I’m a Coinbase Pro user since it was still Gdax and I was a huge fan.
I’m an active but non-professional trader and I own accounts at more than one exchange, yet, to all of my friends and family who showed interest in investing or trading with crypto, I always recommended Coinbase Pro. About 10 people have opened or are about to open their Coinbase Pro accounts based on my recommendation for their first encounter with crypto.
Then, a few days ago, I received a letter of ‘gratitude’: NOTICE OF ACCOUNT CLOSURE.
After the initial shock and a normal human reaction to apologize if I did something wrong, to try to find out what was the problem and to try to resolve the issue, I quickly realized, after contacting the Coinbase support, that that’s not going to happen:
“for security reasons we are unable to elaborate on our internal decision process”.
Being a huge fan and a supporter, I was a bit heart-broken. But soon, using my reason instead of my feelings, I made peace with that. I realized that I’ve probably somehow triggered a red flag in an automated algorithm which increased my risk analysis a bar too high and... off I go.In the eyes of Coinbase I was now being viewed as a risk they need to mitigate, not as a desirable user. They don’t hate me - they just can’t trust me anymore. Fine.They needed me to transfer my assets from my Coinbase accounts.
But when I tried to do that, I was in for another big surprise: about 90% of my assets were gone!
BTC and fiat balances were flat-out zero. I did have access to some of my other currencies and have successfully withdrawn them. But that was only a small percentage of my portfolio.
My efforts to find out what happened to my BTC, fiat and some other currencies always gave the same result:
“...we are no longer able to support your Coinbase account...”“...we have not blocked access to the balance currently in your Coinbase account...”“... you may still send your balance offsite to an external address...”
Yes, but what about the balance that is missing from my account and it was there before the closure?
The closest I got was when they replied:
“We have transferred your case to a specialist who will be able to assist you with this specific issue.You will be contacted directly as soon as we have reviewed your case.”
But the next answer was the same generic answer I received before...
I started to suspect that my account was breached prior to closure and that someone spent all of my fiat and stole my BTC.
I’m totally fine if Coinbase halted my BTC and fiat for the inspection purposes, as it’s written in the User agreement. I’m all for preventing terrorism and money laundering, even if that means that they need to check me from time to time, but I need to know that that’s what’s happening, that I wasn’t robbed by someone.
I need to know what currency my funds are being held in, if they are being held, to be able to adjust my trading activities to minimize the losses.
I also tried to download the trading reports, to be able to calculate and pay the taxes, but the button for generating reports on the ‘Close account’ page doesn’t seem to work.
Although I might sound like some big-time trader with money to throw, that is actually not the case. Most of my portfolio was on Coinbase Pro, because I trusted it the most, and it was worth a few years of hard-earned savings from my day job.
I was a big fan but will I stay one - it all depends on how this issue will be handled and, hopefully, resolved.
Any help in finding out what happened to my money and, perhaps, getting my transaction history would be greatly appreciated.
With love, still,rubi510
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