Bitcoin Forum

I have been reading complaints from a couple of forum users about Coinbase lately, so I wanted to give my opinion as well. I have bought from Coinbase twice over the past few months, first a small amount (5 btc) and then a larger amount (40 btc). I verified my identity fully before placing both of the orders, and both of them went through successfully. I have also spoken to a couple of guys from their support team and they seemed to be quite helpful. So I just wanted to chime in and give a positive story about them, as I've noticed people generally only post about services when there is something negative to say.

I placed 2 more orders this week - one for 15 btc and one for 10 btc (both on the same day). The money has left my bank account and I am just waiting for Coinbase to credit the coins, which they've estimated will happen this upcoming Monday. I will update this thread with positive or negative feedback depending on whether these 2 recent transactions go through. My information is the same and my trade volume is not unusual compared to my previous orders, and the only thing different about these orders were that they were placed on days of higher volatility (I placed both orders when btc was about $560, and now it is listed at $720). If these trades are rejected, then we will know that they are surely acting in a dishonest manner, however if both trades are accepted then it is likely that they are in fact a legitimate company and other customers may actually just be tipping the risk-meter for some other reason.

Hopefully everything goes through successfully, and if so I will continue to use Coinbase and recommend it as I have been doing so far.

I ordered 3 coins last Friday as my first ever purchase and was definitely worried they wouldn't arrive on their scheduled date due to all the complaints I had seen about "High risk" transactions once prices dramatically rise.

I received them as promised that very morning at the locked in price from last Friday with absolutely no problems. As I said in another forum, I don't think people talk as much about successful purchases as much as they do about failed ones, giving the appearance that they cancel every purchase whenever the price of bitcoin shoots up.

I hope your transaction goes through! I'm going to give the instant buy verification a try early next week once they get some more in stock

My transactions with them have been smooth as well.

I have had zero problems with coinbase, except one time they got out synch with the blockchain and an email to support was answered and problem solved in under 24 hours.  Once I verified a credit card to get the 'instant' feature turned on, things have been absolutely seamless.

I too was worried about potentially getting the "suspicious activity" reason for cancelling a buy order.  I was especially worried because this was my first very large order and the price of Bitcoin had moved up nicely since I had placed the buy.

Bottom line: no issues at all.  No issues with my bank as well (USAA).  Coinbase delivered my coins exactly when they had promised. 

I too have nothing but positive experience with Coinbase. Every single coin have been delivered so far, even during that huge spike

Have had positive experience with coinbase until recently, withdrew BTC to Fiat on Monday, was supposed to be in my account by Wed. Nothing. Noted that I had supposedly purchased more BTC on Wed (had not done such a thing!) - Then noted that this was supposedly an "adjusting entry" for my previous BTC sell. No idea what that means. Emailed support, 48 hours and no response. I sold the BTC I was "given" - not even sure that it's a valid sale and why I was given BTC at a random price on Wed when I sold at a specific price on Monday. I leave for Tokyo next week and no money in the bank account I was planning on using. Extremely unhappy and concerned.

I had the exact same experience as csargent this past week too. Cashed out BTC was expecting my money in my account on Wed and on Wed nothing was there. I also was not able to sign into my account either because the SMS verification wasn't working for some reason. I emailed them and they got back to me in about 5 hours and said the transfer took about 3-4 days. I could log into my account a few hours later during the day, and my money was in my account on Thursday. I just think their notification of when the money would arrive in the bank account is a bit inaccurate and it depends on the bank. They've never failed me as far as selling/buying, etc. I've never not had things go missing, so my overall experience them has been very good despite my recent worry.

Gonna keep an eye on this thread as it is key that I know who is compromised and who is not

Thanks for posting in such detail

It takes time and I appreciate it

yay for trusting your bitcoins to others.  Please don't whine on here when they go poof, or you have big delays, or whatever.

I'll just continue to buy locally with cash and safekeep my own, without giving up any privacy or control, thanks.

Thumbs up for Coinbase. I only have Positive feedback for them.

However the verification process was a headache, hopefully theres an easier way in the future.

No problems whatsoever. I trust them completely with storing pocket-coins to send around and linking to bank account. I've purchased quite a few coins already and they all have arrived when they were suppose to arrive.

No problem at all. Uptill now don't know about future. But still great site . Would recommend.

Is coinbase acessible only to US cutomers?

Nope. I am indian and transacting!!

It's interesting to hear that lysanderspooner got a response from Coinbase in about 5 hours and withdrawal the next day. I cashed out different amounts of BTC on Monday and Wed, contacted them on Thurs. No response. No money. Hoping all credits to my bank account on Monday. Of course it's  right when I'm leaving for vacation that this would happen and I can't access my funds. Not happy  :-\

I've done well over 50 transactions with Coinbase; all of them have gone well.

I've bought and sold several times now and know to always add an extra business day or two to their estimation to get my money back.  That said the instant buy option is outstanding for when I need some quick funds and they are certainly a crapload better than Mt. Gox to get fiat out of!

That's not saying much.  Mt. Gox has been sitting on my $5k international wire for more than a quarter now.

So far all of my experiences with Coinbase (all me selling) have been good.  I'll be sure and provide an update if that changes.

I've sold 200 bitcoin total with them, and didn't have an issue. This was also prior to all the posts about problems with buy orders.

No, you don't have problems getting fiat out of MtGox, you have problems getting USD out. I don't vouch for MtGox, but you're putting the blame on the wrong entity.

I don't blame Mt. Gox for not sending my $5k wire...I just don't have the insight to know exactly where the problem lies and if there is a solution that they could employ.

I do blame Mt. Gox for giving me false and misleading information about expectations.  They should have said in big bold letters "We cannot allow withdrawls of USD at this time and we do not know when we will be able to do so."  That would have been an honest and appreciated bit of information that I could have used in my planning.

It's quite possible that I'll be doing millions of dollars worth of activity in the coming years and very unlikely that Mt. Gox will see a dime of it since they are have been demonstrably untrustworthy.

I'm not sure how I am putting the blame on the wrong entity when there's a giant thread with people all over the world needing 6+ weeks to get their money out of Gox ;)  In my case yes its USD but I am hardly alone.

Mt Gox is blacklisted from US banks. If you're trying to wire money to/from Gox using a US-based bank, it's either going to be rejected or take an incredibly long time. There might be like 1 US bank that still deals with Gox. I'm not sure if it's due to shady business practices or if the US gov forced the banks to crack down on them after they got those fines for operating without a license.

To Europe isn't much better, if at all. I cancelled a 2K euro withdrawal in late July after getting nothing but BS excuses and failed promises from support after 6 weeks of waiting.
At no point can they ever tell you where you are in the queue except that it's "not your turn yet".
They can cancel withdrawals within seconds though. But no sir, they have no idea about how far to the front or back of the queue you are when you ask them.

For my part I'm planning to keep a claim against Mt. Gox and hope I can use it to see that Karpeles suffers if he screws me.  Even if it cost me even more to do so.  He can send me the money or he can send me the BTC I sold in Aug right before I requested the wire to clear my account.

Try buying from coinbase today... they aren't accepting buy orders until Dec 2.

No problem. Since I've bought from Coinbase both in times of high volatility and in times of low volatility, I thought this would be a good unbiased test to ensure that they are an honest business and not just ripping people off like some other posters say.

My coins are set to arrive at 10:30pm CST today, so I'll update the thread with the results.


I would never try to withdraw from Gox. Best bet would just be to transfer the btc to another exchange and sell there (if you sell more in the future).

Just wanted to let everyone know that I successfully received the coins from both of my orders. It took about 4 business days, which is typical. I ordered when the price was about $570 and now we are at $820.

Just received another 2k via ACH from Coinbase.  Sold on Sunday, had money this morning.

Coinbase takes it's time, but I've done few transactions thu them and they always deliver. The verification process took forever and they insist on texting me an access code every time I log in, but if they've said money will be available Monday at 2pm it was. Just my 2c.

Can you sell BTC from a pending transaction or do you have to wait 5 days before you can sell?

Pending as in you bought coins from them and they aren't in your account yet?  No.

I've bought and sold well in to 3 digits of coins with them and never had an issue. Love coinbase!

By the time I signed up they provided an option to take the 2-factor code via land-line which is good because I live out of cell phone range.  I also don't clear my cache often and don't use incognito mode or similar so I can at least only worry about 2-factor once every 30 days.  I would prefer to have the option to turn off 2-factor auth though.

Validation to level-1 in my case was very quick, and level-1 is all I need for my goals.

As for an update, I had 2 sales from last weekend.  The estimate was Friday.  One was deposited in my account on Wednesday and the other Friday.  So far no deposits have exceeded the estimated dates.

No problems at all with them since I started using them. However, I recently moved most of my coins to my own cold storage for their safety. It was my reaction to BIPS getting hacked. Nothing other than positive feedback is what I would give them, the exception being that their iOS app was removed by Apple, but we all know how Apple is.

I have had good experiences with Coinbase. The only problem is that transactions can take up to a week with them, but that is to be expected when dealing with ACH transfers from banks. I will update this thread if there are any problems in the future.

As for storing bitcoins on Coinbase, I store them in cold storage and suggest anyone else do the same since you probably shouldn't leave your bitcoins on a third-party online wallet.

I'm having a problem with this same issue of a fake "purchase" of bitcoins equal to the amount I sold several days ago. Coinbase calls it an "adjusting entry" and it appears they just put the bitcoins that I sold back into my account and erroneously claim that I "purchased" them back right after I sold them -- which I did not do. I am waiting to hear back from the company in response to a support ticket and email.

Coinbase is a joke.  You're playing russian roulette with coinbase.  Their algorithm is programmed to defraud the customer.  I can't even describe how many things they do that are dishonest/fraudulent.  They cancel deposits on bull markets, cancel withdrawals (yes even withdrawals, lol) on bear markets and much more shady stuff.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=341188.0

You're happy with them because you got coins, and coins went up.  But imagine if your money goes missing for 1-3 weeks and you're wondering "did my money get stolen or not", then after 3 weeks, you realize it has been stolen.  Its like the stab you and then twist the knife.

check this thread out

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375245.0

Sheesh...I'd hate to see your negative feedback!

While I'm here, I've had several more successful sales and cash was deposited in my account on-time.  I've been lucky over the past several weeks and have hit some peaks.  If Coinbase had a mind to line their pockets by fucking with my nicely timed sales, they deferred to do so in my case.  So far.

I still wish that Coinbase adjusted their prices upward more quickly (less dampening.)  My sales have been significantly under Mt. Gox prices which, admittedly, are influenced by operational conditions.  At the end of the day, though, Coinbase gets me $10k chunks promptly whenever I ask while Mt. Gox still has my $5k which they've been sitting on since last summer.

Put on your tin foil hats - some people claimed coinbase is jointly operated by NSA and other government organizations.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=373470.0


Any thoughts? It's sad for crypto when even remotely secure and more influential website has to depend on governmental power for it to work.

It's a completely valid hypothesis.

I would not read to much into the makeup of the investors though.  TPTB are terrified of the occupy-x type stuff and have been heaving buckets of taxpayer dollars into the surveillance state apparatus.  Just about any two-bit company with a few guys who can surf the web can make gobs of money by doing basically nothing of any particular value.  Shrewd investors have put money into a lot of these, and probably in most cases co-incidentally with the money pumped in by the state through the intelligence community investment wings.  So it is hardly surprising to see a lot of these name co-mingled.  Talk about your 'merger of state and corporate power'!  What a witch's brew.  Interesting times we live in here in the U.S.

Back to Coinbase, yes, it is interesting and potentially telling that they seem to get a free ride.  But then so did Gox...until they didn't.  I've always felt it an interesting hypothesis that Coinlabs were supposed to be the focus point (which Coinbase is accused of being in this thread) but something went wrong.  That something may have been Karpeles figuring things out and getting cold feet.  And subsequently being punished.

For my part it does not matter much.  IMHO, Bitcoin is pretty useless for privacy anyway and probably always will be do to design deficiencies.  Eventually something more promising will probably pop up, but most likely only when driven by a real need.  In the mean time I need a way to capitalize on being an early-ish adopter.  Coinbase is doing me right in this regard.  If the NSA is to thank then...well...Thanks NSA.

I'm guessing that they're trying to cancel my withdrawal after the fact, several days later, now that each bitcoin is worth about $350 less than what I sold them for.

Obviously I will not stand for that. I have screenshots of the sale details, transaction history, and an Excel file that Coinbase emailed to me showing that the sale went through and was not canceled. So there is a legal record of how much money they owe me. They just have to send me the money.

I will be emailing their tech support on a daily basis until I get my money, and I'll let the forum know what happens.