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That and Bitcoin is specifically designed to not give you a recourse in case of an attack. Cryptocurrency designers seem to think that banking was designed as

• Animats 7y ago
  Bitcoin isn't the problem here. Coinbase is regulated as a "money transmitter". You can get into the same situation if you send money via Western Union, which is also regulated as a money transmitter, and tell them to "waive identification" at the receiving end.[1] That's used as a payment method by some scams. Coinbase will pay out via PayPal, so someone with access to an account's credentials could pull of this scam without involving cryptocurrency at all. Now if Coinbase was regulated by the SEC as a "broker/dealer", which is what they really are, they'd be subject to SEC regulations on fraud, and would have SIPC insurance to protect the customer up to $250K.[2] Coinbase does, in fact, have a New York State "BitLicense", which makes them subject to various New York State regulations. Among other things, transactions larger than US$10,000 have to be reported to the New York State Department of Financial Services within 24 hours, and Coinbase is subject to rules about cybersecurity, fraud, and its activity as a custodian of the funds of others. You can complain to the New York State Department of Financial Services. DFS pulled Bittrx's license last month and gave them one day to get out of New York State. [1] https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/fraudawareness/fraud-question-and-answer.html https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/fraudawareness/fraud-ques... [2] https://www.sipc.org/for-investors/what-sipc-protects https://www.sipc.org/for-investors/what-sipc-protects