YC startup Coinbase has been hacked? Unable to withdraw $25,000 | Hacker News Reader

YC startup Coinbase has been hacked? Unable to withdraw $25,000

38 pointscoinbaseuser16 comments

I believe that coinbase has experienced a hack on a large scale, as there have been multiple people having issues with withdraws recently on coinbase. Several other people on the coinbase support forum have recently stated that coinbase has also stolen their funds.

So I wanted to warn the reddit community from using Coinbase.

Here is what happened:

Coinbase shut down my account, and then there was a message displayed saying that I need to transfer the 60 Bitcoins (about $25,000 ) to another address. I attempted to do that at least 10 times, but it simply says "please wait..." for over 2 hours.

Next, I sent 3 different support tickets asking for help on this topic, but it has been 4 days already with no response at all.

I have about 60 BTC on this account, worth around $25,000 at this time.

In conclusion, Coinbase is not to be trusted and has most likely experienced a major hack.

Attached is proof on my coinbase account: http://imgur.com/AK8lCgF

UPDATE 05/26 6:30PM EST: someone else just posted about this. (I swear it's not me )

The person said that they were unable to withdraw their money.

I'm pretty sure coinbase has been hacked. DO NOT USE COINBASE.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4l7tde/coinbase_down/

Hi - Michael here from Coinbase Support. Since this has shown up on both reddit and now here, it's probably worth stating that we haven't been compromised. We have, as the customer stated, closed their account and will not be re-instating it. The customer is able to withdraw their funds without restriction, but has had some issues doing that. It's completely understandable that this would be upsetting. We're working with them to resolve the issue.

I just got a weird email from Coinbase last night. I've had an account for ~2 yrs now but haven't been very active. They sent a message soliciting me to log in for the first time that I can remember. Here's the text of the email:

Subject: The Economy of the Future is Here!

Wow - the price of bitcoin nearly doubled in the last year! We noticed it's been a while since you bought bitcoin and thought you might want to get your stake in finance 2.0 sooner rather than later.

Sign in to your Coinbase account now to instantly purchase bitcoin and start participating in the economy of the future.

The kind of email that makes you think...what is the agenda here?

I got this earlier today:

Just when you were beginning to understand Bitcoin, we decided to add Ethereum! We thought you might want to get your stake in Finance 2.0 sooner rather than later.

Sign in to your Coinbase account now to instantly purchase Ethereum and start participating in the economy of the future.

Not chastising you, but why would you store $25k with what is essentially a bank that has no FDIC (or any other type of) insurance for those funds?

https://community.coinbase.com/t/fdic-insurance-on-usd-walle...

This is meaningless. It's saying Coinbase keeps their money in, surprise, a bank. It's not stuffed under the CEO's mattress, but it also doesn't give any guarantees to the dozens of other ways a Coinbase customer can lose their money stored at Coinbase.

Coinbase have insurance. https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/166237...

>Coinbase's insurance policy would respond in the event that bitcoin stored in Coinbase was lost or stolen as a result of a breach of our physical security, cyber security, or as a result of employee theft

Potentially not covered:

Non-theft malfeasance

Negligence

Bankruptcy

Seizures by foreign governments

Technical problems leading to loss of data

Someone at Coinbase not liking you and wiping out your account

Unauthorized access to your account that doesn't count as a breach of security (your link specifically mentions this one as not covered)

Violation of terms of service leading to forfeiture of account and balance

And probably tons of others I haven't thought of. I know most of these are unlikely, but still very possible. Someone losing their FDIC insured bank account balance due to any of the above is virtually unheard of as long as the consumer exercises their legal protections. Keeping $25k at Coinbase is just as risky as keeping it at Paypal, and we all know how much Paypal loves permanently freezing accounts.

It seems to me that anything associated with Bitcoin becomes a target for hackers.

site relates to bitcoin = eventually hacked

Pssh. This also is true for any other digital system that handles money.

Just moving my money out. I got a gambling warning anyway and do not accept that they forbid this.

I lost a lot of money in the MtGox theft. Not a nice feeling.

I really hope it works out for everyone.

Completely unrealized gains or had you actually lost capital you converted to BTC?

Where should I move my BTC to assuming I can get access to my coinbase account?

To your own, safely generated, bitcoin wallet. Ethereum or the official client on a clean install, for example.

If you have a significant amount of money, I would suggest a good hardware wallet like Trezor or KeeyKey or Ledger.

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