Gamblers, be careful with Coinbase!

[dsly]

This would explain why whenever I send an amount to a gambling site lately it never gets confirmed, and put back into my account.

I had my account locked about 3 months back as well. Just had 0.005 in it, never bothered to contact them for it.

[syahrere]

This would explain why whenever I send an amount to a gambling site lately it never gets confirmed, and put back into my account.

I had my account locked about 3 months back as well. Just had 0.005 in it, never bothered to contact them for it.

good one but must wait 3 month back, if you contact them it can back soon maybe, dont have to wait 3 month

[karakhan]

only u.s players or all withdrawers?

[letyouearn]

Ohh. That's really a strange news. Thank God I only use my coinbase account to save small amount of btc in vault.

[angeloanggam]

There will be a time that a certain trusted site will not work correctly.

I hope coinbase could bounce back.

[Marcy]

thanks for info its so helpfull

[romerun]

Is it good enough by withdrawing from coinbase to btc-e then into gambling sites?

[BayAreaCoins]

Is it good enough by withdrawing from coinbase to btc-e then into gambling sites?

Ya. 

Just make sure they aren't giving you back the same coins as you put in.

[Sonny]

Is it good enough by withdrawing from coinbase to btc-e then into gambling sites?

Yup it should work, but then why don't you use btc-e directly or even better use a personal wallet like Bitcoin Core, Multibit or Electrum?

[2dogs]

Wouldn't mixers be good for this purpose?

On second thought, goodbye, Coinbase!

[kpitti]

Pity that we do not see any official statement from Coinbase. This will impact them 

[fred.perth]

ive had my account closed also, played on primedice :/

didnt have any coins so at least i dont have to deal with that at least..

[hopenotlate]

On second thought, goodbye, Coinbase!

This was my first thought btw.
Really can't get why should I use a service where I'm not free on my choices

[stellar69]

On Reddit someone claimed yesterday to be blocked from Coinbase because he used the Bitcoin poker site Seals and/or Betcoin: http://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/2dxuqw/be_careful_seals_users_coinbase_has_blocked_me/

    Upon review of your Coinbase account, we have determined that we can no longer provide you access to Coinbase Services. Please understand that Coinbase is a regulated Money Service Business under the FinCEN division of the U.S. Treasury Department and as such, we are required to review accounts in order to ensure compliance with regulations.

    Gambling is illegal under US law even if you live outside of the US we cannot provide services to your account for the purpose of any type of gambling activity.

    Please note that we have not blocked access to the bitcoin balance currently in your Coinbase account; while we can no longer process transactions of this bitcoin via our banking relationship, you may send this bitcoin to a local wallet or another bitcoin address.

    In the event that your controls change and you are able to prevent such activity from occurring on your platform please let us know and we’d be happy to review your compliance program and evaluate your account to see if we can support it in the future.

Seals uses unique deposit addresses and AFAIK pretty random withdrawal addresses, so I am not sure how they could recognize that.

Betcoin seems to use 1 main hot wallet according to the comments: https://blockchain.info/address/1NyjjRGuBZ1FUSwrgizjZeHTM83RNh5uWr so that is more obvious.

So it seems Coinbase is at least tracking known hot wallets from gambling sites. Generally gambling sites will use unique random withdrawal addresses or other users' deposit addresses, but some obviously not. If you use Coinbase and you gamble, ideally have a normal desktop or blockchain.info wallet in between and don't deposit/withdrawal immediately from/to Coinbase.


edit1: Confirmation from another site than Seals or Betcoin:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2e2yxr/beware_coinbase_is_banning_accounts_that_play_on/

In the last day we have had players who found their Coinbase account closed because they withdrew coins from SatoshiBet.com to their Coinbase account.

We heard similar stories from other gambling sites (Seals with Clubs, Betcoin, ...)

Switch to Blockchain.info folks.

If anyone has more information it would be great to hear it.


TL;DR: coinbase is blocking accounts that get withdrawals from gambling sites.

If gambling is illegal in US, then why the fuck was the user gambling? Coinbase was fully justified in doing this.

On second thought, goodbye, Coinbase!

This was my first thought btw.
Really can't get why should I use a service where I'm not free on my choices

My first thought: Why do you guys even use coinbase when you already have other wallets?

[bitcoinmining]

This would explain why whenever I send an amount to a gambling site lately it never gets confirmed, and put back into my account.

I had my account locked about 3 months back as well. Just had 0.005 in it, never bothered to contact them for it.

Imagine that there are 1,000 customers like you and that makes 5 BTC easy profit for Coinbase. C'mon guys, if you didn't do illegal things there is always a reason to investigate your locked account.

[stellar69]

They don't have choice. At least they haven't locked the account.
So, looks like coinbase isn't suited for most bitcoiners especially gamblers.

Yes, they arnt the best to use.
The best is downloading tour own wallet and using it. Noone can do anything with you then(except for kids, who delete whatever they see on pc).

[GenieBTC]

How is coinbase dealing with this?

[Itun]

It is disturbing Coinbase is at least trying to monitor the bitcoin traffic but

how are they doing this?

Unless the transactions are blatantly obvious (i.e. notes saying it's for gambling), this is going to be hard.

[edmonddantes]

Coinbase is too legal to use!
Just read there term & conditions,you will be amazed

[manicminer]

Let's put it all together about Coinbase (at least, from my, EU-resident perspective)

- Is Coinbase registered in any EU country as a money service? They deal with European fiat money, too

- I personally am not a gambler, but I have no influence whatever (considered dirty) bitcoins my friend would deposit into my account when trading. If I understand correctly from all the available information, Coinbase can have problems with incoming bitcoins

- If I understand correctly from all the available information, Coinbase can have problems with outgoing bitcoins as well; even if I'm not transferring to a gambling site, if I were just to transfer to another exchange's wallet Coinbase would label me as a money transmitter or something, and flag my account.

Still, for some reasons I'd use hosted wallets for convenience such as trading small amount with friends in person, buying coffee. Anything but Coinbase, kind of? Coinbase would be perfect just for the above purposes; free transfers, bitcoin starts to appearing on the account in 5 minutes or half a confirmation.

So, can you confirm that Coinbase can have problems with both incoming and outgoing bitcoins, or only in one direction? If only in one direction, then I may still fit it somewhere in my wallet (only wallet, no connection to fiat) portfolio, if it has problem with both incoming and outgoing, then I may conclude if you live in the free world (from a banking perspective that means outside the US), you have no reason whatsoever to use Coinbase.