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Comment by throwawaybbqed | Hacker News Reader

I was an early user of coinbase. I only bought a fraction of a coin because of Paul Graham and YC's reputation. Well .. I was wrong. I was not an active trader. It seems they have closed by account and liquidated the btc within (if there were actually btc in my name). I am deeply disappointed that they don't have a telephone number I can call to help figure out the situation. Pretty disappointed.

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Coinbase customer service has always been tragic. I remember my BTC being locked up until I could "verify" my identity by submitting a photo of my passport, but their site kept glitching out and zero response from customer service. This went on for months.

Pulled all my coins out and will never use this scummy product again.

Pretty neat trick right? Super easy to “buy” coins. Impossible to take them out. Quite the moat.

Eh, maybe a month ago I found a Coinbase account from 2013 that I had forgotten about, and it still had everything in it. Your story makes no sense. Coinbase support has always been pretty good for every problem I've ever had. Why talk to someone on the phone when you can click a button and have a live chat with a support agent instantly?

https://help.coinbase.com/en/contact-us

Is this a plant? coinbase support is notoriously horrible, even my friend who works at the company thinks it's bad.

I accidentally sent a wire from my business account instead of my personal account into coinbase. Since my account wasn't verified to be a business account they contacted me, sent the money back and reimbursed me the $30 wire fee. I found the customer service to be great.

I've been trading crypto for a while and exchanges are as sketchy as it gets. Sometimes, you have anecdotal experiences that bubble up on the internet but i truly believe coinbase is the most trust-worthy exchange.

That sounds like they didn’t want to get in trouble. Doubtful they would do the same for an average joe.

I've needed support maybe four times in my 8 or so years using them, and each time they've resolved my problem quickly.

The complaints I've seen about Coinbase support are usually people who withdraw coins to the wrong address or something and are upset that Coinbase won't reimburse them for their own fuckups.

I have had several cryptocurrency exchanges straight up steal money from me and then ghost me. Coinbase has been a pleasure to work with relative to everything else in the crypto space.

If half the company isn't reading this thread I would be shocked. They came from YC and they're mostly a bunch of nerds like us.

How much did you have? A ton or just a little

Not a lot, I think I had like 10 dollars in there, which is why I forgot about it, and it was up to a couple thousand. I did randomly find a few BTC in a paper wallet when cleaning out my office a couple years ago, that was fun.

As other people have alluded to, this might be California "escheating" you out of the account if you haven't logged in for a couple years (in which case Coinbase doesn't have a say in it). You should look into what's in California's unclaimed property registry: https://www.sco.ca.gov/upd_msg.html

Have you even communicated with them about it?

Today might not be a great day to try that. But reach out to them and ask.

I wonder if this is escheat at work, or if it is just them adding new multi-factor and ID requirements and not staying on top of it...

> It seems they have closed by account and liquidated the btc within

This might not be completely legal. How much Bitcoin was it and what it is the date of liquidation?

I highly doubt this is true.

yeah right, they likely have the account closed but the assets still held

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