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Beware of Coinbase. They Reversed My BTC Sale

86 points by abijlani ↗ HN
I sold 5 BTC on December 6th: http://d.pr/i/n9Zc

Couple of days later the BTC showed up again in my account saying they needed to "offset" my transaction which makes no sense because I originally purchased the BTC using Coinbase. I let it be. On December 13th I got a notice saying that the sale had finally completed and so I waited hoping any day my bank account would be credited with $4,118.94.

Instead of the money, they added a transaction to my account saying that I had "Purchased" 5 Bitcoins which I never did. So now instead of having sold 5 BTC at $832. I'm holding 5 BTC at a much lower price which I never wanted. How convenient Coinbase. You obviously benefited from my sale because you sold my coins to someone. And now you conveniently added it back into my account since the price is lower.

The worst part of all this is that I have opened support tickets, tweeted at them, wrote an email directly to the CEO Brian Armstrong. And there is nothing but silence. I even wrote a blog post: amit.roon.io/an-open-letter-to-coinbase

Things can go wrong in a fast growing startup but ignoring customers is the worst thing you can do.

27 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 75.8 ms ] thread
staunch
They probably reversed it because they (wrongly) suspected fraud. I'm sure it's well within their Terms of Service.

You're the one gambling money on an unproven digital currency, created by an anonymous person on the internet, via an unproven and completely overwhelmed little startup. If you can't handle losing money on a failed transaction then don't play the game.

abijlani
It wasn't a failed a transaction. They never said the transaction failed. I got a confirmation that the sale was completed.
staunch
It's failed if Coinbase suspected fraud and it's reversed.
abijlani
From their Terms of Service:

> 3.5 When buying or selling bitcoin, you are buying or selling from Coinbase directly. Coinbase does not act as an intermediary or marketplace between other buyers and sellers of bitcoin.

staunch
Also from their Terms of Service:

> Coinbase may cancel or reverse potentially high-risk buys or sells of bitcoin, including those made using reversible payment methods.

Could very easily be that your transaction was flagged and then reversed. Your BTC was returned in full. If the price had gone in the other direction I doubt you would be offering to compensate Coinbase for the difference.

abijlani
If it failed then why did they take 7 days to return my BTC? That's the benefit of BTC that things can be verified in a matter of minutes.
staunch
Yes, that's slow, but they gave you back all your Bitcoins. I get that you're disappointed about losing money trying to trade Bitcoins, but if this is how you react to this relatively minor problem you should not be trading Bitcoins yet. Problems like this are the norm right now.
bradleysmith
coinbase has been overwhelmed with increased volume and rapid fluctuation in the last two weeks. As staunch has said, to have only lost time in the transaction process and missed chances to get in or out at a particular price was an inherent risk in placing the transaction in the first place.

I have also been held up by coinbase delays in transactions over the last few days (though nothing was reversed), so I empathize with the pain. If you know of a more reliable and more quickly servicing online bitcoin exchange, I know many who would be happy to hear about it.

malandrew
That's fine that they can reverse transactions that are fraud. However after investigating the transaction and determining that it isn't fraud, then they should be on the hook for honoring the transaction. Incorrectly flagging legitimate transactions as fraudulent is their problem, not the customer's. They should either improve the algorithm or provide additional controls that give them confidence that a transaction is not fraudulent (e.g. two factor authentication. linking bank accounts and confirming a person's identity). If a person has completed all the security requirements Coinbase has, then that person should be able to make a transaction with the confidence actually will clear.
dlazerka
You cannot reverse bitcoin transaction. It either happened or not, determined by the broadcasted block chain.
staunch
It's a Coinbase transaction and not a Bitcoin transaction that's at issue.
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yapcguy
It looks like Coinbase has a problem managing their float of Bitcoins and/or serious risk management problems.

There was a story yesterday about someone wiring over tens of thousands of dollars and not hearing back for 1-2 weeks.

My theory is that Coinbase are performing some kind of proprietary trading and have burnt themselves badly, and to recover losses, they are front-running customers and delaying trade settlement.

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berberous
Maybe I'm misinterpreting your tone, but you sound overly defensive of CoinBase and dismissive of the OP. He's not crying over his losses, but warning others about the terrible customer service he has received. And I for one appreciate these warnings.

You're right that the people gambling on BTC are playing a risky game, and maybe they should expect events like this. Likewise, however, a startup flush with tons of capital that can't be bothered to even reply to its customers' support tickets shouldn't complain when people warn others away from them. (Although r/bitcoin is probably a better forum than Hacker News).

Regardless of their TOS, they know full-well that customers use their platform to speculate. If they can't handle high-value financial transactions properly, or at least respond to their customers when things go wrong, then they shouldn't play the game either.

bcl
Time to stop these posts. This isn't coinbase support and it isn't a forum to air your problems.
AnotherDesigner
I'm glad all of these threads happened. Now I know that Coinbase isn't a reputable company and I should never trust them with my money.

All of these posts show the truth, even when YC posts things like this:

http://blog.ycombinator.com/coinbase-yc-s12-is-becoming-the-...

manicbovine
Hacker News would be better off with a long-form blogpost about the business and technical aspects of this purported problem with Coinbase.
crcastle
I've been more than pleased with the service Coinbase provides. I have been a customer for almost three months and have bought and sold several thousand USD worth of BTC in that time.

How do you know these posts show the truth? What if these poor experiences we see posted on Hacker News are occurring at a rate of 1 in every 1000 Coinbase transactions or even 1 in 10,000 transactions? I agree that with money the error rate should be low, but BTC is the wild west.

You're taking on risk wherever you buy and sell BTC these day. As a US citizen, I'd rather take a little bit of risk with Coinbase, a US-based company supported by reputable US-based VCs, than take on the risk of sending my money to Slovenia or Japan -- not to mention the extra fees to do international wire transfers to/from those countries.

bcl
You cannot really believe that a few posts on HN, whether they are positive or negative, really are a good indicator of Coinbase's reputation, can you? Anyone can post anything and the more negative it looks the more people upvote it. Upvotes do not correlate to truth or accuracy.

For example if I were to post that I have used Coinbase multiple times with no problems I wouldn't expect to see a single upvote. It isn't news.

lfuller
These aren't simply customer quibbles, Coinbase is literally causing customers to lose thousands of dollars of their own money. They clearly are an untrustworthy company, and people should be informed - especially when there are large sums of money on the line.
mazarian
I'm also glad people are posting about Coinbase. Thankfully I've only entrusted them with 1 BTC...but I will surely not be using them for anything else.
cheshire137
I'm glad to see these posts. Well, I'm not glad these things are happening to Coinbase customers, but if they are, I'm glad reports are showing up here.
bushido
I will refrain from calling out coinbase for their alleged improper management and execution of transactions(alleged by me in great details in the previous threads) due to retracting a couple of my comments (on my own behest) due to drawing conclusions based on misunderstanding a reply to one of my posts. I have decided to subdue my biases against CoinBase practices for a few days for health reasons.

But, some of the issues that were highlighted may be prevalent here, as they do seem to behave like an exchange (even though they are allegedly not one even though they fit the definition).

Before someone points this out, its true that bitcoin is not recognized as a currency in the US, but it is considered a security by SECs definition of what a security is.

By CoinBase's definition they buy and subsequently sell or buy-back BTC like an ecommerce product. Wonder why an e-commerce product previously sold by them would be "offset" or reversed due to potentially fraudulent activity?

Also, it can be alleged that the OP is not being completely forthright about the full story? I don't believe that the OP is hiding anything.

If the OP did send and receive BTC thus technically having different BTC than the ones CoinBase sold to the OP is there any reason that all incoming BTC transactions cannot be classified as fraudulent?

I will not personally answer any of these questions even though I want to.

The previous threads are at: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933360

edit: spelling and grammar

lafar6502
Heh, they're not exactly _IGNORING_ customers. They're using them as milking cows.
PhantomGremlin
You only need to know two things about BTC. Both courtesy of @ReformedBroker (but origin may of course be elsewhere).

Don't get me wrong, I really really really wish that a practical and honest and low-friction anonymous virtual currency existed. It doesn't currently. Bitcoin isn't it.

1) "You know what's cooler than a million dollars? Virtual currency backed by nothing and nobody."

2) The second explains BTC using a Venn diagram. If you don't understand this diagram, you're the ideal BTC user. http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2013/11/20/bitcoin-likely-u...