

Missing bitcoins on Coinbase - Hilyin

It has been two days now since I have seen my bitcoins. This isn't because of a delayed confirmation, or someone hacked my account. My ledger displays perfectly that I should have bitcoins in my account. But I don't. I've tried to contact Coinbase by email and their twitter account and have received no response.<p>So here I am, knowing they are a ycombinator backed company, posting here, to find out what the heck is going on? I perused twitter to see if maybe other people are having this same problem.<p>Looks like I am not alone!<p>"@brian_armstrong @coinbase Still no response on my support request. I'm still missing 9.6 BTC. Can you tell me what's going on?"
https://twitter.com/thomrburg/status/303870208102248448<p>"@coinbase Day 3 of missing BTC. Imagine if your bank suddenly took your cash from your account."
https://twitter.com/aginanon/status/303653952162000897<p>"Balance says 0 when I should have around 80btc?! Heard @coinbase was having some issues but that they had been resolved.. whats the dealio?"
https://twitter.com/jacobparrish/status/303642200707854336<p>"@jacobparrish @coinbase I'm still having the same problem too! Really nerve-racking."
https://twitter.com/nsillik/status/303650076549591040<p>It is time to come clean. What happened to our money? Why haven't you responded to anyone in 48 hours about this?
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barmstrong
We had a display bug introduced over the weekend which showed incorrect cached
balance amounts. Definitely frustrating, and my deepest apologies for that. We
are working through support requests and should have a fix out for your
account by end of day. Thank you for bearing with us!

~~~
redegg
Brian, could you respond why Coinbase has shifted from a clusterfuck pay-a-
withdrawal-with-the-global-pool-of-coins to pay-a-withdrawal-with-the-
user's-coins?

I noticed Coinbase credits users even without transaction confirmations. Then
I noticed withdrawals used the same inputs from the deposits the user
receives.

This could be bad and good:

1) (good) User is immediately notified when Coinbase is breached. It's the
moment when they notice their deposit address is sending coins to a address
that is not their's.

2) (bad) There is one chance to protect the coins. If you even think the
private keys are compromised, you would have to be safe and broadcast the move
of coins to new addresses. This will be really messy.

3) (bad) Anonymity reduction. The user can't launder coins in the network.
Withdrawing deposited coins will appear to be a direct transaction from:

A -> B (deposit) then B -> C (withdrawal)

instead of:

A -> B (deposit) then Z (other user's coins) -> C

Also, is Coinbase moving to a client-sided wallet approach?

~~~
barmstrong
Part of doing the secure offline storage is that we need to use a hot wallet.
[http://blog.coinbase.com/post/33197656699/coinbase-now-
stori...](http://blog.coinbase.com/post/33197656699/coinbase-now-
storing-87-of-customer-funds-offline)

It's definitely not perfect yet, but the security benefits are important. We
posted an update on the payouts via unconfirmed transactions as well:
[http://blog.coinbase.com/post/43285532179/unconfirmed-
transa...](http://blog.coinbase.com/post/43285532179/unconfirmed-transactions)

Just generally, we are going through hyper growth right now, so this tends to
magnify small problems. Thank you for bearing with us!

------
josscrowcroft
I understand the frustration, but _"It is time to come clean. What happened to
our money?"_ sounds very accusatory – as if you've already made your mind up
that you've been duped, which is unlikely to be the case.

Fair play for posting on HN, but Coinbase is a great company and Brian's a top
guy – I think it's better to give him the benefit of the doubt. I've been
humbled in the past by jumping to conclusions or venting too early.

This is at worst a technical issue combined with a minor customer support
mishap (i.e. not being available when needed).

~~~
RaphiePS
I think that would apply if this weren't money-related. When your money
mysteriously goes missing and nobody's telling you why, I think that's cause
for concern.

~~~
josscrowcroft
Cause for concern, sure, but my problem with it was the jumping to
conclusions, as I noted with the quotation from the post.

~~~
RaphiePS
How is that jumping to conclusions? He's not saying that he thinks they stole
it. He just wants a clear explanation of what happened. I don't see
pitchforks, just a demand for a response.

------
markkat
Just checked and my balance was ok. But it did freak me out that I couldn't
see my balance before I agreed to a new user agreement which included me
waiving my rights to join a class action lawsuit.

~~~
jonny_eh
That raises a good point. If you don't agree to the new EULA, is there a way
to withdraw your money?

------
peter41144
I am trying to send a verification email so that I can verify my account. But
it will not show up. I have tried multiple times with 2 different email
accounts, and I have checked the spam folders on both accounts, but I am not
receiving the verification email. Can someone in administration please tell me
what to do or send me the verification to peter41144@gmail.com.

Thanks,

-Peter

------
moonplayer
I'm missing over 40 btc from coinbase account too! They were even there
previously but now it says they're gone! There is no trail of them
disappearing through transactions though!

~~~
moonplayer
I posted this about 20 minutes after I sent them an email about it. I just
checked my account right now and the missing coins are back in the account.
thanks for the fast response coinbase. Hopefully that doesn't happen again.

------
salibhai
There are replies to the tweets
<https://twitter.com/nsillik/status/303650076549591040>

@teevers @jacobparrish yup. It was fixed for me at about 4pm pacific
yesterday.

------
aianus
Make a transaction and they'll reappear. At least, they did for me.

~~~
Hilyin
Can't, I have 0 balance error when I try.

~~~
w-ll
Maybe send 0.00000001 Satoshis

