Tell HN: Coinbase stopped regular payouts of wires as of Dec 15

11 points by g09980 ↗ HN
Myself and what appears to be a hundred other people are waiting for thousands of dollars in wires for the past month.

No way to get a response from Coinbase other than occassional Reddit replies. Phone support claims to investigate and no reply again. Status page has been showing fluctuating numbers (e.g. "up to 5 business days") but about a month already in my case.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/ for many such stories.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7mpk7s/upvote_is_your_wires_withdrawals_are_from_dec/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7o6nqb/880000_withdrawal_delay/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7o4tgz/please_help_coinbase_lost_my_8000_usd_wire/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7o7wxa/its_time_for_organized_legal_action/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7nnqxx/us_wire_transfers_from_coinbase_to_bank_from_dec/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7mpk7s/upvote_is_your_wires_withdrawals_are_from_dec/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7kwllo/stop_giving_lies_and_false_hope_with_up_to_3_days/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7kt75b/coinbase_not_paying_out_i_transferred_26k_by_wire/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7mcy2n/up_vote_if_your_wire_withdrawn_from_1212_1215/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7nntqf/waiting_for_30k_wire_for_two_weeks_already/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/comments/7o6oyv/list_of_cases_for_olga_from_coinbase_sepa_and/

And many more.

Hoping this is just growing pains, but the lack of communication is scary.

11 comments

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What's a wire? A transfer between two Coinbase accounts?
Fiat (cash) payment to a bank.
There is no cash left for transfers. "ATM is empty". They wait for new crypto buyers with dollars but market stalled out of crash fear.
First and foremost, cash balances at coinbase are FDIC insured.[1] There are regulatory requirements for cash on hand because of this. In the worst case, the FDIC should step in and fork over the cash that people are trying to withdraw.

Secondly, the drop in price of crypto shouldn't cause something like this. Coinbase is a marketplace. When one person sells their cyrpto for fiat another person is trading their fiat for crypto. When someone is going to withdraw money this transaction has already taken place.

1. https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/166237...

I know it's not the same thing, but this is seemingly an issue with Coinbase as I had issues with them back in early 2016.

I had to get my bank involved with a purchasing issue from Coinbase. They declared the charges as fraudulent since I couldn't get a response from anyone at Coinbase. This was back in early 2016 before the recent crypto madness too...

There's a non-trivial chance that the Bitcoin bubble will burst because of some drastic event from Coinbase (or another exchange, like Binance). There is some incredibly suspicious activity going on there including:

- The fact that the coins land in your account weeks after you've purchased it (presumably to stop a bitcoin run?)

- Inability to pay their users.

- their exchange GDAX is known for having spoof buy and sell orders that disappear sporadically (this is illegal in regulated markets).

- the whole Bitcoin cash fiasco

I'm OK with speculating and bubbles, but not manipulation.