Coinbase Just Closed My Account for Betting Against Trump!
Do Not Gamble Online With Bitcoin from Coinbase or This Can Happen To You!
Yesterday when I logged onto coinbase.com I was horrified to discover a notice on my account (screenshot below). It appeared that my account was under the process of being shut down. At first I thought it must have been a mistake, but after further investigation I realized that this was an ongoing concern among bitcoin enthusiasts like myself. I have been using Coinbase for the past 3 years and have had a few problems here and there. In the beginning Bitcoin would just vanish and then I would have to message them because I had screenshots and I called them out on it. But that was an isolated instance, and it never happened again. I bought a lot of bitcoin over the years and got a lot of alts too, that is why it was so disturbing when Coinbase shut me down. I have been cut off from the market!
Why Did This Happen, What Did I do?
After investigating I found the prohibited items:
https://www.coinbase.com/legal/prohibited
The only thing that comes to mind that I did was Gambled online, which violates the policy. It was a one time thing for the election, I thought I would ride the Hillary Train to Victory Land, and that I did, until someone of the new Hillary Money tainted my coinbase account, and right before doing yet one more large ETH trade I found this.
After the initial shock of being shut out of my Bitcoin liquidity I checked my email and found 1 big fat confirmation! Email screenshot below:
I Cannot Believe!?
This is where I am now. I asked Coinbase what am I supposed to do with all this Bitcoin and Ether they sold me now that I can not sell it with them anymore. There was no reason given. I appealed my case to Vlad. I told him how I was sorry and how I just quit gambling because it is too risky for me, and how I am more of a save and hold, and he said maybe I might get this situation resolved. However unfortunately Michelle from Coinbase Compliance did reply and said that I broke more than one of the rules, and I did more than just gambling (Whatever that means?) and Coinbase cannot re-open any closed accounts.
No Really... What Else Did I do?
The only other thing that I can think of was accidentally double spending some bitcoin one time when I re-launched an old snapshot of the blockchain and re-spent the same BTC. The reason it was an accident was the server was shut down for 3-6 months, and when I brought it back online the bitcoin was back to where and when I backed it up, and I totally forgot that I already sold it to coinbase six months earlier. Because my rig was not synced yet, and at the time Coinbase had totally instant transactions and there was a dos attack on the rise, and instant transactions, I was able to sell it before it confirmed! Big security hole exploited, but I never did it again! I notified them and at the time they did not seem to care, however my instant transactions were shut down and I had to do a lot of new verification. Heres the email below:
It Is a Different World Without Coinbase But I will have to get used to it.
It is like starting over from scratch with crypto now. I have no idea what to do with my Bitcoin, and other alts. Theres always online shopping, but that is just not the same. What about steem, what we really need is a steembase.
Thanks for letting us know. If we wanted our money controlled like this we'd be using dollars.
Very sorry to see you ran afoul of Coinbase's cryptic compliance rules. I've heard stories of this happening to people from time to time. I think in general it's a good idea to send cryptocurrency purchased on Coinbase on to some other exchange account first before using it for something. Preferably an exchange outside of the United States or a decentralized one like OpenLedger. I use Coinbase strictly as a gateway to / from the fiat world, and do all my crypto-related transactions from other wallets.