
Coinbase is down - gdeglin
https://status.coinbase.com/incidents/y0m6htcxbvfd
======
redm
Coinbase reliability is so bad recently they would do better-telling people
when they are fully functional because of thats the abnormal state.

As a Coinbase user, I'd love to get away from Coinbase but I can't get them to
even acknowledge the $5,000 I wired them 15 days ago. Two emails into CS and
still no response from them other than an automated email stating they are
really behind. If I can ever get my money back, I'll never use them again.

Gemini seems to work well and be much more reliable, albeit much smaller and
not as functional as GDAX.

UPDATE: Coinbase email about my missing wire, the first response in the 15
days since my wire:

"This is an automated email. As we experience rapid growth, we are also
experiencing a high volume of support requests and we regret not being able to
answer your inquiry in a reasonable amount of time."

~~~
bubblethink
gemini requires you to give them your bank's username and password. It's not
like you are authenticating with your bank directly. It's actually quite
deceptive. It'll show you something similar to your bank's login screen, but
you are still on gemini's website. You are literally giving gemini your
password. I'm not sure why people don't object to that. They have a roundabout
wire transfer way for the initial authentication, for which they claim that
they credit the wire fees. I did the roundabout wire thing, and still waiting
for the credit. Support has been lackluster. gemini also forces you to use
authy, as opposed to standard totp. Overall, gdax(coinbase) for me is much
better than gemini.

~~~
DiNovi
That's not what's happening at all. They are using a service called Plaid for
bank authentication. It's used a lot of places. And you are doing ACH
transfers; not bank wires.

[https://plaid.com/](https://plaid.com/)

~~~
bubblethink
What they do at the end is moot. Their domain, or a third party domain, asks
you to enter bank credentials. The red flag is that you are not entering your
credentials in your bank's website. Most other places ask you for your account
and routing number, and do ACH micro deposits, after which you confirm the
deposited amount. Gemini doesn't do that. The only way to avoid that on Gemini
is go the wire route, which will incur a $20-$30 charge from your bank.

~~~
DiNovi
it's a third party service that provides your routing numbers to gemini. they
aren't storing your bank password anywhere.

~~~
bubblethink
Why should you need to trust a third party (payment company) of a third party
(Gemini) with the plaintext password to my bank account ? Even if you trust
them to not store the password long term, in the interim you are giving them
access to your entire financial history. That's a pretty big privacy issue in
itself.

~~~
DiNovi
Holy shit, it's not a plaintext password. _sigh_ read about plaid. I linked to
it.

~~~
bubblethink
web authentication is really not my area, but would you care to explain how
this is safe ? For instance, I recognize when an app or a site is trying to
use google to authenticate me, I am taken to google to authenticate. I'm not
taken to the bank in this case. From [https://blog.plaid.com/getting-
started/](https://blog.plaid.com/getting-started/), it looks like a curl
request with plaintext password request made to plaid's servers.

Also from
[https://plaid.com/legal/longtail/](https://plaid.com/legal/longtail/), "You
acknowledge that in accessing your data and information through the Service,
your provider account access number(s), password(s), security question(s) and
answer(s), account number(s), login information, and any other security or
access information, and the actual data in your account(s) with such
provider(s) such as bank and other account balances, credit card charges,
debits and deposits (collectively, "Provider Account Data"), may be collected
and stored in the Service."

------
codewritinfool
Last week I received an automated email from them saying my 2-factor settings
had changed and that if I didn't initiate it, please contact them.

I contacted them and they sent this: "You received an SMS and email
notification indicating that your 2FA settings were changed. Please note that
this message was sent in error and your 2FA settings have not been changed."

Wow.

~~~
artursapek
Ouch, that would give me a heart attack considering the recent buzz about
hijacked SMS being an attack vector:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/21/hackers-
ar...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/21/hackers-are-
hijacking-phone-numbers-and-breaking-into-email-and-bank-accounts-how-to-
protect-yourself/#2d33200b360f)

~~~
anonova
Note that Coinbase sent an email out some weeks ago telling customers to
switch to Google/Microsoft Authenticator instead of relying on Authy and SMS:
[https://blog.coinbase.com/how-to-increase-your-coinbase-
acco...](https://blog.coinbase.com/how-to-increase-your-coinbase-account-
security-4b7164926631)

------
Animats
EU Debit / Credit Card withdrawals are down, but SEPA transfers are still up,
as is the API, so you can pull your money and Bitcoins out of Coinbase. Do so
_now_ ; if Coinbase is OK, you can put it back; if not, you've got it.

The history of Bitcoin exchanges is that when they get into trouble, things
get worse, not better. Get out while you can.

The Mt. Gox liquidation is still proceeding, slowly.[1]

[1] [https://www.mtgox.com/](https://www.mtgox.com/)

~~~
daxorid
Hate to pile on with the same comment that appears in every "github.com is
down" post on HN, but BTC/ETH/LTC are decentralized networks.

Why would anyone carry balances in wallets outside their immediate, local
control?

~~~
thephyber
> Why would anyone carry balances in wallets outside their immediate, local
> control?

To be able to exchange it to a non-crypto currency.

~~~
FabHK
That. And do it fast, and cheap. Sure, you can keep it in your own wallet, but
then you have to wait half an hour and pay > 5$ extra for every round-trip
into fiat.

------
LyndsySimon
Call me paranoid, but the largest entry point into the Bitcoin network going
down like this at such a volatile time sounds like an excellent way to drop
the price a bit while the general public can't get in to buy. Turn the site
back on, wait a few hours, and sell into the resulting rally.

~~~
0xfeba
My bittrex wallet is also unable to receive funds:

'Wallet offline - Waiting for ETH network to stabalize'

Uh....

~~~
QML
This also happened during the BAT ICO; its a similar network attack on Bancor
ICO now.

------
Alex3917
The Coinbase stability problem is basically just functioning as an accidental
circuit breaker that triggers whenever there is too much volatility.

Right now though most alts are so mispriced that I expect it will be basically
the same situation all week as each one slowly drains into ETH until it hits a
semi-rational market cap.

------
jboggan
I think Charlie Lee picked a good day to quit as director of engineering:

[https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/charlie-lee-ends-his-
coinbas...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/charlie-lee-ends-his-coinbase-
career-to-focus-on-litecoin-development/)

~~~
sushid
Did he quit or did they come to a "mutual understanding?"

And I suppose he picked a good time seeing as he finally got LTC into Coinbase
right before the segwit pump.

------
jackbravo
and probably related to the 10% drop in price of the bitcoin:
[https://cryptowat.ch/bitfinex/btcusd](https://cryptowat.ch/bitfinex/btcusd)

------
donquichotte
They also stole 50$ of my money when I tried to make a deposit. They just
returned the amount -50$ without explanation. Not gonna use coinbase anytime
soon.

~~~
c0nducktr
This is similar to what happened to me. I've attempted to contact their
"support" via email but nobody's replied in over a month.

------
wakest
This is getting ridiculous. Anyone have any insight as to why they are so
badly managed?

~~~
conception
Coinbase isn't a trading exchange, so it's not designed to be one. But people
try to use it as one because they don't realize the difference.

~~~
sushid
Okay, but what about gdax? Their name is literally global digital assets
exchange. There's absolutely no excuse for this kind of nonsense.

------
wakkaflokka
I really want to get a hardware wallet because of these situations, but I'm
afraid of two things:

(1) I want to be able to get my currencies into USD FAST if needed. (given
that Coinbase is down, a hardware wallet in this case would probably be a lot
faster FWIW)

(2) I'm not entirely sure I trust myself to not lose the ledger and paper
phrase more than I trust Coinbase or other online wallet.

Somebody convince me otherwise?

~~~
Jach
Why not just have an encrypted wallet file that you backup remotely? I
wouldn't trust myself to not lose the hardware, or the hardware to continue
functioning indefinitely. Just use a strong passphrase that you can memorize.

------
NwmG
My coinbase account was hacked, phone number changed (2FA). It has my bank
account hooked to it... Their resolution so far was to simply create a new
account...

------
elliottcarlson
I've had a support ticket open with them for over 30 days and not a single
human response. There were two automated messages stating that they were
backlogged, but at this point it's beyond ridiculous. I've gone to their
forums and have tweeted at them, but support is completely non-existent. It
surprised me how big of a player they are considering this and similar issues
listed here in the comment thread.

------
k-mcgrady
Just looking at BTC/LTC/ETH on Coinbase it seems like all have experienced a
significant drop in price. This often seems to coincide with terrible Coinbase
performance. Does downtime cause the drop in price/drop in price spike traffic
and cause downtime/or are they unrelated?

~~~
QML
When there's a significant drop in price, usually there's a rush of people
trying to sell off BTC/ETH and another rush of people trying to buy BTC/ETH.
Coinbase has been having issues with uptime with the recent surge in interest
for cryptocurrencies.

------
wakkaflokka
This is really frustrating. At least GDAX is still up. Any thoughts on GDAX
vs. Gemini vs. Poloniex vs Kraken?

~~~
erentz
Kraken and Gemini inexplicably don't support users from WA state, which is
incredibly frustrating.

~~~
polyomino
I live in washington and use itbit.com

~~~
NotSammyHagar
gemini just told me they support wa state on my new acct.

------
gchokov
Starting to think that this is all intentional. Or the worst service ever.
I'll never ever use coinbase.

------
nether
I've made $12k (4x return) from my ETH investment through Coinbase. Overall
the site has worked well, granted I don't trade as frenetically as most crypto
speculators.

------
mcculley
I've had a support ticket open with Coinbase for weeks with no update. It led
me to open an account with Gemini.

------
clarky07
App is back up and working for me now (for anyone concerned and wanting to buy
or sell). site still down.

------
dmoy
In case anyone from coinbase is watching:

"Coinbase is currently experiencing high traffic & customers have receive
a..."

The & symbol seems a tad bit awkward

s/receive/received/

Might wanna say "some customers" or "many customers" or w/e, instead of just
"customers"

~~~
matthuggins
I'm sure the maintenance page phrasing is their top priority.

------
SN76477
Who is surprised?

------
jturolla
how can they handle traffic for gdax and fail miserably dealing with some
static pages like the front page?

------
williamtrask
lol, i'm sure that being on the front page of hacker news helps them be less
overwhelmed with traffic

------
nickthemagicman
Seems like it happens every other week?

------
virtuexru
Not only are they usually down when abnormally high traffic hits; they are
down for a good number of hours as can be seen by the age of this post.

------
gxs
I will never do business on coinbase again.

Over the past few years, they are always down at the most inopportune time. I
wouldn't trust them at this point.

No, I don't have alternatives, no I don't want to divulge details, just
putting the warning out there. Yes you're free to do as you please.

------
mrsoul
Coinbase is the most incompetent service ever. I will try to hack them.

