Coinbase should solve it's coinbase trust issue. I bought a small amount of litecoin almost 2 weeks ago, i'm well past my "delivery by" date, my funds left my bank account over 10 days ago, yet I still don't have my coins in my account.
To counter anecdote with anecdote, I've had no issues with coinbase and have found them pleasant to use. That includes transferring to gdax/selling/withdrawing, etc.
You can’t counter a bad experience with a neutral one man.
Example:
Ann Rule was on a first name basis with Ted Bundy before he was caught. He didn’t murder her or any of her friends once. Its probably fine to take a car ride from him.
I've never had a single problem with Coinbase either. Most complaints seem to be from brand new signups getting delayed, people failing the AML/KYC checks.
My USD withdrawals always show up in my bank account 2 days later.
My account is 4 years old, was verified, 2FA setup, and bought/sold without issue 4 years ago.
Recently logged in to find that previously verified ID documents were somehow wiped out and my account became restricted. Reverified ID without issue, but account still restricted. Been 13 days and nada from their support save for an automated response.
My account is over 3 months old. They took my money and successfully gave me my tiny bit of ETH and BTC, but for some reason my litecoin transaction is stuck in the ether.
That's annoying then, maybe the run up in LTC triggered a new tier of verification or they really are that far behind. I'm sure you'll get it eventually but if you're looking to flip it now you can't yet.
If you're not buying with the intent to hold, I recommend depositing USD to their exchange GDAX. Fees are lower and you can sell/withdraw immediately.
So? Services that operate on money shouldn't just have an SLA where is works fine for some people. When you want a lot of nines, "it worked for me a few times" is not enough.
Probably should be completing AML/KYC checks before funding the account, but funny how there's never any issue with that not happening in a speedy amount of time...
There are hundreds of similar complaints about Coinbase on their sub-reddit just within the last week or so, many including support ticket numbers. People are getting pretty freaked.
https://www.reddit.com/r/coinbase
FYI this is identical to what happened on Mt Gox. It was easy to send money in, but getting more than 0.5 BTC out became quite difficult.
That said, it seems closer to the truth to say that they're simply under load. But it's hard not to wonder. There's no way to know there's a problem until it's too late.
It's a good reminder to keep your coins off Coinbase.
> It's a good reminder to keep your coins off Coinbase.
I'm finding that keeping coins off of Coinbase is easier to do than keeping cash off of Coinbase. It's fast and cheap to transfer cryptocoins to Coinbase, but takes me days to add cash.
Yep. I follow the ecosystem closely (not invested, just fascinated by it) and there are an incredible number of complaints about coinbase in general, and their atrocious support in particular.
Coinbase has said they've scaled their support team 2x in recent weeks. Surely that's not an easy feat and speaks to the sort of volumes they are handling at the moment.
I've used Coinbase since 2013 but I had a very important transaction simply disappear about a year and a half ago (despite being confirmed 10s of times) until I showed support that the transaction definitely went through. No explanation whatsoever. Just showed up a day after they replied to me.
Agreed. I sold some ETH and deposited the funds into a USD wallet, which Coinbase decided to close due to eligibility restrictions once the funds were already in it.
I've had a ticket open for about a month w/o access to those funds.
Silly question, but did you try reloading the page? I've noticed that if I place an order that isn't immediately filled, then tab to a different page and switch back to the gdax page an hour later, the account balance isn't updated even if it shows that my order was filled. Refreshing has always fixed it for me.
After I read on Hacker News by a number of commenters that Coinbase Customer Support had given up -- seemed fairly dodgy to give them money as you've no reason to think you'll get recourse should something go wrong.
I went with BitPanda. I should leave my referral link here but rather my own words carry the recommendation.
> This happened to me as well a few weeks back. Smells a lot like a Ponzi scheme.
Readers, please enshrine this comment as the canonical example of the Cryptocurrency Corollary of Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion about cryptocurrency grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Ponzi approaches 1."
Coinbase's entire business is to irreversibly and permanently send you Bitcoin in exchange for you sending them funds that you have months to dispute and reverse. And this is with reasonable fees that put a check-cashing outfit to shame. Of course they're going to err on the side of caution. Based on zero information whatsoever, I'm going to assume you're telling the truth. But for every honest person like you, there are probably at least two who truly are trying to steal Bitcoin from Coinbase.
I don't like it any more than you do when businesses make mistakes. But jumping straight to "Ponzi scheme" is just silly.
If you have a statement on your site saying you will deposit x coins in y days, you should do that. If you don't for a lot of people, then something is wrong with your business and no, people should not trust you.
> in exchange for you sending them funds that you have months to dispute and reverse
and here we see the limits of crypto currency and the legitimate concerns people have with it.
>Readers, please enshrine this comment as the canonical example of the Cryptocurrency Corollary of Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion about cryptocurrency grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Ponzi approaches 1."
Because the Corollary is true. At this point to believe otherwise marks you as a credulous dupe.
You were probably defending Mt Gox up to the day of its collapse. The Bitcoin True Believers are the easiest marks for these scams and cons because their ideology blinds them to reality.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that they might using the cash influx from newer users to cover cash outs for older users. Which I suppose is fine if they keep balanced books, but not if they're not delivering advertised service to the new users, which they aren't. They took my money, gave me nothing, then went absolutely silent.
Yes, it is unreasonable. You could say that any business "might [be] using the cash influx from newer users to cover cash outs for older users." Seriously, don't hide behind the word "might." It's a lazy defense of an accusation that's based more on emotion than reason or facts.
I once ordered a computer from Dell. The sealed box arrived empty. I went through few weeks of increasingly enraged emails and phone calls. Should I have assumed Dell was a Ponzi scheme?
The fact that HN is just discovering Coinbase (Normiebase) and not discussing the in's and out's of Etherdelta tells me this bubble still has a far way to go before it bursts.
How many fund-stealing XSS attacks has EtherDelta been hit with by now? It should be considered criminal that they still haven't put up a competent Content-Security-Policy header that would entirely block that class of exploits. Their current one is trivially-bypassable security theater that I tried reporting and got blown off. It's probably for the best that they don't have more attention.
Well now I'm worried. I also bought a tiny amount of ETH and BTC which is still in my account but I'm really worried about getting the funds out, even if it's just a refund of my original USD.
I didn't come here to spread doubt, just to +1 with my experience. I have had other transactions with them go okay, but when this one went wrong I realized how absolutely abysmal their support is.
They stole my money and I'm being downvoted for it, ha!
why did you give them so much money that you are "really worried" dont be irresponsible, its a new venture , dont put in your life savings ... just a couple of dollars , try it out if it doesnt work then at least its not something to be "really worried" about
I gave them money , they gave me coin , everything worked ... maybe you made them angry and tried to do something illegal on their site so they shut your user down.
I hear they prioritize "good" users in their system.
There is a section where there is the type of account you add, if you add a bank account you get special treatment
"maybe you made them angry and tried to do something illegal on their site so they shut your user down."
Ahh, crypto-punk-decentralized-liberatrians never seize to amaze with the level of double-think they can achieve.
How someone can hold both "the government is evil and might take your money" and "maybe you made this website angry so they didn't give you your money" at the same time is truly impressice.
> just a couple of dollars , try it out if it doesnt work then at least its not something to be "really worried" about
Could you imagine living in a world where you had to start every business relationship by only making extremely small "beta test" transactions, be it a trip to Target to opening an account at your local credit union. Like, on your first trip to Costco, you only bought a box of gum because you couldn't ever be sure they wouldn't somehow completely fuck you over and if they did fuck you over the societal response would always be "LOL too bad, so sad.... shouldn't have trusted them!!!"
I dunno about anybody else, but that really isn't the world I would want to live in.
There is value, substantial value, to trust others and when that trust fails, having a solid legal system to back you up. If you cannot trust anybody but yourself, every transaction you make becomes significantly more expensive.
Same. Coinbase are in over their heads. There is so much room for competition here.
At times I’ve been unable to access my accounts or have transactions complete in a reasonable amount of time. Coinbase closed my account without notice with no explanation other than a mention of their desire to comply with FinCEN. I never got an answer from them as-to what I did “wrong”. I sure as hell wasnt selling heroin or babies on Silk Road. Imagine if Wells Fargo closed an account without notice or explanation after a customer had a few normal deposits and withdrawals. deep rolls eyes
Yeh I think people flooding to coinbase to make overnight money expect instant gratification but coinbase has to register users with the Federal Trade commission at least for me as an American so let's not forget in addition to the other comments detailing how hard it is for any startup to scale, there is another bottleneck called FTC approval for first time coinbase users and that is on the Federal Trade Commissions timeline.
Let's also not forget while many other otherwise good UI platforms dropped out of NY because well, it was too hard and the fees were too high coinbase continued to integrate and work with lawmakers because they know how important it would be not to disciminate against states and also to have legal integration with Wallstreet, so as much as you may be upset with Coinbase for not scaling fast enough for you and making the government go faster, you should ask why so many other platforms aren't there to offer you an equally good alternative.
That being said, throughout all this bustle lately, I have not experienced issues with Coinbase and have performed a variety of money moving actions to and from multiple bank accounts coinbase and gdax with no delays. This could be because I'm an established user, approved by the Federal Trade Commission and have an established credit history with Coinbase which has led to another increase in what I am allowed to do.
Furthermore, Coinbase has been open apologetic, taken complete responsibility for the lack of being able to instantly gratify as they stayed over 8x the exponentiation of new users trying to register relative to the last spurt in the sunmer and promised to be transparent even if they can't be perfect. They have a ten day backlog on customer support tickets even after hiring 400 new people just for customer support and plan to hire even more.
It sounds like you are a new user who feels entitled to instant gratification, instant approval by the FCC, instant trust from Coinbase who probably doesn't have an established credit history with you and you're mad because things didn't work for you immediately.
I saw the other day Coinbase had an update saying wire transfers we're delayed 2-3 business days but I did not have a delay with mine, which means they probably prioritize established traders.
I wouldn't be so hard on Coinbase, but if you think you can provide a better solution by all means go for it. We need more competition in this space.
I also recommend certifying yourself with a few other platforms and getting your accounts tested and registered and having some money there so if you experience delays with Coinbase you have other options to move money. I am established with multiple platforms in case I experience issues with Gdax, but as it turns out I never have.
Imagine building a startup that moves 10's of millions of new users' monies each month out of US bank accounts. While other startups are just scaling page views, Coinbase is scaling money. Keep in mind that it takes just one financial loss to break trust from the entire community. Has any other bank in history scaled this fast?
Yes. Remember that online banks were once new. 10s of millions flowed through lots of banks and new services like PayPal during the dot com boom of 99/00.
To the dozens/hundreds of complaints like this, there are tens of thousands of non-complaints that you don't ever hear about -- users who use the service to buy/sell/withdraw without issues.
People are particularly emotional about Coinbase because it touches on their bottom line -- money. But let's not forget the fact that ALL startups have major scaling woes. Bugs in the tech being ironed out, overwhelmed support and engineering teams recruiting and integrating talent to meet the demand -- in Coinbase's case exponentially growing demand. If you've worked in a software startup you know how easy it is to be met with exponential increase in demand, and how impossibly difficult it is to stay above water growing a team at the same rate.
I'm positive on Coinbase due to their backing. YC, Andreessen Horowitz, DFJ, among dozens of high-profile investors. These guys want a $20B valuation, they're not interested in backing a failing company or a scam.
If a new investment firm took this long to have securities show up in your account, they'd be shut down faster than you can say SEC. Coinbase isn't exactly a new t-shirt company working out issues with their silk screener, they're an allegedly $20B (alleged) currency exchange. They have a higher standard to meet.
I can see how Silicon Valley standards have to rise up to Wall Street standards and they're not there yet. Tech like Auto/Finance/Space are new to SV and they're all full of scaling woes. Traditionally "SV style" has been to be scrappy and accept a healthy amount of breakage, and never say no to incoming demand, even if it's crippling your platform.
You have a point that SV needs to get into the mindsets of the industries they are trying to disrupt and rise to those higher standards.
To add another point, Coinbase is in unchartered territory. I want to see a new cryptocurrency investment firm show up on the market and function without a hitch. Companies like Coinbase are the only datapoints so far in this space.
"Can't deliver the service as expected" is par for the course in innovative early stage startups. Veteran tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, etc., struggled hard and failed to deliver as expected for many years. And still do. Apple computers and OSes in the 90s were unusable garbage; you spent more time twiddling extensions than actual use. Remember Windows 3.1x? It was an utter failure of an OS but the only available solution to many businesses. Time will tell how Coinbase evolves but my take is they'll continue to improve and catch up to demand.
It can't provide the level of service expected for financial services of this sort. That doesn't imply they should give up and go home, but it does mean that one should temper one's expectations of being taken fully seriously.
