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I cannot recommend Coinbase at all. I operate an adult comic book publisher and they shutdown our account without notice and gave no real reason for their actio

I cannot recommend Coinbase at all. I operate an adult comic book publisher and they shutdown our account without notice and gave no real reason for their action. All support tickets took 3 - 5 days to get a reply and it was always unhelpful. For a company like ours the whole appeal of Bitcoin is the anonymity, so our readers don't have to worry about buying lewd comics and having it show up on their statements. Coinbase tarnishes what Bitcoin stands for and they do not protect artists/publishers. Edit: For transparency here is my back and forth with their support (http://imgur.com/CHeAEPP http://imgur.com/CHeAEPP) and the link to one of our books on Amazon I shared (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1634420241/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1634420241/ [NSFW]). Ironically I've been waiting on a reply from them for 22 days and counting. They have about $5,000 in our disabled account along with all our customer/order information that we can't access. Do not use Coinbase.

FooNull 11y ago
Can you recommend something better? Can anyone in this comment section recommend a better service? I'm an artist who wants to use bitcoins for nearly an identical reason. However, there have been two big limiting factors, which have prevented my supporters and artist peers from using bitcoin. 1) It isn't clear how they get money into and out of the system. - The artists don't want a bunch of 'bitcoins' that they don't know what to do with - The supporters don't own any bitcoins, and don't know where to get them. 2) They are afraid that bitcoin will crash and they will lose all their money. It's easy enough to dissuade the fears about the second point by 'cashing out' right away. But what are the best options out there to allow the average user to put their money into bitcoin, and to allow not-so-technical users to get money out of bitcoin and into their bank? Coinbase is the only service I've found to 'easily' do this, so far. Even at the cost of my anonymity. :(
- boling11 11y ago
  I'm working on something that solves this problem. Can you shoot me a note? Email: b@privacy.com
- rickycook 11y ago
  coinjar. and they've had a Bitcoin debit card for about 6months ^.^
- pakled_engineer 11y ago
  There's also Bitpay, they do the same thing coinbase does for merchants in fact most of the exchanges have some kind of merchant API so you can immediately sell coins. You could also make an agreement with somebody on your localbitcoins.com city listing, but then you run into fees and possibly fluctuations since they won't be a 24/7 service like bitpay or coinbase. Localbitcoins may have an API to automatically make a sell listing I'm not sure, I use IRC still to trade.
  - sachingulaya 11y ago
    Amusingly, bitpay told me I wasnt eligible to use their services because I vend electronic cigarettes. Too risky for them... not too risky for my cc merchant though.
T3RMINATED 11y ago
i was Banned too
gohrt 11y ago
$5000 seems substantial enough to involve law enforcement. Presumably Coinbase performed a transaction involving them receiving BTC, and then instructing you to deliver your product. Why would they not pay you as soon as you deliver, unless they are making a fraud claim on behalf of their customer?
clolege 11y ago
I've had the same exact experience. They locked my account for weeks without response to my emails, and when they finally get back to me they told me that I'm "ineligible to use their service" but without ever a reason why. The entire ordeal was really frustrating and I would strongly recommend against their service also.
eco 11y ago
Sounds like Bitcoin may have finally gotten its PayPal.
barmstrong 11y ago
Coinbase CEO here, I can sympathize that this was probably frustrating but I think it stems from a misunderstanding about the service that Coinbase provides. In a purely bitcoin to bitcoin world, this sort of transaction would not be an issue and you wouldn't have a risk of an account being closed. But you're not trying to do a purely bitcoin transaction here - you are trying to exchange bitcoin into your local currency and put the funds in your bank account (this is what we offer with our merchant tools). To offer this service, we (Coinbase) work with those bank rules and that is why you are seeing our service act much like the traditional financial world. You might not like this, but we didn't make those rules, and it is the only way I know of that works if you want to exchange bitcoin in the traditional financial world. (John's answer from the support thread you linked also explains this). Accepting purely bitcoin-to-bitcoin payments would be one solution that might work for this if that is what you want (there are plenty of other solutions other than Coinbase for this). I should mention that we are probably at fault for marketing it more as a bitcoin wallet vs an exchange which has different implications to people (I think this is part of the reason for the confusion). Finally, I believe you may be mistaken that you can't access the $5k in funds. Are you sure? This page describes our policy on that topic: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1905680-does-coinbase-freeze-accounts- https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/190568...
- fandango 11y ago
  You still didn't answer the original question though. Why can't he do business with you? Perhaps you are not legally obliged to give a reason, but it would definitely make you look a lot better then simply saying "uhuh, not here buddy". I think you can't have it both ways, ignoring support questions and not having to deal with backlash like this.
  - barmstrong 11y ago
    I think I did answer the question. He can't do business with us because our bank partners don't want to support certain types of businesses. If you are wondering why the banks don't want to support certain types of businesses, I could only speculate but I'd guess it is reputation risk and they may have seen that category as a front for other illegal activity in the past. But that is their decision to make, not ours. For example, Stripe also prohibits adult content which is largely (I would guess) a result of input from Wells Fargo https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

FooNull 11y ago

Can you recommend something better? Can anyone in this comment section recommend a better service? I'm an artist who wants to use bitcoins for nearly an identical reason. However, there have been two big limiting factors, which have prevented my supporters and artist peers from using bitcoin. 1) It isn't clear how they get money into and out of the system. - The artists don't want a bunch of 'bitcoins' that they don't know what to do with - The supporters don't own any bitcoins, and don't know where to get them. 2) They are afraid that bitcoin will crash and they will lose all their money. It's easy enough to dissuade the fears about the second point by 'cashing out' right away. But what are the best options out there to allow the average user to put their money into bitcoin, and to allow not-so-technical users to get money out of bitcoin and into their bank? Coinbase is the only service I've found to 'easily' do this, so far. Even at the cost of my anonymity. :(

boling11 11y ago
I'm working on something that solves this problem. Can you shoot me a note? Email: b@privacy.com
rickycook 11y ago
coinjar. and they've had a Bitcoin debit card for about 6months ^.^
pakled_engineer 11y ago
There's also Bitpay, they do the same thing coinbase does for merchants in fact most of the exchanges have some kind of merchant API so you can immediately sell coins. You could also make an agreement with somebody on your localbitcoins.com city listing, but then you run into fees and possibly fluctuations since they won't be a 24/7 service like bitpay or coinbase. Localbitcoins may have an API to automatically make a sell listing I'm not sure, I use IRC still to trade.
- sachingulaya 11y ago
  Amusingly, bitpay told me I wasnt eligible to use their services because I vend electronic cigarettes. Too risky for them... not too risky for my cc merchant though.

T3RMINATED 11y ago

i was Banned too

gohrt 11y ago

$5000 seems substantial enough to involve law enforcement. Presumably Coinbase performed a transaction involving them receiving BTC, and then instructing you to deliver your product. Why would they not pay you as soon as you deliver, unless they are making a fraud claim on behalf of their customer?

clolege 11y ago

I've had the same exact experience. They locked my account for weeks without response to my emails, and when they finally get back to me they told me that I'm "ineligible to use their service" but without ever a reason why. The entire ordeal was really frustrating and I would strongly recommend against their service also.

eco 11y ago

Sounds like Bitcoin may have finally gotten its PayPal.

barmstrong 11y ago

Coinbase CEO here, I can sympathize that this was probably frustrating but I think it stems from a misunderstanding about the service that Coinbase provides. In a purely bitcoin to bitcoin world, this sort of transaction would not be an issue and you wouldn't have a risk of an account being closed. But you're not trying to do a purely bitcoin transaction here - you are trying to exchange bitcoin into your local currency and put the funds in your bank account (this is what we offer with our merchant tools). To offer this service, we (Coinbase) work with those bank rules and that is why you are seeing our service act much like the traditional financial world. You might not like this, but we didn't make those rules, and it is the only way I know of that works if you want to exchange bitcoin in the traditional financial world. (John's answer from the support thread you linked also explains this). Accepting purely bitcoin-to-bitcoin payments would be one solution that might work for this if that is what you want (there are plenty of other solutions other than Coinbase for this). I should mention that we are probably at fault for marketing it more as a bitcoin wallet vs an exchange which has different implications to people (I think this is part of the reason for the confusion). Finally, I believe you may be mistaken that you can't access the $5k in funds. Are you sure? This page describes our policy on that topic: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1905680-does-coinbase-freeze-accounts- https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/190568...

fandango 11y ago
You still didn't answer the original question though. Why can't he do business with you? Perhaps you are not legally obliged to give a reason, but it would definitely make you look a lot better then simply saying "uhuh, not here buddy". I think you can't have it both ways, ignoring support questions and not having to deal with backlash like this.
- barmstrong 11y ago
  I think I did answer the question. He can't do business with us because our bank partners don't want to support certain types of businesses. If you are wondering why the banks don't want to support certain types of businesses, I could only speculate but I'd guess it is reputation risk and they may have seen that category as a front for other illegal activity in the past. But that is their decision to make, not ours. For example, Stripe also prohibits adult content which is largely (I would guess) a result of input from Wells Fargo https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses