Coinbase

Again and again, we’re shown why we shouldn’t trust CEX’s and why self-custody is so important.

Every Coinbase user is suddenly showing 0 balance or no balance in their wallet. Right after it pumps insanely the last couple hours. No one can sell. What convenient timing for this glitch to happen.

Self-custody is literally so important and this is why. Robinhood pt 2. These CEX’s don’t want us to make money, they want them to make money. I’m 90% in self-custody, but even just having the 10% I have on the Coinbase CEX blocked is just rage inducing. I didn’t even want to sell but it’s the principle. How dare they. Genuinely.

Edit: some users are suggesting it might be a traffic surge, which is a different but potentially valid explanation. I do really hope this is a genuine mistake. Either way it still emphasises the importance of self-custody.

It’s about the choice being yours.

Edit 2 (19 hours later): to users asking what’s the point as you need a CEX to sell…you just send funds to any CEX of your choice. Advisably one that is working. Because self-custody gives you back the choice to do that. Your funds aren’t stuck in a CEX that is frozen.

Earlier today Coinbase made a “transparency post” naming about 50 assets that they are planning to list on their exchange. Most of them are illiquid shitcoins that no one can figure out why they are even listing in the first place.

A bunch of people on Twitter went digging on-chain and found out that there is an insider that has been buying massive positions in these tokens, which have all obviously skyrocketed after the announcement.

This is blatant corruption and insider trading. Yet the SEC won’t do shit about this and instead prevents a Bitcoin ETF from existing or bans US residents airdrops. This is why we can’t have nice things.

I deposited ETH, from an address I have used many times, to my CB address I have used many times without issues. Deposit made on Christmas day 2021.

I got the usual CB email saying they'd received my deposit, and the tx is confirmed on etherscan.

The coins were never put into my portfolio.

I opened a support ticket, and got a vague non-answer by reply (we're looking into it). It was promptly closed without explanation. I have since opened another 3 tickets which have all been met with similar vague responses, and then the tickets are closed without explanation. My requests to make a complaint have been ignored. I posted on their subreddit 2 weeks ago and got another vague response, no DMs etc.

I've posted there again today but don't expect much.

My account is not suspended etc., I am still able to transact with existing funds and deposit fiat. I tested this yesterday.

The funny thing is I trade high volume and had I continued using CBP, I would have paid them multiples of the value of this deposit in fees over the next 12 months. Congrats, you played yourselves.

I was able to live with CBP constantly going down during periods of volatility (sus AF!) but this is crossing the line.

I am purely posting to encourage others to stay away from coinbase and CBP. I am not the first person this has happened to. There are literally hundreds of posts like mine on their support sub where people have had funds vanish and the support team just ignores them.

Aside from this their fee structure sucks anyway. People seem think CBP is the cheapest for fees but they're only the cheapest if you trade over $100k per month. I only used them because it was a quick cash onramp from my Revolut account. I'll be sticking with Binance and Kraken from here on out. I will also be looking at the LRC DEX because they pay you to trade.

Be careful where you leave your funds.

EDIT: Lots of people doubting the legitimacy of my post which I guess is healthy skepticism. When I get home from work I will redact my personal details and edit in links to my (very one sided) correspondence with Coinbase.

Edit 2: I've done the above with mods.

Edit 3: RESOLUTION! Thank you all so much for your support. I'm happy to report that Coinbase were magically able to resolve my issue straight away after I tagged their reddit support account on this post. I received the mail in this image:

I went straight to filing a complaint and within about 10 minutes my account was credited with the missing funds. They have devalued by about 30% ish since I sent them, and I sent them to be sold immediately at the time, but I seriously doubt I'll get anything else out of CB. I'm just glad to get my coins back at last.

Thank you all again. Naming and shaming most definitely works.

Also, a final word, a lot of people are looking for alternative exchange recommendations. I am in the EU and use binance a lot, also have a Kraken account and they have been recommended by a lot of people. But I know these aren't great options for some people in the USA.

I'm also going to look at using the LRC DEX for trading as they pay you to trade via negative fees! Amazing. I don't believe there's any geo blocks on this either. The issue I experienced makes me think DEXs are the way forward.

Good luck to everyone this year, don't forget to buy high and sell low 🚀

My guess is Coinbase is running on fractional reserves and doesn't wanna lose out on it's governance rewards so they are artificially delaying withdrawals of ALGO. I don't know about you guys but after I get my ALGO's withdrawn I'm finding an alternative to CoinBase. They have officially lost my business which is a shame because I've used them since getting into crypto.

They did this exact same thing before the 1st governance period in September and people lost out on signing up. This is no different than what Robinhood did with GME stock. It just shows that CEX's need regulation desperately and we're currently at the mercy of Coinbase assholes.

There have also been other strange things between Coinbase and Algorand. For the longest time they had Algorand listed as an ERC-20 token. Additionally they commonly do not post updated/correct news for Algorand. A few days ago they listed Securitizes Tokenization of Down Jones Index Funds as happening on Ethereum instead of Algorand, since then they've taken it down from Ethereum but haven't posted it to Algorand news.

This all smells a bit fishy. I have been having this feeling for a while that coinbase is deliberately trying to undermine Algorand.

Does anyone know of a good alternative to Coinbase and Binance in the US?

EDIT 1: They canceled my withdrawal after over 24 hours pending and said "Blockchain transaction was compensated". I'm wondering if I should try to withdraw again or convert to another coin and transfer off.

EDIT 2: Tried withdrawing again and it canceled almost immediately and said the same thing "Blockchain transaction was compensated." I'm pretty sure they still took my .002 ALGO transaction fee though. CB is fucking us over royally.

EDIT 3: Tried withdrawing once more, instant withdrawal cancel with same reason as before. I'm done trying to withdraw tonight. Will try again tomorrow in the AM and update the post.

EDIT 4: I was finally able to withdraw my ALGO's today. Look's like Coinbase most likely saw this post and bought more ALGO. The amount of ALGO in Coinbase 2 doubled and magically withdrawals were reenabled. Which means this was 100% a liquidity issue, and not a technical issue. Thank you everyone for contributing, I'm proud to be a part of this community. The elites get scared when all us little guys work together, never forget how powerful we are when we work collectively. This is the exact reason why we are all here, so huge monolithic entities can't dictate and control our lives without any recourse.

EDIT 5: MAKE COINBASE SQUIRM. Withdraw everything. Coinbase 1 is down to 351 ALGO and Coinbase 2 is down to <1 Million ALGO. Let's clean them out. Hopefully they will learn not to do this again.

EDIT 6: I've been reading some people are still having problems withdrawing.

From the Justice Department:

Beginning in approximately October 2020, ISHAN WAHI worked at Coinbase as a product manager assigned to a Coinbase asset listing team. In that role, ISHAN WAHI was involved in the highly confidential process of listing crypto assets on Coinbase’s exchanges and had detailed and advanced knowledge of which crypto assets Coinbase was planning to list and the timing of public announcements about those crypto asset listings. Beginning at least in August 2021 and continuing through May 2022, ISHAN WAHI was a member of a private Coinbase messaging channel reserved for a small number of Coinbase employees with direct involvement in the Coinbase asset listing process. The private channel was used to discuss, among other things, “exact announcement / launch dates + timelines” that Coinbase did not wish to share with all of its employees.

The Insider Trading Scheme:

On at least 14 occasions beginning at least in June 2021 and continuing through April 2022, ISHAN WAHI knew in advance both that Coinbase planned to list particular crypto assets and the timing of Coinbase’s public announcements of those asset listings and misappropriated that Coinbase confidential information by tipping either his brother, NIKHIL WAHI, or ISHAN WAHI’s friend and associate, SAMEER RAMANI, so that they could place profitable trades in those crypto assets in advance of Coinbase’s public listing announcements.

After getting tips from ISHAN WAHI, NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI used anonymous Ethereum blockchain wallets to acquire crypto assets shortly before Coinbase publicly announced that it was listing or considering listing these crypto assets on its exchanges. Following Coinbase public listing announcements, NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI sold the crypto assets for a profit. Based on confidential information provided by ISHAN WAHI, NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI collectively traded shortly in advance of at least 14 separate Coinbase public listing announcements concerning at least 25 different crypto assets. As a result of the insider trading scheme, NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI collectively generated realized and unrealized gains totaling at least approximately $1.5 million.

To conceal their purchases of crypto assets in advance of Coinbase listing announcements, NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI used accounts at centralized exchanges held in the names of others, and transferred funds, crypto assets, and proceeds of their scheme through multiple anonymous Ethereum blockchain wallets. NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI also regularly created and used new Ethereum blockchain wallets without any prior transaction history in order to further conceal their involvement in the scheme.

ISHAN WAHI’s Attempt to Flee the United States:

On April 11, 2022, Coinbase announced that it was considering potentially listing dozens of crypto assets on its exchanges. Based on Coinbase confidential information provided by ISHAN WAHI, RAMANI caused multiple anonymous Ethereum blockchain wallets to purchase large quantities of at least six of the crypto assets that were to be included in Coinbase’s April 11, 2022 listing announcement.

Shortly after RAMANI traded in advance of Coinbase’s April 11 listing announcement, on April 12, 2022, a Twitter account that is well known in the crypto community tweeted regarding an Ethereum blockchain wallet “that bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of tokens exclusively featured in the Coinbase Asset Listing post about 24 hours before it was published.” The trading activity referenced in the April 12 tweet was the trading caused by RAMANI. Coinbase thereafter publicly replied on Twitter noting that it had already begun investigating the matter and a few weeks later stated in a public blog post that any Coinbase employee who leaked confidential company information would be “immediately terminated and referred to relevant authorities (potentially for criminal prosecution).”

On May 11, 2022, Coinbase’s director of security operations emailed ISHAN WAHI to inform him that he should appear for an in-person meeting relating to Coinbase’s asset listing process at Coinbase’s Seattle, Washington office on Monday, May 16, 2022. ISHAN WAHI confirmed he would attend the meeting.

On the evening of Sunday, May 15, 2022, ISHAN WAHI purchased a one-way flight to India that was scheduled to depart the next day shortly before ISHAN WAHI was supposed to be interviewed by Coinbase. Prior to boarding the flight, ISHAN WAHI falsely told Coinbase employees that he had already departed for India when he had not. In the hours between booking the flight and his scheduled departure, ISHAN WAHI called and texted NIKHIL WAHI and RAMANI about Coinbase’s investigation, and sent both of them a photograph of the messages he had received on May 11, 2022, from Coinbase’s director of security operations. Prior to boarding the May 16, 2022 flight to India, ISHAN WAHI was stopped by law enforcement and prevented from leaving the country.

You can read the entire transcript here:

In the nick of time, a gigantic crisis for the major US crypto exchange Coinbase was recently prevented. A "white hat hacker", a hacker with good intentions, came across a major vulnerability and instead of exploiting it, he notified the team at Coinbase. Coinbase was able to fix the vulnerability in no time and publicly thanked the hacker.

Coinbase white hat hacker

The hacker in question is known on social media as "Tree of Alpha. On Twitter a few days ago, he let it be known that he wanted to get in touch with Coinbase's dev team urgently. As it turns out, he was on to something important.

Just a few hours later, Coinbase announced that they had temporarily suspended all trading on the Advanced Trading platform under the guise of "technical problems. Moments later, the problems had been resolved, Tree of Alpha itself confirmed.

According to Tree of Alpha, the problems could have potentially caused a real catastrophe for Coinbase and the rest of the crypto industry. Indeed, the vulnerability allowed malicious parties to manipulate all Coinbase order books with fake prices. Of course, the consequences of such an exploit would have been huge, not only for the crypto exchange, but for the overall crypto industry.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstong

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, has since publicly thanked Tree of Alpha. According to him, the hacker's willingness to warn Coinbase instead of exploiting the vulnerability himself once again shows what the crypto community really stands for. It is unknown if Tree of Alpha received a reward for his achievements. This is often the case within the crypto industry.

At least Coinbase can count itself lucky that it ended with a bang.

This subreddit has been riddled with warning after warning and yet people are still shocked, somehow, when a large exchange or stablecoin goes belly up and their funds are locked or liquidated.

In terms of stablecoins failing, cant do much about that.

In terms of where you keep your decentralized currency, that is absolutely your choice.

So before any other exchange falls, understand that by not moving your coins and allowing a centralized company to "hold" them for you, you are consciously accepting the potential loss of said currency.

I know that we all heard about this, but I wanted to leave a reminder of whats possible... An excerpt From Coinbases own quarterly report that ended March 31, 2022.

This is NOT a "be careful with Coinbase" post, its a "be careful with ANY centralized exchange" post. I only mention Coinbase because its big but it is not too big to fail.

I bought Bitcoin when I was 16 on Coinbase, and almost immediately after they changed their policy so you had to be 18 to use the exchange. They locked my account, so I was forced to hold. I'm sure they would have let me withdraw my funds if I contacted them but I figured I would just come back when I'm 18. Well I forgot about it until I noticed the bull run in february, I logged on and damn... 1,000 percent gains on my 20 dollars. Best investment of my life. Since then I emailed them, they unlocked my account, and I've been DCAing weekly.

Edit: Holy crap just got out of work and seeing this post blow up made my day! Thanks everyone!

Edward Snowden's tweet on Coinbase's superbowl Ad is a reality check for Crypto exchanges, how they do business.

Tweet

Coinbase spending $16,000,000 on a Superbowl Ad to direct people to their website and $0 to make sure that website doesn't crash 10 seconds after the ad starts is do very internet

Exchanges are willingly spending huge lot of money on their marketing and all,but they don't want to spend a dollar to make sure their customer gets the best service.All they want is new customers.

It's not just one exchange, most of the Crypto exchanges are doing the same.If they will spend even half of the marketing money to improve their customer service, improve their website,to give customers best experience they might get more customers.

The Silk Road BTC address (linked to the US government) moved 2,000 Bitcoin ($131M) to Coinbase Prime and 29,800 Bitcoin ($1.95B) to a new address 8 hour ago.

This is likely an OTC deal and does not directly affect the BTC spot price. They still hold 179.19K BTC ($11.7B) in the old wallets.

Details:

Now the crazy part about this story is that they transferred 30,170 Bitcoin (approximately $2 billion) with no regulations or paperwork like the bank does.

Imagine if you wanted to transfer that amount of money by using the bank 😂, they would have freaked out and asked you everything about this transaction. They would need to ask their bosses to come and see you directly, and you would have to sign A LOT of papers to get through with YOUR MONEY. Not to mention about how much the fee is and how long you could have waited for this amount of money to actually be "processed" and "completed".

If I were to risk losing my money between the bank and cryptocurrency, I would choose cryptocurrency because I can have control over it. I wouldn't have to wait for the bank to retrieve it for me or follow their instructions on what to do next, especially since they can be unreliable.

What side are you on?