you need further support, please reply back to this message and include any additional questions or concerns. Thank you for understanding. Regards, Coinbase Support '' As you can see, on their end " everything is fine '' and " I am able to sign in ''. That is not true, obviously that is why I am filing this complaint. It is unacceptable to have such low grade of customer service when the amount of money they handle is enormous. Right now I am invested in cryptocurrencies for far longer than I was supposed to, this has the potential to cause me a lot of financial damage. My case number with Coinbase is XXXX
Company Response:
State: NY
Zip: 125XX
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-30
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-29
Issue: Managing, opening, or closing your mobile wallet account
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: Coinbase.com is the exchange I used to buy the crypto-currency coin XRP. I stored my coins on coinbase.com and I used the coinbase vault feature to store my coins. I have been trying to withdraw my coins out of the vault, but they are stuck. The security feature has me approve my withdrawal through a primary email then secondary email. I click on approve withdrawal and I get sent back to coinbase and nothing happens. My coins don't get withdrawn. If I try to make another withdrawal then I get an error code that I have to complete my first withdrawal, even though the withdrawal cancels itself if I don't approve within 48 hours. So I am completely stuck and coinbase support isn't responding.
Company Response:
State: CA
Zip: 95350
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-29
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-29
Issue: Money was not available when promised
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: On XX/XX/2021 I Sent USD XXXX at XXXX XXXX from Coinbase Pro to Coinbase Account. Transaction ID : XXXX. The money was never transferred to coinbase account and is not in my coinbase pro account.
Company Response:
State: MO
Zip: 63376
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-29
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-29
Issue: Managing, opening, or closing your mobile wallet account
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: Filled with Coinbase : Case XXXX XX/XX/XXXX restricted from Buy/Sell and Send/Receive Case XXXX buy/trades restricted XX/XX/XXXX Case XXXX ( XX/XX/XXXX XXXX uploaded ID and picture with ( For Coinbase Trading XX/XX/XXXX ) for verification ID was approved, but am still restricted ( XX/XX/XXXX XXXX Case XXXX contact us from XXXX, and we can submit your account for a review at that time. I did contact for a review. Case XXXX followed your instructions for 2 step auth it does enable ( XX/XX/XXXX XXXX but still restricted from Buy/Sell and Send/Receive Received email XX/XX/XXXX that XXXX was passing information to an account specialist my take 4-5 business days XX/XX/XXXX sent email to XXXX and XXXX that it had been 5 days now and I did not get a response. I did not receive a response XX/XX/XXXX sent another email and placed another complaint on Coinbase through contact help coinbase.com that it has now been 17 days and nothing has been resolved This is all unacceptable! I want access to my money.
Company Response:
State: FL
Zip: 33611
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-02-17
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-28
Issue: Fraud or scam
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: I have been locked out of my coinbase account. Tried to log in but every time they ask for a 2 step verification the text is never received. the account has {$100.00} in it. XX/XX/2020. I have sent them emails but no response from nobody. I just used a different phone number just to test out if the sms verification is down but to my surprise they did sent out a code to that phone number. I requesting help to resolve this issue.
Company Response:
State: PA
Zip: 17036
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-28
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-27
Issue: Managing, opening, or closing your mobile wallet account
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: Hi, I have previously made 2 complaints through you about Coinbase and thankfully the problems have been partly resolved but not completely. After 35 days of account disablement Coinbase decided to close my account which is fine and provided me links to remove my Cryptocurrencies as well as my GBP. Despite the fact that I managed successfully to remove my cryptocurrencies, the link they provided for my GBP to be withdrawn to my bank account is broken and does not work. Considering my account could be closed at any time now I am in risk of not having access to my GBP in Coinbase account anymore and Coinbase is not answering my E mails in this regard. Coinbase only responded once asking me to send them a screenshot of the problem and I did that. however they did not respond anymore and it is now been over a week that I can not withdraw my fund. Please look into my case as my fund which is XXXX is there to be withdrawn and their link is broken and the time is going to be up for me and I might lose my fund. I will send you the screen shot of the problem I am facing with Coinbase. Thank you. XXXX XXXX
Company Response:
State:
Zip: XXXXX
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-27
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with explanation
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-27
Issue: Managing, opening, or closing your mobile wallet account
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: I opened a regular Coinbase account on XX/XX/XXXX2021 of this year. After discovering that transaction fees were lower on Coinbase XXXX, I also opened a Coinbase XXXX account on XX/XX/XXXX, which was linked to my regular Coinbase account, and funded the Coinbase XXXX account with three deposits via ACH from a linked bank account : 1. {$25000.00} ( on XX/XX/XXXX21 ), 2. {$11000.00} ( on XX/XX/XXXX ) and 3. {$5900.00} ( again on XX/XX/XXXX ). On their interface, Coinbase implies that the Coinbase account and Coinbase XXXX are linked but separate accounts. I executed one purchase of ~XXXX BTC on XX/XX/XXXX for {$25000.00} and had the remaining ~ {$16000.00} sitting in a cash reserve. On XX/XX/XXXX, Coinbase XXXX froze my ability to execute trades on the basis that I needed to verify my identity. On that day, I made multiple attempts to take photos of and webcam shots of my driver 's license and photo capture of my face, and failed more than 3 times over the course of multiple hours before my documents were finally accepted. The experience was so incredibly poor and the {$5.00} credit offered for my troubles was sufficiently insulting that I asked Coinbase to provide information about closing my account, given my frustrations with verifying my account and re-gaining the ability to make trades and withdraw funds. On XX/XX/XXXX, I received an e-mail from Coinbase providing me with a link to close my account. My plan was to 1. close my regular Coinbase account ( which had a {$0.00} balance ) and then 2. close my Coinbase XXXX account ( which had the amounts listed above ). After completing # 1, however, my Coinbase XXXX account has now also disappeared, and when I try to re-register with my original e-mail address, am being told to set up a new account. To top it off, I am currently in XXXX XXXX as of XX/XX/XXXX21 ( my account was opened in the US on XX/XX/XXXX ) and will be here until the end of XXXX for the XXXX of my XXXX child. When attempting to troubleshoot the issue through Coinbase 's customer support system, I received an automated message claiming that they only offer " self-help customer support '' in my region of XXXX XXXX, despite the fact that I have a permanent US address. As I do not have access to the ~ {$42000.00} in aggregate BTC and cash that had been sitting in my Coinbase XXXX account, it appears to me that Coinbase has seized my funds without offering any ability for recovery.
Company Response:
State: WA
Zip: 98275
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-27
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with explanation
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A
Date Received: 2021-01-28
Issue: Managing, opening, or closing your mobile wallet account
Subissue:
Consumer Complaint: I locked my self out of coinbase on XX/XX/XXXX while on XXXX I withdraw my money for total XXXX with coinbase and everytime I am submitting my photo to get a new password coinbase refuses to let me in my account ... .I withdrew my money out on XXXX and coinbase is refusing to give me my money back
Company Response:
State: IL
Zip: 60659
Submitted Via: Web
Date Sent: 2021-01-28
Company Response to Consumer: Closed with monetary relief
Timely Response: Yes
Consumer Disputed: N/A