I sold 5 BTC on December 6th: http://d.pr/i/n9Zc<p>Couple of days later the BTC showed up again in my account saying they needed to "offset" my transaction which makes no sense because I originally purchased the BTC using Coinbase. I let it be. On December 13th I got a notice saying that the sale had finally completed and so I waited hoping any day my bank account would be credited with $4,118.94.<p>Instead of the money, they added a transaction to my account saying that I had "Purchased" 5 Bitcoins which I never did. So now instead of having sold 5 BTC at $832. I'm holding 5 BTC at a much lower price which I never wanted. How convenient Coinbase. You obviously benefited from my sale because you sold my coins to someone. And now you conveniently added it back into my account since the price is lower.<p>The worst part of all this is that I have opened support tickets, tweeted at them, wrote an email directly to the CEO Brian Armstrong. And there is nothing but silence. I even wrote a blog post: amit.roon.io/an-open-letter-to-coinbase<p>Things can go wrong in a fast growing startup but ignoring customers is the worst thing you can do.
I will refrain from calling out coinbase for their alleged improper management and execution of transactions(alleged by me in great details in the previous threads) due to retracting a couple of my comments (on my own behest) due to drawing conclusions based on misunderstanding a reply to one of my posts. I have decided to subdue my biases against CoinBase practices for a few days for health reasons.<p>But, some of the issues that were highlighted may be prevalent here, as they do seem to behave like an exchange (even though they are allegedly not one even though they fit the definition).<p>Before someone points this out, its true that bitcoin is not recognized as a currency in the US, but it is considered a security by SECs definition of what a security is.<p>By CoinBase's definition they buy and subsequently sell or buy-back BTC like an ecommerce product. Wonder why an e-commerce product previously sold by them would be "offset" or reversed due to potentially fraudulent activity?<p>Also, it can be alleged that the OP is not being completely forthright about the full story? I don't believe that the OP is hiding anything.<p>If the OP did send and receive BTC thus technically having different BTC than the ones CoinBase sold to the OP is there any reason that all incoming BTC transactions cannot be classified as fraudulent?<p>I will not personally answer any of these questions even though I want to.<p>The previous threads are at:
[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705</a>
[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933360" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933360</a><p>edit: spelling and grammar
You only need to know two things about BTC. Both courtesy of @ReformedBroker (but origin may of course be elsewhere).<p>Don't get me wrong, I really really really wish that a practical and honest and low-friction anonymous virtual currency existed. It doesn't currently. Bitcoin isn't it.<p>1) "You know what's cooler than a million dollars? Virtual currency backed by nothing and nobody."<p>2) The second explains BTC using a Venn diagram. If you don't understand this diagram, you're the ideal BTC user.
<a href="http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2013/11/20/bitcoin-likely-users-venn-diagram/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2013/11/20/bitcoin-likely-u...</a>
They probably reversed it because they (wrongly) suspected fraud. I'm sure it's well within their Terms of Service.<p>You're the one gambling money on an unproven digital currency, created by an anonymous person on the internet, via an unproven and completely overwhelmed little startup. If you can't handle losing money on a failed transaction then don't play the game.