Forced Off Coinbase

Just a quick vent to go along with the numerous related topics I've found searching on here, the Coinbase Reddit, the Cryptocurrency Reddit, etc... It seems common to dismiss these stories as bots or made up for some reason. So I'll say this, I'm not a bot, which I'm sure is exactly what a bot would say haha. I'm just a regular guy who has been interested in Bitcoin for years.

My Coinbase account is relatively old, so it's not like I just created it and started setting off new user flags if that's a thing. Very minimal use of it though. I created it sometime in early 2020, bought a small amount of Bitcoin to make a purchase, but never ended up using it so I sold for a small profit and the account basically wasn't being used. I more recently took a big interest again when it dipped way down.

Long story short, I got back on my account and funded it with my linked bank account. This time larger amounts, started small to test, then eventually a couple larger transfers (about enough to buy a whole coin). The majority was sitting in USDC as I was waiting for a dip. I made a small purchase of Bitcoin (200ish $) to buy from a private seller, the purchase went off without a hitch, seller sent me the send link, I sent, they received, I received my items about a week later. All good, right? I made a couple more larger buys of Bitcoin after that, one for around $1k worth, then next for around $10k worth. This was all within about the past month, so my account had a majority sitting in USDC and a small portion in Bitcoin.

Cue email from Coinbase. Here's the gist....

"As the most trusted crypto exchange, Coinbase takes a number of steps to keep your account safe, and we actively monitor for unusual activity and scams that may affect our customers. Based on this monitoring, we are concerned you may have sent, or are trying to send, crypto to a fraudulent person or platform.

Out of an abundance of caution and to protect you against potential loss, we have temporarily limited your ability to send additional crypto until June 22, 2024. This restriction will be removed automatically as the set time period elapses."

My account history is only what I laid out above. For those who immediately jump to "oh yeah sure you must've been doing shady shit." I think my activity was all pretty normal. Like I said the seller I sent to had no issues and I received my items in return, they are well reviewed and regularly used by others.

Anyway, I tried the Coinbase chat support, and like others say they're useless. Basically told me what the email said. They said they can't expedite it, just have to wait for the date in the email. Turned out they also stopped my ability to buy, even though I wouldn't with them randomly restricting my ability to send. It just all seemed very sudden and unjustified by what I can tell.

With that said I've lost faith in Coinbase, and luckily I can still withdraw my funds and sell my current positions in Bitcoin. Oh and yes I also checked the website for any messages about verification or security steps, there was nothing but I added all the 2FA etc just to see if that would help but it didn't. I'm in the process of getting a Kraken Pro account opened, verified, linked up, etc... I've already started withdrawing everything from Coinbase. This is frustrating and makes you a bit uneasy with the lack of information or support how they can just lock you out. I've seen other posts with similar issues, so I'm hoping Kraken might be better. Yes I have cold storage and I'll be moving my stuff onto that, but Coinbase beat me to the punch before I could even start that process.