Allegedly Coinbase prevented 1,000 customers From Sending Funds to the Hackers

[Anonylz]

Crypto exchange Coinbase has said that it prevented little over 1,100 customers from sending bitcoin to Twitter hackers who hijacked high-profile accounts to advertise a bitcoin scam last week.

If Coinbase didn't take the step, these customers would have collectively sent 30.4 bitcoin (currently worth about $278,000) to hackers, the exchange's chief information security officer, Philip Martin, told Forbes. Notably, this amount is more than twice the actual amount ($121,000) that hackers collected via victims.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/72200/coinbase-says-it-prevented-over-1000-customers-from-sending-280000-worth-of-bitcoin-to-twitter-hackers

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Excellent operational work. If all exchanges had taken such measures in time, the hackers would probably have received significantly less.
What do you think?

Very good move by the coinbase team, but i wonder how they managed to figure this out that the receiver's address is for hackers or they where just being suspicious?
If other exchange were more observant as coinbase was, they would have been able to prevent those who fall victim from sending their funds across,  am still finding it hard to believe people can just send over their money so easily to any information they come across online without any proper verification.

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[CarnagexD]

Excellent operational work. If all exchanges had taken such measures in time, the hackers would probably have received significantly less.
What do you think?

Just this time, coinbase had performed its duty to safeguard the funds of its client.  Honestly it is a good job for them in preventing their 1000 clients from losing money on that recent scam attempt.  Just for this moment, even though we experienced bad Customer Service from them, we should at least be appreciative to the fast action of blacklisting the scammer address to prevent further damage to their customers.

This is what we should look for in an exchange, protecting us from those hackers by cancelling transactions if they are suspicious. Coinbase will surely increase and improve its reputation towards other people who are looking for a good crypto exchange. We need more of this and I hope that Coinbase should be a role model for other exchange to have a high security and safety in its customer's transactions. Imagine, 30.4 bitcoin that is equivalent to $278,000, and that's a huge amount of asset. If Coinbase didn't prevent that sending of money, probably those hackers will celebrate, but we are glad that Coinbase did its responsibility as an exchange.

[ranochigo]

It's good that Coinbase has done something good in this case and it is something to applaud for. However, it's still a fact that Coinbase has the control and can dictate who has access to your coins and your Coinbase account. This is something that demonstrates their power albeit in something that portray them in a good light.

It's definitely not a point for people to encourage users to start using shared online wallets which gives the third party the rights to stop or freeze your coins.

[batang_bitcoin]

That was a quick action and good feedback from Coinbase. They've managed to prevent their users to send funds to the scam address which we have to appreciate what they've done to counter those scammers at least. I think this will also wake up the other exchanges to have that certain staff or department to monitor about sudden scams and to block those addresses that's being shown with those websites or link shared to their users. That will prevent and if not, it will lessen the number of potential victims.

[FinneysTrueVision]

It's disturbing to know that so many bitcoins are in the hands of centralized custodians. Since Coinbase owns the keys those are their bitcoin, not their customers. All they did was protecting their own funds which is the reasonable thing to do.

[witcher_sense]

Coinbase and some other exchanges did a great work in preventing their customers from transacting where they wanted to. What if I want to send my money to scammers, I understand risks and this is my conscious decision? I can't really, because this money is not mine, this money belongs to exchange. They decide for me what I can spend "my" bitcoin on. Actually, this situation is very dangerous for bitcoin adoption, people become used to some third party organizations holding and controlling customer's bitcoin. At some point, bitcoin can repeat the history of gold, that part when gold became centralized and forcibly exchanged for paper money.

[Gotumoot]

Great move by coinbase to help their customers on securing their funds I hope more online wallet would take action like this to prevent their customer from getting scammed in the future.
And to stop or lessen the scam on the internet lets just hope that more people would also help prevent some scam like this by reporting it to the developers of online wallets and even in exchange.

[erikoy]

It's disturbing to know that so many bitcoins are in the hands of centralized custodians. Since Coinbase owns the keys those are their bitcoin, not their customers. All they did was protecting their own funds which is the reasonable thing to do.

This because bitcoin has shown great potential when it comes to business. Owning itself is already considered as investment. While it is in the hands of these centralized groups or organizations there will be a good reason from them to keep it. This is why I just thought that these bitcoins at their hands might potentially will be involve to business. Well, only them can tell on these holdings and I have a good perception that it could be good for the cryptocurrency system itself.

[alani123]

This is an example of how ethical address tracing can prevent loss of funds.
However, all thanks to Coinbase bragging about it, next time the scammers will know to create a new address each time.
This one simple trick that bitcoin wallets teach you about as soon as you download them... This time Coinbase was one step ahead. Probably not the next one though.  

[Kakmakr]

I have to tell you, I am not a big fan of centralized services, because I think they are destroying Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision for Bitcoin... but when I see things like this happening, I think Satoshi would agree that it is a necessary evil for services like this to exist. 

As always, we have two side to a coin.. and the other bad side is that decisions might be made to not allow Bitcoin donations to controversial organizations.. like WikiLeaks by these centralized organizations. (Like what was done by centralized Banks in recent history)

Bitcoin is a payment options, so there will always be criminals that would exploit or scam people and it is no different with any other kind of payment option. (How many people have been scammed with cash payments, compared to Bitcoin?... answer... Millions) 

[btc_angela]

It's good that Coinbase has done something good in this case and it is something to applaud for. However, it's still a fact that Coinbase has the control and can dictate who has access to your coins and your Coinbase account. This is something that demonstrates their power albeit in something that portray them in a good light.

It's definitely not a point for people to encourage users to start using shared online wallets which gives the third party the rights to stop or freeze your coins.

Give and take, pros and cons, they have done something good and has stop deposits from scammers but at the same time, you can just imagine the control they have in our wallets.

And I agree that it shows that we shouldn't trust any services specially shared online wallet that we don't have total control of because there are instances that they can freeze our coins anytime that want.

[plvbob0070]

Focusing on the action Coinbase did with the recent issue, they really did a good job preventing 1000 customers from sending funds to the hacker. Without taking immediate action, the hacker could have got such a huge amount of money from the customers that could lead to a much bigger problem.

Great move by coinbase to help their customers on securing their funds I hope more online wallet would take action like this to prevent their customer from getting scammed in the future.
And to stop or lessen the scam on the internet lets just hope that more people would also help prevent some scam like this by reporting it to the developers of online wallets and even in exchange.

With the recent incident, I think exchanges will also learn from it to prevent the same scenarios from happening again. But it's not just about them since customers are also responsible for sending funds.

[LogitechMouse]

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Not using Coinbase here but on this part, they deserve a bit of a recognition in what they did. They saved the investors from getting scammed. They reacted fast with this so thanks to the team.

Well this incident too of hacking is just a proof that the security system of different social media platforms must be upgraded. Still kudos to Coinbase for reacting fast with this incident. I also believe that this thing will happen in the future though.

[Ucy]

I wonder how the company did this. I am usually cautious before approving or disapproving this kind of approach. It could be abused in the future(not necessarily by the company), even though it may have been used well today. You could aswell be prevented from sending money to innocent people/addresses.

I believe it should be possible to blacklist or tag addresses used by proven criminals to commit crime. But it should be done decentrally, with checks and balances.
Imagine creating a seperate decentralized application/community to report or mark proven scams addresses to enable validators reject all transactions entering into the addresses.
Such community has to be guided by clear rules, be transparent, immutable, permissionless/trustless, anonymous/private, consensus-driven, etc

[bitcoinst]

I have to tell you, I am not a big fan of centralized services, because I think they are destroying Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision for Bitcoin... but when I see things like this happening, I think Satoshi would agree that it is a necessary evil for services like this to exist. 

Everything is correct. Basically, we don't have much choice. Centralized services occupy most of the crypto market, which means that we cannot just get rid of them, and most likely in the near future they will continue to increase their influence. All we can and should do is to provide such services with an appropriate level of security. In this case, Coinbase intervened in the personal affairs of users, but thereby saved them from mistake.

Bitcoin is a payment options, so there will always be criminals that would exploit or scam people and it is no different with any other kind of payment option. (How many people have been scammed with cash payments, compared to Bitcoin?... answer... Millions) 

Bitcoin, like many cryptocurrencies, expands opportunities for everyone, both for ordinary people and for criminal elements. This is a side effect in our culture.
We do not know how high the turnover of these elements is, but we can assume that the turnover of drug money laundering in our usual offline casinos can easily exceed these amounts.

[Lorence.xD]

This time, Coinbase makes good things by preventing the customer from sending funds to hackers. I hope that more twitter users will be aware of this, so they don't need to send the money. If Coinbase can do another thing like this, people will think that Coinbase wants to protect their customer from hackers, which can be a good promotion from Coinbase.

Indeed it is a good thing, but these measures are a band-aid solution to a growing problem. This will only make these scums make a counter measure. This is a step though which is nice.

[Lucius]

There's something good about this, someone prevented someone from doing something stupid - but what message is it sending to us? The first is that custodial service isn't a bad thing because it can prevent users from falling in to scams, but what actually comes out of the whole story is that some users are pretty naive and fall for the cheapest tricks.

What a paradox, users of decentralized cryptocurrency Bitcoin saved from scam by the world's most famous crypto bank. If it weren’t tragic it would be ridiculous what perception some have today about what they’ve really invested in, but given that their ignorance obviously has a very high level, Coinbase is the ideal place for their coins.

[gentlemand]

Very good move by the coinbase team, but i wonder how they managed to figure this out that the receiver's address is for hackers or they where just being suspicious?

Because those tweets followed the same painfully obvious way of operating as all the other trillions of giveaway scams. This is makes it doubly flabbergasting that anyone would fall for it.

If I were running Coinbase I'd tell those fucking morons they weren't able to withdraw their coins until they'd passed an IQ test.

[stompix]

What a paradox, users of decentralized cryptocurrency Bitcoin saved from scam by the world's most famous crypto bank. If it weren’t tragic it would be ridiculous what perception some have today about what they’ve really invested in, but given that their ignorance obviously has a very high level, Coinbase is the ideal place for their coins.

Banks are good!
They've prevented bad actions for their customers and safeguarded their funds.
We should all put our money in Coinbase's wallets since they acted so responsible.

/s

What lesson we've learned here? (assuming the statement from coinbase is true and is not publicity lie)
That some people simply need a service like that, they need a bank that prevents them from sending money to a Nigerian prince, they need a credit card company that can make chargebacks on buying fake covid medicine, they need a teller asking them twice if they really want to empty their account and send the money to this individual across the globe.

Pretty obvious, bitcoin is not for everyone and not everyone can be their own bank

If I were running Coinbase I'd tell those fucking morons they weren't able to withdraw their coins until they'd passed an IQ test.

If they would do that will all their clients they would probably have more coins than Satoshi.

[ChiBitCTy]

This is quite interesting that Coinbase actually does some good that is not based on something that benefits themselves.  That said, I would still not ever use Coinbase again.  They are a scummy/untrustworthy company that is all about what's best for themselves not the community.