Coinbase Shows Balance as 0 | Hacker News Reader

Coinbase Shows Balance as 0

status.coinbase.com

75 pointskulor89 comments

Bitcoin's price jumped past $60K today.

I'd imagine traffic to Coinbase's servers looks like this:

                 |
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  _/\    /\_/\  _|
     \/\/     \/
  
  ----- time ---->

Google trends has Bitcoin searches at 4x where it was 24 hours ago.

Well, someone needs to be an exit liquidity :)

...and 8x where it was 72 hours ago.

Ha. Nice!

Funny how every time an event happens where people would probably love to sell BTC and cash out these oh-so-great crypto marketplaces always have some issues why customers can't cash out on mass. It's so predictable at this point it's crazy how it's not criminally investigated yet.

Yea I've switched to calling them "CoinBS" for this reason, and I've been with them since the GDAX days.

Between the suspiciously inconvenient outages during market volatility and their forced switch-over to Plaid for bank account verification (during which they unlinked my previously verified accounts), I'm pretty much fed up with their absolute garbage customer experience over the past 3-4 years.

Problem is Binance is not any better either. If someone rolled out a boutique crypto exchange that offers a quality customer experience & phone support similar to TDA/ThinkOrSwim I would gladly sign up in a second.

What is the crime being committed when Coinbase allegedly has technical issues.

Coinbase has been investigated for criminal activity. For example,

https://www.dfs.ny.gov/reports_and_publications/press_releas...

https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/17222-us-coinbase-to-pay-100-...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-coinbase-insider...

I think it would be interesting to look at whether Coinbase employees and insiders are able to cash out at these price peaks when millions of customers are not, due to alleged "technical issues".

All of the decentralized exchanges have been running just fine.

Once you onboard fiat -> crypto, there is no excuse to use coinbase any longer unless you want to go crypto -> fiat.

If you really want to sell to fiat during a bull market where centralized exchanges are failing, sell to a stablecoin of your choice and wait until things calm down for a bit to convert that to fiat.

You suggesting this has echoes of robinhood?

Believe it was named in at least one complaint against them by the government.

I mean it seems to only be Coinbase. Hard to imply conspiracy when 1 site is having issues out of many.

Feel like a large portion of your responsibility as a financial institution should be reliability and uptime. This is just cartoonishly bad.

Bugs and mistakes happen, even with traditional banks:

https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2023/10/10/wells-fargo-customer...

Yeah, and the same logic applies to traditional banks. You control billions of dollars, your threshold for mistakes is very small.

And this isn't a case of "bugs or mistakes", it's a case of being underprepared.

And this isn't a case of "bugs or mistakes", it's a case of being underprepared.

How is this not either a bug in their software/systems or some mistake? Does being "prepared" mean 100% availability/uptime? Even very mission critical systems like the Sabre system that powers many of the world's airlines can't maintain 100% uptime indefinitely.

I think regulators should be much more concerned with integrity than uptime. Losing temporary access to my account balance is bad, but not nearly as bad as the bank showing an incorrect balance.

Banks aren't much better either.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/06/timeline-of...

They're included "as a financial institution".

I got quite the fright thinking someone had cleared out my account.

Yeah, it took them about 10-15 mins to report it on their status page despite already trending on Twitter and downdetector having 8,000 reports.

Tbf getting all of the engineers and leadership online to figure out what is going on, write and authorize a public statement is a pretty quick turnaround

Don't use coinbase, but this seems like the sort of thing they'd stick a warning about in a flash message on the account page itself. "We've recieved reports of our page incorrectly reporting account balances. Please standby for more info..." Maybe there's some useful procedure in place preventing them from doing that quickly? Seems like something most sites with authentication would have? I usually build it into my front-ends... it doesn't have to look good (if you're running a reliable site, anyway,) it just has to be visible.

They did exactly this. I see $0 balance and big red banner on top with the same message as on the status page.

EDIT: looks like a scaling issue. Refreshed the page and balance reappeared. Refreshed again and it is gone, but the chart below with the balance history still has correct data.

Ah, ok that makes more sense, especially because this would almost certainly trigger a whole lot of people logging in on every device they have to make sure it wasn't a device artifact, and maybe the APIs/systems were both affected by the same problem. My gut says an investment platform should have a more fault resistant messaging system, but I can't think of a reasonable fundamental security or stability threat they'd face without one, so maybe that money was better spent in other areas.

Edit: Entirely theoretical, but I wonder if there's a bank-run sort of threat for a financial institution getting communication about a system like this wrong enough.

I wondered why this story rapidly disappeared from the front page then I remembered Coinbase is a ycombinator company.

HN has a long history of impartiality on ycombinator matters, so I don't think such accusations should be made without evidence of a pattern of it happening consistently.

As the OP, I had the same thought and conflict of interest assumption.

It has made me query the moderation as you could squint and class it as low-quality content, however, I feel (agnostic of being the OP) it's highly relevant news to the HN audience.

I agree.

Many would not. Anything cryptocurrency news can be flagged, depending on time of day.

I never understood Coinbase but then I am also a dummy when it comes to crypto in general and never understood it. But coinbase, isn't it a centralized service that sort of defeats the purpose of crypto/bitcoin which is supposed to be decentralized ?

GitHub is also a centralized service that defeats the purpose of using decentralized technology. People will use centralized services when they contribute value in excess of the loss of value from being less decentralized.

I donno. With Github, I still have my source code somewhere stored locally. With coinbase, you are at their mercy because doing finance things is not that easy. Again, I think crypto/bitcoin is stupid but its just me may be.

The point of crypto isn't to force decentralization, it's to permit it. If you'd like to keep your crypto on a service like Coinbase, you have that freedom. Alternatively, if you'd like to self-host your crypto, you also have that freedom. The option is the whole point.

Either way most people still need somewhere to buy it if they don't have any, which is what Coinbase is primarily for.

You assume people buy Bitcoin because they care about decentralization.

That is an incorrect assumption.

People buy bitcoin because they want to make financial gains.

I know that. proving my point further that crypto/bitcoin has nothing to do with decentralization which was the original purpose.

Bitcoin is decentralized and people buying bitcoin for financial gains without caring about decentralization are both true statements.

how many people are doing bitcoin today because of decentralized aspect vs everything else (speculation, get rich quick, make money etc).

> But coinbase, isn't it a centralized service that sort of defeats the purpose of crypto/bitcoin which is supposed to be decentralized?

Dollar cost average in, say, every month, on Coinbase, withdraw the BTCs immediately to an address you control (for example using an hardware wallet).

Do that 20 times and you never have more than 5% of your cash at once on the centralized exchange.

Some call it "on ramp / off ramp".

Now I don't doubt some people use Coinbase as their wallet: both for the on/off ramp and to store their coins (that is: without bothering to ever withdraw to an address they control) but nothing forces people to do that.

Yes, it’s utterly nonsensical if you truly believe in the original goals of Bitcoin.

There has to be some system to exchange crypto and real money.

But these exchanges don't do gold do they? I thought that was only real money besides bitcoin?

> But these exchanges don't do gold do they? I thought that was only real money besides bitcoin?

I think some do gold and are using these old companies in Switzerland holding gold for people in vaults, with proof of reserves (contrarily to the gold "it's there we swear but we refuse an audit" inside Fort Knox).

Nothing stops you from selling physical gold for USD (or EUR or whatever), sending that money to Coinbase, buying Bitcoin.

I don't think people are disputing that USD/EUR are used to pay taxes and to buy everyday thing. What some people are disputing is the value of USD/EUR in the face of ever more indebted states and ever more money printed.

The goal is not to never use USD/EUR: the goal is to never be exposed to these for too long. At the very least you'd want yield on your USD/EUR countering inflation (and for that it's not sufficient to "keep your USD at the bank").

I mean, it's for speculators speculating on the price. Crypto is too volatile to use as a currency. Like would you buy a pizza with your NVDA shares? No. You just hold them in the brokerage and turn them into cash when the price meets your target. People are using Coinbase to do exactly that with crypto.

Correct. You trade security for convenience.

Well…” convenience “ isn’t exactly being delivered at the moment!

> getting all of the engineers and leadership online to figure out what is going on

We've seen nothing suggesting they've figured out what is going on.

I have no idea why people use Coinbase. They charge exorbitant fees and will lock your account at the drop of hat if you try to cash out.

I use it b/c some vendors accept btc, and they do an easy payment option. The discount for using btc outweighs the fees.

It's because it's a great place to HODL for me, since they seem vastly more secure than all the sites that have gone down in thievery and flames over the years.

I think it'd be disingenuous to suggest that there is any safer place to hold crypto, given they are publicly traded, have excellent engineers, have insurance, etc. I even think it's more likely I'd fuck up personally custodying my crypto than letting Coinbase hold it. I've had friends lose so much money trying to keep their crypto in private wallets and on shady exchanges.

Perhaps people should get off these me-too-coin casinos and just self-custody their bitcoin if they are serious about saving.

The amount of friends I have with non-trivial amounts of bitcoin they are unable to access anymore due to “self custody” says this isn’t always the best idea either.

I don’t know what a good idea is when it comes to storing your bitcoin. But if you’re gonna go with one of the major players, at this time, Coinbase seems relatively safest.

Odds are they lost access because they didn't treat it as something really valuable. A good idea is to learn how to safely store and backup your keys (plural). If you allow others to hold your bitcoin, particularly a large one that could easily be nationalized, you're playing with fire.

I've got a couple thousand bitcoin in self-custody, mined out of curiosity a couple days after Satoshi's initial announcement.

The key is of course lost, but not to worry; I printed it out on a sheet of paper, which I buried in the garden of my dead grandmother's home. It's underneath the chicken coop. Anyone want to go digging?

Not your keys...

not your coins!

Not the first time this has happened. 2022 during super bowl.

Seems like they have scaling issues....

It has been happening since 2014.

Bitcoin is ripping upwards, this is just how Coinbase works.

Hopefully Coinbase learns from this to add a "Sorry we're experiencing issues" screen rather than showing the wrong data.

yes. happening to me too!! they updated their website with the incident.

Crypto exchanges love having technical difficulties during sell-offs.

That makes no sense. Exchanges make their money when people trade. Sell offs are by nature high volume days.

To boot internet play money is on a rip up 8 percent in 24 hour to near ath.

Honest exchanges make most of their money when people trade (whether directly, via transaction frees, or indirectly, via selling order flow information or whatnot).

But many cryptocurrency exchanges seem to be dipping into their customers' accounts to make speculative gambles and are consequently often illiquid (if not just plain insolvent) during market routs.

Fair enough. I also didn’t see the quick fall today before responding.

The one true thing about crypto is it will move thousands of dollars to invalidate any comment daily.

This ignores their own holdings.

Bitcoin liquidated 8% in an hour. Likely someone closed a very large position. But the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that they shorted at the high stopped their users from selling. Now many users would panic sell their long positions after being down 5-8%. And coinbase closes its short position.

It is showing zero for me in Eth but I don't have any BTC.

looks like they are back now.

the issue has been fixed

does not look like that

yeah it comes and goes. saw my assets show up and now they are not.

"Your assets are safe," generally the last thing you hear from these grifters before your assets disappear completely.

Tinfoil is unnecessary, Bitcoin hit 64k, all the retail investors are seeing the news and logging in.

This doesn't seem like a sensible reason to show a 0 balance, but maybe I haven't worked in enterprise enough.

My guess: the API is down, so the client attempts to get all coins and their balance and add them up. Because the API errors, no coins are returned, therefore the balance is 0. It's a bad design because its alarming, and I'm fairly sure they're going to change it after this.

It could well be errors caused by an overloaded system.

Well, bitforex is offline since february 23th after a 57 millions withdrawal.. So coinbase going down wouldn't be that suprising : https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/02/26/bitforex-websit...

Hey, this is Coinbase, not Binance.

They said the same about FTX.

FTX didn't have CZ assuring us that funds are safu.

Didn't people trust SBF about as much as CZ?

And CZ reached a plea deal, paying $4.3 billion in criminal penalties, so I still don't see the difference.

Maybe (probably) binance is in a much better state than FTX, but the CEO's word on that is meaningless in both cases.

Ehh Coinbase is the only exchange that doesn't seem to be a complete grift. Also why would an increase in price result in them being insolvent? I doubt they're net short crypto

Don't need to be insolvent to pull the rug.

Coinbase has suspicious crypto hedging. As a market maker, during huge crypto moves, generally to the upside, they have "outages". Its not that much different than robinhood shutting off GME trading. Behind the scenes Robin Hood likely got caught levered on the wrong side

> Coinbase has suspicious crypto hedging

Any source on this? I've never heard that

> during huge crypto moves, generally to the upside, they have "outages"

Price increase -> increased web traffic -> outage

"Behind the scenes", Robinhood's broker/the DTCC casually flashed a revolver from under the table.

https://qz.com/2184431/robinhood-nearly-defaulted-during-the...

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