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

[20kevin20]

So they prevented the transfer of Bitcoins to a certain scammy address, but should we feel good that there is some kind of prevention around here or should we rage over Coinbase for literally blocking an address from their platform?

The motive is great, but this reminds me of that time CZ wanted to do a block rewind after the Binance hack.

What lesson we've learned here? (assuming the statement from coinbase is true and is not publicity lie)

Besides what you mentioned, this should be a lesson for some newcomers out there: custodial wallet means your address could be censored at Brian's tip of the finger.

This is quite interesting that Coinbase actually does some good that is not based on something that benefits themselves.

I'm quite sure they did have some people registering on their platform specifically because they blocked addresses found to be owned by the scammers.

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[audaciousbeing]

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?

Irrespective of the independence that they have taken away from their customers, I think there is still some good in this for them to protect their customers but at the same time they should not just assume that is the way to do things in the crypto world because it means that they can then just go an blacklists some wallet address even though it might be legitimate transactions that is going on between parties. But this really is a good one and should be commendable and also they should do well to enlighten their customers not to be too greedy.

[The Cryptovator]

To be honest, I had noticed from coinbase warning about the Twitter hack. When saw the warning notice on coinbase then I enter the forum to read more and realized there are going something suspicious. I have been using coinbase to sell my bitcoin locally since there are no fees. But handle only a small amount for a small-time. So I could say that was a great decision by the coinbase team to prevent their users from scammers. Warning popups & block transactions were real-time actions. Hope other exchange will follow the same thing in the near future if anything happens like this. Whoever controlling their fund via non-custodial wallet, usually they are enough clever and should be able to detect generic scams. Otherwise, no one could save them.

[htsy585]

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

This was quite a nice move from coinbase, atleast this prevented +1000 misinformed crypto users who thought doubling there assets would be that easy from falling victim of the twitter hack. I would have said freezing the transfer of users is against everything cryptocurrency and blockchain stands for but then again, they are centralized exchange with full access and jurisdictions not to talk of the fact that it was done for a common good! Kudos to coinbase team!

[DeathAngel]

Kudos to Coinbase for the proactive/preventative measures but it really makes you wonder, doesn’t it. Supposedly 1,100 were willing to be fooled by such a dumb scam attempt. Us bitcoin'ers are supposed to be intelligent people.

[bearexin]

Wow, I saw that news this morning and I have to say that they did a really good job in protecting the funds of their customers who are of course dumb lol. I don’t know why people would think that such a thing is real. Who on earth will tell you to send money to them so that they can double it when you’re not in gambling for sure?

Imagine how much these hackers would have gotten if Coinbase didn’t take this timely action. They would have gotten three times of the amount they got . It’s high time people get wise and stop rushing into just anything they see. I am just wondering if any of coinbase user cum this forum Bremen will share their experience to confirm this news? Because, I am really concerning about about coinbase's this timely action.

[aundroid]

What lesson we've learned here? (assuming the statement from coinbase is true and is not publicity lie)

lesson 1: "send me btc, I will send you back the double amount" works every time
lesson 2: Idiots never die out
lesson 3: A lot of people out there better not be "their own bank"

[Yaunfitda]

Do we need to give Coinbase a pat in the back here? They take measures to prevent "1,100" customers, supposedly,however, where are Coinbase support when you needed them? Specially the downtime pattern we've seen in the past from them, when the price of bitcoin suddenly spike?  .

Why not? They deserve a little praise for quick reaction. But people should clearly understand that using exchanges as your wallet is a net negative, because you take risks of getting your account hacked or frozen, the exchange itself can get hacked, there's KYC and so on. And there's too little positive sides, in this case they only prevented people from sending coins because it was very well known scam. They can't do anything against smaller or smarter scams, so it might create a false sense of security.

Ok, I'll give credit where credit is due, they did their part to prevent more people to send bitcoin to the scammers, so that's a good thing., protecting their customers. But it is a scary thought that this exchanges had obviously total control of your bitcoins and this should be a very big lesson for everyone not to put your confidence to these centralised exchanges.

[Idrix1]

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

I can't agree more, the amount the hackers parted with would have been much lesser if at all mega exchanges like binance, bittrex, okex and kucoin blacklisted the hackers bitcoim wallet and prevented users from sending funds to such wallet just like coinbase did. Coinbase deserves appreciation for such a wonderful move and people need to stop being greedy and naive to avoid futher scam schemes such as this henceforth

[ene1980]

Do we need to give Coinbase a pat in the back here? They take measures to prevent "1,100" customers, supposedly,however, where are Coinbase support when you needed them? Specially the downtime pattern we've seen in the past from them, when the price of bitcoin suddenly spike?  .

This is the question i have in mind and i am not using them for a very long time but are they monitoring all the transaction that are made or is it just a publicity stunt because i have not seen anyone complaining that their transactions are not going through anywhere and if there were over thousand customers who were not able to send the transaction you will end up seeing complaints publicly.

[Viscore]

That is supposedly a thing to do in order to protect their reputation and found not accountable for being affiliated with the scammers. Crypto holders will find themselves comfortable with when the saw how the site protecting their clients.

Good job Coinbase, you prove to be worthy of our trust and that you should have to sustain. It is worth admirable for the other sites to monitor every transaction that it looks suspicious and investigate, in this way we can prevent this kind of event.

[shoreno]

this sounds impossible  . with the number of accounts hacked , how will they collect all those address and how can they be able to block sending those funds to that address  . never experienced it to any wallet that i use but they only say that transaction are ireversible and they dont have any control to the funds once you sent it   .  maybe coinbase only give a warning on their page or on thier wallet upon you open it  . thats still fine atleast they are concern compare to other wallet providers out there  .

[Debonaire217]

This is one of the characteristics that an exchange should have, they are fully aware of their service and transactions happening through their platform is completely monitored. Many people say that regulations aren't really needed for bitcoin, maybe this kind of scenario explains it all, that it wasn't bad for us if we provide our real identity to trusted exchanges, the process may take longer but the fact that they are securing our funds and transaction should be more prioritized than us having complete anonymity. Great action to Coinbase, indeed.

[Wexnident]

Well, Coinbase finally did something in exchange for how bad their site is. Now, only if coinbase were to run their exchange properly, with this move of theirs, I'd properly address them as one of the best even at the current moment.  I suppose all major exchanges should have some sort of central news system that lets them update about news regarding such issues so they can freeze the said accounts on their exchanges to prevent more hacks like this. Coinbase did pretty well imo, and even if it wasn't actually a hack, at the very least, they avoided the worst possible situation and could just provide explanation to their custoimers. I for one would agree to them suddenly freezing my account, as long as the reason is understandable like this one that is, compared to me losing my funds due to a scam.

lesson 1: "send me btc, I will send you back the double amount" works every time
lesson 2: Idiots never die out
lesson 3: A lot of people out there better not be "their own bank"

Well, you can't 100% blame them for this one. It was official accounts of famous people, ones that have the capital to actually do the double amount scam that's been a trend since 2017. Still, they can take part of the blame, but not fully imo. After all, it's not like they can immediately tell that something was wrong, especially if they're only following one official account that got hacked. If they saw that multiple famous persons were doing the same thing, they'd probably find something suspicious after all.

[slaman29]

Like stompix above says, and what I have also told people in the past before, very clearly, Bitcoin is not for everyone. If you would rather trust someone else to take care of your money, and to help you prevent your idiot self from falling for scams, then Coinbase is good for you. I would even just hire my mother to take care of my Coinbase and advice me on every financial decision if I were you, guys who trust Coinbase and would send bitcoin to scammers.

[rodskee]

Great move for the coinbase. It prevented the possibility of losing money.

If this wasn't a lie or for the sake of publicity then yes a big Kudos for Coinbase.

If there are always huge transactions or there would be a big amount of money transferring to other crypto addresses, the exchanging platform could give doubt about it because it's their part of security, they are just making things sure.

Not sure since base from OP its a collective transaction and the system manage to
detect that funds will be transfer to one
Address and they prevent it to happen, a good thing since the recipients is the
address of the hackers.

Coinbase is really familiar with such scams or the nature of the crypto world. Coinbase should receive big appreciations.

Again, if this is not jus for publicities they really deserve that, such actions to
help their customers to prevent being scammed.

[aundroid]

lesson 1: "send me btc, I will send you back the double amount" works every time
lesson 2: Idiots never die out
lesson 3: A lot of people out there better not be "their own bank"

Well, you can't 100% blame them for this one. It was official accounts of famous people, ones that have the capital to actually do the double amount scam that's been a trend since 2017. Still, they can take part of the blame, but not fully imo. After all, it's not like they can immediately tell that something was wrong, especially if they're only following one official account that got hacked. If they saw that multiple famous persons were doing the same thing, they'd probably find something suspicious after all.

Anybody who falls for that kind of scam is gonna have themselves to blame. period.
Anyone with a spark of common sense should realize that no one simply returns twice the amount of anything.

In German we have a proverb for this behaviour: "Greed eats brains" 

[hatshepsut93]

Ok, I'll give credit where credit is due, they did their part to prevent more people to send bitcoin to the scammers, so that's a good thing., protecting their customers. But it is a scary thought that this exchanges had obviously total control of your bitcoins and this should be a very big lesson for everyone not to put your confidence to these centralised exchanges.

Yeah, but we have known this for a long time, probably since the Mt Gox or even earlier. The whole point of Bitcoin was to not trust someone else with storing your money.

Theoretically, something similar to what Coinbase did could be achieved in a more decentralized manner - it might be possible to make a scraper and database for this type of scams and make a public API, so that wallets could warn the users about potentially fraudulent addresses, but it also comes with risks to privacy and it requires a bit of trust in central authority. Still, it's better because it's just a suggestion, the user still controls their key.

[FinneysTrueVision]

I remember when I first got into bitcoin, Coinbase used to be my main wallet. They never prevented me from getting scammed by fake cloud mining services.

[Wawa2013]

Coinbase action now I must give appreciation to prevent and freeze suspicious transactions, especially related to sending funds
to the twitter hackers that recently occurred. The actions taken by Coinbase could save 1000 customers, this is something that
must be copied by other exchanges.