Bitcoin Forum

I would like to share a trading experience on coinbase. I am a international student here in America who just opened a coinbase account with my driver license recently and have an USD wallet activated.
After I deposited $10k and made few trades it suddenly appears a SSN verification which I do not have. Now they locked my account from sell/buy and withdraw money from the wallet. I mean I understand all platforms would require a identity certification and I would be super willing to cooperate if they can do that BEFORE people buy in. 
It gave me a false lead to let me think a driver license is good enough to trade on the platform because apparently they did not stop me from depositing money in and even let me traded few times.
I called customer service few times and uploaded every document I have in America and they tell me I need to wait for an unclear time period. They say they are not responsible for any loss during the time the account is limited and user must take their own risk in the market. As a very experienced trader I totally agree with that but the situation here is that the risk is created by the platform not from the market.
Once I start trading I have right to make choices either buy or sell but coinbase deprived that right from me. I called them since yesterday 2/20/2018 and watching price went down but can't do nothing. Of course if it was going up I can't sell either.
From my perspective, they are violating their own rules to let people put money in then start to use those rules to make your money stuck in there. If they need a SSN to make buy/sell&withdraw, they shouldn't let people get in at the first place if they don't have one.

I feel for you. It's clearly a best practice that you get fully verified prior to even depositing any funds on an exchange (that would have saved me on Bitgrail), but it's a pain to wait with the sometimes glacial pace of verifications on many exchanges. It probably is better just to be patient and wait though, even if you miss a few opportunities. I wish I had a better suggestion for you at this point then to be patient, and perhaps keep following up with a phone call to support or other contact every few days.

That is extremely frustrating.

If you don’t get access to your money, you might consider going to the media to bring attention this this. Maybe TechCrunch or a similar blog would find this an interesting story. I’m sure Coinbase wouldn’t want the negative PR!

Thank you all for trying to help, I will take some actions if needed.

Coinbase is legit.You shoudl try contacting the support and let them know your situation.They may accept alternate forms of identification or your ITIN number

So many scammers out there, it effects everyone.

While this is certainly frustrating, try to understand that from their perspective (as a business) they have been completely overwhelmed for the past few months with cryptocurrency's sudden spike in mainstream popularity.

They may have some shady business practices, but they are not scammers. Try filing a case with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Coinbase is legally obligated to respond to inquiries made through them.

It will never happened to be scam. You just need to  learned and study it first and do some reseach.As far as im using bitcoin it never happened to me like that incident. There are some people who tried to hack and scam  but for sure bitcoin is Not one of them.

Maybe your right on this one mate,though OP has a mistake here this doesnt mean his money will be hold on that as if he has no access.this talking about assets that we expect to be safe and secured and now being taken by our own exchange..go to media make some noise so after that maybe may dialogue to you

some markets can happen it, but have a different way, which is essentially the same. I also use a market that has the same problem. but this happens when it over the volume, market is always maintenance. and when it can do trade. prices have been destroyed. different if the price goes up. it will be fine.

I am sure that senyzas is valid.but tha SEO is now working heard on all tha exchange. if you do not have a problem with using a commodity,, you have to be careful now!coin base our future coinbase can't scame tha project this is a very good project... we earn good currency from this pproject because coinbase is a very important medium for bitcoin we have to be coutious letter because we eran a lot of knowledge from USA..coinbase would like to share a trading experience.I am an international student here USA..who has recently opened coinbase account with my driver license and has activated dollar.now thy sell my account from tha sell or collected money from tha money I understand that all platform require and identity certification and if I can do it thy would be willing to cooperate..

I wish you the best!

I agree that the Coinbase is legit, I also have an account there, as far as I know, you really need your account. I think you should do a little more research on the exchanges that you wanted to use because you're risking your own money in it. That is why many people got scammed because they don't really do a research before they invest their money, they just rely on the people who told him to invest.

That's not a scam but a pretty neat trick for coinbase to save both their investors and not break any regulations laid down by the SEC. If they manually try to verify all the account holders detail, they might take a lot of time which would result in them losing their investors to some other exchange which they are not ready to do. If they allow trading and do not do kyc or other mandated checks and even one of the account holders later come out as shady or involved in some terrorism or other acts, coinbase risks to lose their complete business. But yes coinbase should have told all these regulations before and if someone deposited the money without kyc, they should allow to transfer that money back to the bank account.

Your words totally make sense. Exactly, they should prevent people from depositing until full KYC but not froze their account after bought in.

Yes I did, I uploaded everything they need. But they tell me to wait for a very uncertain time period. Their customer service won't even say it is a month, a year or a week no matter how I ask them.

The point is, if they need full KYC to trade they should do that in advance not after people already bought in.

Did you read the user agreement before sign-in up?

https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement?locale=en



Seems like they've mentioned it.
And you checked that tiny button when you created your account.
Be honest, did you read this before?

They don't require all your documents but if "special" situations occur, they are covered.
And you with only a driver licence, and a foreign student in the US, you are indeed special.


Again, read their user agreement. Mentioned also.


You didn't bother to read two lines, did you?

All you need is to think before you click. There are lots of scammer all over the world all we need is to secure our online wallets. We need to choose different pasword with some of accounts. And dont ever trust someone you didnt know.