Is Coinbase blatantly ripping off its users? Accounts were cancelled and all assets were transferred!

On July 24, 2024, a user of the Xiaohongshu community posted an article about his Bitcoin investment experience. He said that he transferred all the coins to Coinbase at the end of 21, and found that he could not log in to the account in June 24. After consulting Coinbase customer service, he found that the account had been cancelled. Coinbase sold the BTC and sent it to an institution in Wyoming. The reason given was that his account had not been active for a long time and the assets were considered "unclaimed property".

Details:

In 2017, the investor decided to invest all his savings of about 200,000 yuan in Bitcoin (BTC). His idea was simple: either double the assets or return to zero. At first, he strictly followed the "buy and hold" strategy, paying attention to Bitcoin's price fluctuations and resisting the urge to trade frequently. In the first week, his assets doubled, which gave him a lot of confidence.

However, as other "air coins" such as XRP, BCN, and TRX skyrocketed in a short period of time, the investor began to envy. Two weeks later, he gave up his plan to hold Bitcoin for a long time and turned to buying and selling frantically between these high-risk tokens. Despite the volatility of these tokens, he failed to seize the opportunity. Instead, his assets quickly shrank from 2 bitcoins at the highest point to 0.5 bitcoins in 24-hour watch trading.

In the first quarter of 2018, the investor learned from his mistakes and exchanged all his assets back to Bitcoin and decided to hold it for a long time. However, this holding did not last long. In 2021, Bitcoin rose again, and he tried to recover his capital through trading again. This time, he mainly traded more stable second-tier tokens such as ETH, but the results were not ideal. In the end, the assets shrank again from 0.5 bitcoins to 0.23 bitcoins. He lamented that if he had not operated frequently, he would have recovered his capital long ago.

Concerned about the security of platforms such as Huobi and Binance, the investor transferred all his assets to the legal Coinbase platform in the United States at the end of 2021. Since then, he occasionally logged into his account to check the status of his assets. However, in June 2024, he found that he could not log in to his Coinbase account. After consulting customer service, he learned that the account was considered "unclaimed property" due to long-term inactivity, and the assets had been sold and transferred to an institution in Wyoming. Although he provided login evidence in February and March 2024, Coinbase customer service still insisted that it could not help and suggested that he contact the Wyoming Unclaimed Property Department.

Since June, the investor has been closely following the website of the Wyoming Unclaimed Property Department and found that there are many people in similar situations. After three months of sorting, he finally found his asset records a few days ago. At present, he is preparing various materials to try to apply for the recovery of assets. However, since most of the personal information when registering the account has been forgotten, he has little hope of recovering his assets.

Automatically send unclaimed property after two years of inactivity?

Regarding this incident, some people commented that the protagonist of the incident did not understand the rules. If there is no activity in a US financial account for two years, unclaimed property will be automatically sent. It will not be robbed at all. It will be taken back directly after applying. Who can you blame if you fill it out randomly?

In response, the protagonist replied: "The explanation of the Coinbase official website on this issue is that depending on the laws of each state, the inactivity period is generally 3 to 5 years, and the scope of activity includes accessing the account. The explanation can be found on the official website."

He also provided pictures of the email verification information when he logged into his Coinbase account on February 8 and March 1 this year.

This investment experience is a profound lesson for anyone considering entering the cryptocurrency market. Frequent trading, high-risk speculation, platform security, and negligence in account management are all key factors that led this investor to end up with almost nothing. I hope that through his story, more investors can be warned to be cautious and rational when entering the cryptocurrency market to avoid similar tragedies.