On September 2, 2017, I deposited some funds to Coinbase for the first time. Then a bit more later. I liked it and kept some funds there until our beloved cryptocurrencies increased in value 10 times.

It was a good time to sell, what I did. That way I got my investment back. I left the remaining crypto in the Coinbase safes and almost forgot about it.

Until, in April 2024, late in the evening, a few days before my birthday, I received an email from Coinbase saying that my account will be closed due to a violation of the Terms of Service. “NOTICE OF ACCOUNT CLOSURE” they call it.

Attempts to log in to my Coinbase account resulted in a static page listing my cryptocurrencies, their balances, and a statement that I must transfer everything to another wallet.

There was a small problem with this... There was no way to actually initiate a transfer. Or sell the funds. Or convert them. Just nothing.

Desktop browser always redirected me to this static page, only user profile was somewhat accessible. On the contrary, the mobile application worked, showed me the balance and advertisements to participate in trading initiatives. No need to say that transfers did not work either.

Getting a bit nervous, I started to take action. The first challenge was to create a support case. It is not possible to do this when you are authenticated on Coinbase. You have to explicitly log out to see the button. The same day I got a reply saying yes, your account is being closed, transfer your funds. The case was closed. Urgh... I immediately submitted a “claim” to the case handling process, which also required logging out. Two days later, I received a reply saying, yes, your account is being closed. “You can still send your balance to an external address”. This was a lie.

After I filed a complaint, I went to Reddit, found the latest post about the same situation, and left a comment there. Yes. “The latest post about the same situation”. There are a lot of cases like this where Coinbase just closes accounts.

Just moments after that I got a response from a Coinbase support person who lives on Reddit. There was a little discussion that ended with nothing. The final answer, as in other such situations, was: “Contact us on social networks”. Really?!

While talking to the person on Reddit I somehow triggered a real person on live chat widget right on Coinbase website. The default Indian guy (well, Abhishek) suggested to clean the cache in my browser. But it seems that I was able to move the case I created before a bit forward, to the second level of support or something like that.

I went back to Reddit after the live chat. OK, just to be completely ridiculous, I wrote to Coinbase on Instagram. They took me a little more seriously, asked for some screenshots, and told me they would look into my case.

At that moment, my case was reopened and I began to feel some hope.

The only action I could take in my Coinbase account was to unstake Ethereum. I did that and it was a good decision. Unstaking takes 10 days by default.

Exactly on my birthday, three days after the account closure email, I received an update on the case I had originally created. It was a rather long response. In essence, they informed me that my account will be returned to a normal state for three business days.

There was also a long description of how I could technically cash out fiat money. However, I did not have any, so nothing to cash out.

The most important thing was that with the unlocked account I was finally able to transfer out all my assets. I was even lucky that the unstaking took less days and I was able to transfer my Ethereum as well.

I ended up with 0 on my Coinbase account. And I don't care about them anymore. Now I care about the platform I transferred crypto to...

What have I learned? As with other things in the digital world, you have little control. Your inbox is in the hands of email providers, your storage is in data centers owned by unknown people. Your money is just database records that many people can edit.

I have freed myself from that to some extent, but it is not possible to be completely independent. Just diversify your assets, just limit the damage...

#coinbase #cryptocurrency