HN Explorer

Missing bitcoins on Coinbase

59 points by Hilyin ↗ HN
It has been two days now since I have seen my bitcoins. This isn't because of a delayed confirmation, or someone hacked my account. My ledger displays perfectly that I should have bitcoins in my account. But I don't. I've tried to contact Coinbase by email and their twitter account and have received no response.

So here I am, knowing they are a ycombinator backed company, posting here, to find out what the heck is going on? I perused twitter to see if maybe other people are having this same problem.

Looks like I am not alone!

"@brian_armstrong @coinbase Still no response on my support request. I'm still missing 9.6 BTC. Can you tell me what's going on?" https://twitter.com/thomrburg/status/303870208102248448

"@coinbase Day 3 of missing BTC. Imagine if your bank suddenly took your cash from your account." https://twitter.com/aginanon/status/303653952162000897

"Balance says 0 when I should have around 80btc?! Heard @coinbase was having some issues but that they had been resolved.. whats the dealio?" https://twitter.com/jacobparrish/status/303642200707854336

"@jacobparrish @coinbase I'm still having the same problem too! Really nerve-racking." https://twitter.com/nsillik/status/303650076549591040

It is time to come clean. What happened to our money? Why haven't you responded to anyone in 48 hours about this?

22 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 54.2 ms ] thread
[dead] cointrust5
The biggest problem with coinbase is the lack of transparency. When they raised money through LendingClub, they missed their funding goal - so they just extended their timeframe but did not tell anyone . This is NOT what I expect from someone I need to trust with my money.
aianus
Make a transaction and they'll reappear. At least, they did for me.
Hilyin
Can't, I have 0 balance error when I try.
w-ll
Maybe send 0.00000001 Satoshis
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
markkat
Just checked and my balance was ok. But it did freak me out that I couldn't see my balance before I agreed to a new user agreement which included me waiving my rights to join a class action lawsuit.
jonny_eh
That raises a good point. If you don't agree to the new EULA, is there a way to withdraw your money?
barmstrong
We had a display bug introduced over the weekend which showed incorrect cached balance amounts. Definitely frustrating, and my deepest apologies for that. We are working through support requests and should have a fix out for your account by end of day. Thank you for bearing with us!
redegg
Brian, could you respond why Coinbase has shifted from a clusterfuck pay-a-withdrawal-with-the-global-pool-of-coins to pay-a-withdrawal-with-the-user's-coins?

I noticed Coinbase credits users even without transaction confirmations. Then I noticed withdrawals used the same inputs from the deposits the user receives.

This could be bad and good:

1) (good) User is immediately notified when Coinbase is breached. It's the moment when they notice their deposit address is sending coins to a address that is not their's.

2) (bad) There is one chance to protect the coins. If you even think the private keys are compromised, you would have to be safe and broadcast the move of coins to new addresses. This will be really messy.

3) (bad) Anonymity reduction. The user can't launder coins in the network. Withdrawing deposited coins will appear to be a direct transaction from:

A -> B (deposit) then B -> C (withdrawal)

instead of:

A -> B (deposit) then Z (other user's coins) -> C

Also, is Coinbase moving to a client-sided wallet approach?

barmstrong
Part of doing the secure offline storage is that we need to use a hot wallet. http://blog.coinbase.com/post/33197656699/coinbase-now-stori...

It's definitely not perfect yet, but the security benefits are important. We posted an update on the payouts via unconfirmed transactions as well: http://blog.coinbase.com/post/43285532179/unconfirmed-transa...

Just generally, we are going through hyper growth right now, so this tends to magnify small problems. Thank you for bearing with us!

josscrowcroft
I understand the frustration, but "It is time to come clean. What happened to our money?" sounds very accusatory – as if you've already made your mind up that you've been duped, which is unlikely to be the case.

Fair play for posting on HN, but Coinbase is a great company and Brian's a top guy – I think it's better to give him the benefit of the doubt. I've been humbled in the past by jumping to conclusions or venting too early.

This is at worst a technical issue combined with a minor customer support mishap (i.e. not being available when needed).

Hilyin
If money went missing from your wallet, you wouldn't be a little upset? Coinbase can regain my trust when their customer service actually replies to my support ticket and resolves their issue. Until then, money is gone, trust is gone.
RaphiePS
I think that would apply if this weren't money-related. When your money mysteriously goes missing and nobody's telling you why, I think that's cause for concern.
josscrowcroft
Cause for concern, sure, but my problem with it was the jumping to conclusions, as I noted with the quotation from the post.
RaphiePS
How is that jumping to conclusions? He's not saying that he thinks they stole it. He just wants a clear explanation of what happened. I don't see pitchforks, just a demand for a response.
amorphid
Having digital money go missing certainly feels like getting robbed. I'd be pissed if some ignored my inquires. A situation like this is why God invented email and SMS alerts.

Disclaimer: amorphid is full of $#it. I did not invent email and SMS alerts. I was having too fun thinking up a sequel to the duck billed platypus to worry about digital communication.

-God

P.S. Love of money is still evil, but I gotta admit Bitcoin is pretty cool.

javis
Handing all your Bitcoins over to an online wallet is still risky business. Unlike banks, they have no insurance. If someone runs off with all the money, it's gone. And due to the anonymous nature of Bitcoin, it'd be almost impossible to find the culprit, if done correctly.

If the balance on my online banking is incorrect, I calmly ring customer service, knowing they'll fix it. With CoinBase I'd react completely differently. With the amount of other Bitcoin services that have been hacked in the past, I'd be scared CoinBase had met the same fate.

moonplayer
I'm missing over 40 btc from coinbase account too! They were even there previously but now it says they're gone! There is no trail of them disappearing through transactions though!
moonplayer
I posted this about 20 minutes after I sent them an email about it. I just checked my account right now and the missing coins are back in the account. thanks for the fast response coinbase. Hopefully that doesn't happen again.
peter41144
I am trying to send a verification email so that I can verify my account. But it will not show up. I have tried multiple times with 2 different email accounts, and I have checked the spam folders on both accounts, but I am not receiving the verification email. Can someone in administration please tell me what to do or send me the verification to peter41144@gmail.com.

Thanks,

-Peter

[dead] peter41144
I am trying to send a verification email so that I can verify my account. But it will not show up. I have tried multiple times with 2 different gmail accounts, and I have checked the spam folders on both accounts, but I am not receiving the verification email. Can someone in administration please tell me what to do or send me the verification to peter41144@gmail.com so that I can finish setting up my account?

Update: I still have not received any emails from coinbase to either of my gmail accounts, so I decided to try sending the verification email to my yahoo account. That worked! Then I went to account settings and switched to my gmail account and clicked on "save". Everything looks good now. But how can I know for sure that my gmail account is actually connected now to my coinbase account? No emails have been sent to either my gmail or yahoo account letting me know that I had changed email addresses in my coinbase account settings. Is there a way I can verify that peter41144@gmail.com is now actively connected to my coinbase account?

Thanks