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Funny, after reading the article I decided to go to Coinbase to see the Bitcoin prices, and this is what I find: We have reason to believe you reside in a coun

Funny, after reading the article I decided to go to Coinbase to see the Bitcoin prices, and this is what I find: We have reason to believe you reside in a country in which Coinbase is prohibited by law from doing business (Iran, Islamic Republic Of) per the sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. As a result, we’ve unfortunately had to close your Coinbase account. I'm not Iranian and I'll comply with their KYC requests, but every day Coinbase feels more and more like PayPal. I thought this is what we were trying to avoid in the first place. PS: Happily, I had no funds on the account. I hope this helps as a reminder to others: keep your money in your own private wallets.

vertex-four 10y ago
> I thought this is what we were trying to avoid in the first place. Well, yes. Doing anything with USD (or most other currencies) is a complete nightmare, especially including converting them to other currencies. The goal is that eventually you might want to accept some or all of your pay as bitcoin, which would've been paid to your employer as bitcoin, and thus the loop is closed and nobody has to implement any KYC procedures. Converting from <currency> to bitcoin to pay somebody for them to turn it back into <currency> suffers from all the legal issues that affect <currency> - which should be obvious. Also obvious is that this will pretty much never happen on any large scale, rendering bitcoin near-worthless for most people.
- riprowan 10y ago
  > Also obvious is that this will pretty much never happen on any large scale Not obvious to me, if the timescale is expanded sufficiently.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    The issue is that you need a large amount of people to be using bitcoin - enough that some significant amount of them will pay your company in bitcoin - before you can start offering to pay your employees in the bitcoin you receive... and significant amounts of people are unlikely to use bitcoin until they're being paid in it.
- fbuilesv 10y ago
  I should clarify I was not looking for fiat money at any point, I just wanted to check the Coinbase price at that moment. I don't think I have used the account since I last referred a friend a couple of months ago. Now, even if I wanted to use their wallet or vault, I can't. That's not a bad thing in my mind though.
throwanem 10y ago
Well, it's either Paypal or it's Mt. Gox; you pays your money and you takes your chances. The Bitcoin market, libertarian-utopian rhetoric aside, seems increasingly to prefer the former to the latter.
lojack 10y ago
Yeah, I changed states not too long ago and had a bunch of money tied up in Coinbase's Exchange. After numerous emails I had to accept that my money was locked up for the foreseeable future.
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  Any time I purchase or sell Bitcoin on Coinbase I immediately move the funds out. I don't know whether it's Coinbase themselves or just onerous government regulations, but I don't trust them not to randomly lock my account one day with no recourse.
pjc50 10y ago
> Coinbase feels more and more like PayPal > Coinbase is prohibited by law from doing business The premise that bitcoin frees you from normal legal requirements is the problem here. Or the US attempts at global jurisdiction for KYC, take your pick. Paypal is not gratuitously bad. Every annoying decision they make is because they're backed into a cost-minimising corner by fraud and compliance problems. The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully caveat emptor, and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to put off non-ideological adopters.
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  > The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully caveat emptor, and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to put off non-ideological adopters. Well said.
- wyager 10y ago
  >The premise that bitcoin frees you from normal legal requirements is the problem here. It does. Coinbase != Bitcoin. Conflating the two is like conflating Gold with EZPawn. >and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft Source? I buy things with bitcoin quite frequently. With even a modicum of judgement, it's easy to sniff out scams. This is also what reviews are for.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    ? Using bitcoin to send money to Iran from the US remains illegal even if there's no institution in the middle. Source for theft and fraud: https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/
    - oarsinsync 10y ago
      > The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully caveat emptor, and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to put off non-ideological adopters. > Source for theft and fraud: https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ The site you've linked seems to be talking about thefts, similar to losing your credit card and someone running rampant with it, not purchase fraud. In the case of credit cards, someone's still paying for it, it's just not you. There's no reason why this same system can't be applied to Bitcoin, without having to change anything in the protocols. It's just an extra intermediary in the middle who suffers the loss instead of you. Got any sources that relate to purchases per your original?
csydas 10y ago
Understandable, but wasn't this always going to be inevitable given people treating BTC as an investment for USD instead of as a crypto currency? Sooner or later, regardless of the Government/Country combination, you're going to get the attention of various agencies when an online currency starts to be used to store irl currency. It's why it's always been somewhat ironic to me that despite the original intent of cryptocurrency, people still listed their holdings in USD, as if BTC was their portfolio. I understand to a degree the argument of what you do with your money should be your business, and if you want to store it in BTC and believe you can convert it to necessary currency later on, that's fine; I'm not being sardonic either, that's your choice with your money. But I don't think that BTC was really designed or intended for this purpose as it brings the exact sort of scrutiny that one would hope to avoid with a cryptocurrency, and with scrutiny, regulation. Maybe if the total value of exchanges on BTC without the injection/interaction of irl currencies grew large enough (i.e., there were enough transactions for legal goods/services), the same scrutiny "might" be applied, but I'm not really convinced that governments would care much one way or another. Bitcoin's own reputation has also helped bring this scrutiny down - even if the level of anonymity is questionable, most government officials and agencies hear "anonymous" and "exchanges" and immediately want to have controls set in place. Even if they figure out that there is a very traceable paper trail, there's still an interest in ensuring that it's not being used to launder. Their curiosity will not be satisfied with people's assurances that "it's an online currency, that's all." Basically, the gold rush with BTC sort of led it exactly to the state it's in, and brought the eye of government to it. As long as people treat it like gold or silver or any other commodity, the government is going to want a piece of it, or at least keep a solid eye on it.
- wtbob 10y ago
  > Understandable, but wasn't this always going to be inevitable given people treating BTC as an investment for USD instead of as a crypto currency? Fundamentally inevitable, no — there's no inherent reason for countries to care about the movement of currency — but practically inevitable, yes. As long as we have such financial 'crimes' as money laundering (which is only against the law because it's easier to prove than the real crimes it's designed to hide), we're going to have KYC requirements and all the rest of the incumbent-protection measures which make it so hard to have a financial startup.
riprowan 10y ago
If your Bitcoin are not stored in a wallet whose keys you exclusively control, then you do not possess Bitcoin, you possess an IOU for Bitcoin.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  You could feel the same way about your bank or Paypal or your home if you have a mortgage, but I still don't feel it's unreasonable to both use these services and expect them to serve the purpose they were built for legally and ethically (the legal requirement ostensibly being what he ran into here). I think most people would agree that keeping large amounts of cash is both fruitless (no interest) and irresponsible (higher probability of theft) and keeping your bitcoin in a personal wallet doesn't seem terribly different, except that theft can happen from anywhere not just your physical location. This isn't to say I don't understand the feeling, given the relatively unregulated, shady nature of the bitcoin economy. Additionally, money has value because it's useful, and Coinbase makes bitcoin much more useful to me (easier to buy and spend, which is the point of money). So you're not wrong, but I also believe that's a criticism that ought to be tempered with reality.
mrb 10y ago
"Coinbase feels more and more like PayPal" Of course the difference being that if you need to use PayPal for a transaction and if PayPal rejects you you have no recourse, however if you need bitcoins and if Coinbase rejects you you have many Bitcoin exchanges to fall back to. That's what a distributed system and economy is all about :) PS: maybe your IP is wrongly geolocated in Iran?
- fbuilesv 10y ago
  I share your point, it just sucks to see this happening because three years ago I was cheering for Coinbase here on HN. > PS: maybe your IP is wrongly geolocated in Iran? Highly unlikely, but even if that was the case, they still have my passport and bank statements on file.
fbuilesv 10y ago
Update: I tried to contact support to see what was the best way to send them the documents they needed for unblocking my account. This was their response: Thank you for your interest in Coinbase. Our primary goal is to make our platform safe and secure for our customers. Coinbase is a regulated Money Services Business under FinCEN (FinCEN.gov), and as part of our responsibility, we are legally obligated to implement regulatory compliance mechanisms. We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to support your Coinbase account as well as any other accounts you may have created. Please note, we have not blocked access to the balance currently in your Coinbase account; while we can no longer process brokerage orders via our banking relationship, you may still send your balance offsite to an external address. Please be careful when dealing with this company, and remember that even if you're in the US there are many alternatives (LocalBitcoins, Circle and Gemini come to mind).
- dmix 10y ago
  There has to be more to this story, no? Or are you saying it was just random? What country do you live in?
  - fbuilesv 10y ago
    I don't think it was random, I happen to have a Colombian passport and I use VPN's on a regular basis. These two don't go well together as you can imagine. I live between various countries (none of them embargoed by the US, which AFAIK are the only ones excluded from Coinbase) but I have a US company and a passport with those shiny stamps that could clear any doubts about me sneaking through "El Hueco". I was not given a chance to show them however, so I'm just glad I don't use them regularly. I'm sorry I don't have a great mistery story behind this :P

vertex-four 10y ago

> I thought this is what we were trying to avoid in the first place. Well, yes. Doing anything with USD (or most other currencies) is a complete nightmare, especially including converting them to other currencies. The goal is that eventually you might want to accept some or all of your pay as bitcoin, which would've been paid to your employer as bitcoin, and thus the loop is closed and nobody has to implement any KYC procedures. Converting from <currency> to bitcoin to pay somebody for them to turn it back into <currency> suffers from all the legal issues that affect <currency> - which should be obvious. Also obvious is that this will pretty much never happen on any large scale, rendering bitcoin near-worthless for most people.

riprowan 10y ago
> Also obvious is that this will pretty much never happen on any large scale Not obvious to me, if the timescale is expanded sufficiently.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  The issue is that you need a large amount of people to be using bitcoin - enough that some significant amount of them will pay your company in bitcoin - before you can start offering to pay your employees in the bitcoin you receive... and significant amounts of people are unlikely to use bitcoin until they're being paid in it.
fbuilesv 10y ago
I should clarify I was not looking for fiat money at any point, I just wanted to check the Coinbase price at that moment. I don't think I have used the account since I last referred a friend a couple of months ago. Now, even if I wanted to use their wallet or vault, I can't. That's not a bad thing in my mind though.

throwanem 10y ago

Well, it's either Paypal or it's Mt. Gox; you pays your money and you takes your chances. The Bitcoin market, libertarian-utopian rhetoric aside, seems increasingly to prefer the former to the latter.

lojack 10y ago

Yeah, I changed states not too long ago and had a bunch of money tied up in Coinbase's Exchange. After numerous emails I had to accept that my money was locked up for the foreseeable future.

vocatus_gate 10y ago
Any time I purchase or sell Bitcoin on Coinbase I immediately move the funds out. I don't know whether it's Coinbase themselves or just onerous government regulations, but I don't trust them not to randomly lock my account one day with no recourse.

pjc50 10y ago

> Coinbase feels more and more like PayPal > Coinbase is prohibited by law from doing business The premise that bitcoin frees you from normal legal requirements is the problem here. Or the US attempts at global jurisdiction for KYC, take your pick. Paypal is not gratuitously bad. Every annoying decision they make is because they're backed into a cost-minimising corner by fraud and compliance problems. The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully caveat emptor, and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to put off non-ideological adopters.

vocatus_gate 10y ago
> The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully caveat emptor, and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to put off non-ideological adopters. Well said.
wyager 10y ago
>The premise that bitcoin frees you from normal legal requirements is the problem here. It does. Coinbase != Bitcoin. Conflating the two is like conflating Gold with EZPawn. >and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft Source? I buy things with bitcoin quite frequently. With even a modicum of judgement, it's easy to sniff out scams. This is also what reviews are for.
- pjc50 10y ago
  ? Using bitcoin to send money to Iran from the US remains illegal even if there's no institution in the middle. Source for theft and fraud: https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/
  - oarsinsync 10y ago
    > The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully caveat emptor, and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to put off non-ideological adopters. > Source for theft and fraud: https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ The site you've linked seems to be talking about thefts, similar to losing your credit card and someone running rampant with it, not purchase fraud. In the case of credit cards, someone's still paying for it, it's just not you. There's no reason why this same system can't be applied to Bitcoin, without having to change anything in the protocols. It's just an extra intermediary in the middle who suffers the loss instead of you. Got any sources that relate to purchases per your original?

csydas 10y ago

Understandable, but wasn't this always going to be inevitable given people treating BTC as an investment for USD instead of as a crypto currency? Sooner or later, regardless of the Government/Country combination, you're going to get the attention of various agencies when an online currency starts to be used to store irl currency. It's why it's always been somewhat ironic to me that despite the original intent of cryptocurrency, people still listed their holdings in USD, as if BTC was their portfolio. I understand to a degree the argument of what you do with your money should be your business, and if you want to store it in BTC and believe you can convert it to necessary currency later on, that's fine; I'm not being sardonic either, that's your choice with your money. But I don't think that BTC was really designed or intended for this purpose as it brings the exact sort of scrutiny that one would hope to avoid with a cryptocurrency, and with scrutiny, regulation. Maybe if the total value of exchanges on BTC without the injection/interaction of irl currencies grew large enough (i.e., there were enough transactions for legal goods/services), the same scrutiny "might" be applied, but I'm not really convinced that governments would care much one way or another. Bitcoin's own reputation has also helped bring this scrutiny down - even if the level of anonymity is questionable, most government officials and agencies hear "anonymous" and "exchanges" and immediately want to have controls set in place. Even if they figure out that there is a very traceable paper trail, there's still an interest in ensuring that it's not being used to launder. Their curiosity will not be satisfied with people's assurances that "it's an online currency, that's all." Basically, the gold rush with BTC sort of led it exactly to the state it's in, and brought the eye of government to it. As long as people treat it like gold or silver or any other commodity, the government is going to want a piece of it, or at least keep a solid eye on it.

wtbob 10y ago
> Understandable, but wasn't this always going to be inevitable given people treating BTC as an investment for USD instead of as a crypto currency? Fundamentally inevitable, no — there's no inherent reason for countries to care about the movement of currency — but practically inevitable, yes. As long as we have such financial 'crimes' as money laundering (which is only against the law because it's easier to prove than the real crimes it's designed to hide), we're going to have KYC requirements and all the rest of the incumbent-protection measures which make it so hard to have a financial startup.

riprowan 10y ago

If your Bitcoin are not stored in a wallet whose keys you exclusively control, then you do not possess Bitcoin, you possess an IOU for Bitcoin.

stinkytaco 10y ago
You could feel the same way about your bank or Paypal or your home if you have a mortgage, but I still don't feel it's unreasonable to both use these services and expect them to serve the purpose they were built for legally and ethically (the legal requirement ostensibly being what he ran into here). I think most people would agree that keeping large amounts of cash is both fruitless (no interest) and irresponsible (higher probability of theft) and keeping your bitcoin in a personal wallet doesn't seem terribly different, except that theft can happen from anywhere not just your physical location. This isn't to say I don't understand the feeling, given the relatively unregulated, shady nature of the bitcoin economy. Additionally, money has value because it's useful, and Coinbase makes bitcoin much more useful to me (easier to buy and spend, which is the point of money). So you're not wrong, but I also believe that's a criticism that ought to be tempered with reality.

mrb 10y ago

"Coinbase feels more and more like PayPal" Of course the difference being that if you need to use PayPal for a transaction and if PayPal rejects you you have no recourse, however if you need bitcoins and if Coinbase rejects you you have many Bitcoin exchanges to fall back to. That's what a distributed system and economy is all about :) PS: maybe your IP is wrongly geolocated in Iran?

fbuilesv 10y ago
I share your point, it just sucks to see this happening because three years ago I was cheering for Coinbase here on HN. > PS: maybe your IP is wrongly geolocated in Iran? Highly unlikely, but even if that was the case, they still have my passport and bank statements on file.

fbuilesv 10y ago

Update: I tried to contact support to see what was the best way to send them the documents they needed for unblocking my account. This was their response: Thank you for your interest in Coinbase. Our primary goal is to make our platform safe and secure for our customers. Coinbase is a regulated Money Services Business under FinCEN (FinCEN.gov), and as part of our responsibility, we are legally obligated to implement regulatory compliance mechanisms. We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to support your Coinbase account as well as any other accounts you may have created. Please note, we have not blocked access to the balance currently in your Coinbase account; while we can no longer process brokerage orders via our banking relationship, you may still send your balance offsite to an external address. Please be careful when dealing with this company, and remember that even if you're in the US there are many alternatives (LocalBitcoins, Circle and Gemini come to mind).

dmix 10y ago
There has to be more to this story, no? Or are you saying it was just random? What country do you live in?
- fbuilesv 10y ago
  I don't think it was random, I happen to have a Colombian passport and I use VPN's on a regular basis. These two don't go well together as you can imagine. I live between various countries (none of them embargoed by the US, which AFAIK are the only ones excluded from Coinbase) but I have a US company and a passport with those shiny stamps that could clear any doubts about me sneaking through "El Hueco". I was not given a chance to show them however, so I'm just glad I don't use them regularly. I'm sorry I don't have a great mistery story behind this :P