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Topic: Did a Coinbase employee steal my coins or someone else ? (Read 239 times)

legendary
Activity: 3122
Merit: 1492
However, the good news is Coinbase will have an initial public offering and become a public company. Can shareholders begin questioning similar issues to i_am_viral and why does this exchange go offline everytime there is a bitcoin pump hehehe?



Crypto exchange Coinbase has reportedly begun preparing to go public.

A Reuters report, citing people familiar with the matter, said Coinbase's listing could come as early as this year. One source told the news outlet that the exchange is considering a direct listing instead of a traditional initial public offering (IPO).


Source https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/70982/coinbase-ipo-prep-report
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18748
they would need to go outside of their established security protocols and dump private keys from their bitcoin hot wallet. that's rather risky, which is the more important factor for me.
I appreciate that, but if OP's wrongly sent BCH has been moved (as he says it has), then it means Coinbase have already gone through this process. As you say, this is the difficult and risky step. My point was that since this step has already occurred, the remaining steps to return coins to their rightful owners is trivial - link the list of addresses swept to the relevant accounts and add the relevant balance on each account. If they are willing to go through the time consuming and expensive process of dumping and importing private keys to an alternate chain, then there is no good reason they can't also go through the simple process of changing a few numbers on their database to credit accounts with their missing coins.
legendary
Activity: 2590
Merit: 3015
Welt Am Draht
they can't just "sweep" the addresses though. they have to dump and import them into a different wallet on a different blockchain. that carries very, very serious security implications for their bitcoin hot wallet.

Yup. Which is why they should take their own sweet time doing it and tell customers it'll happen when it happens. In this case it clearly has happened and they did it for their own benefit rather than the actual owner of the cashola.
legendary
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1483
Once they've done that, they can just set up an automatic sweep of all incorrect addresses (just like they sweep all correct addresses multiple times a day) and credit customers accordingly. Their whole "too time consuming" argument is complete nonsense. They are stealing from their customers and they can't be bothered to fix it.

Delete Coinbase.

they would need to go outside of their established security protocols and dump private keys from their bitcoin hot wallet. that's rather risky, which is the more important factor for me.

i'm fairly sure coinbase (and most exchanges) structure their key architecture in a way that would make it costly in terms of man hours vs the financial benefit customers receive. it sucks, but customers really ought to heed the warning virtually every altcoin-supporting exchange posts on the deposit page---that deposits on the wrong chain will not be credited.

for example, this is what kraken has told customers in the same exact situation:

This is what Kraken replied to me:

"You are absolutely correct about us possessing the private keys in this circumstance. That being said, it isn't as straight forward as you might think. Kraken is a cryptocurrency exchange and the nature of cryptocurrency exchanges are wholly different from the experience you might have with a personal wallet where you have easy access to the private keys. With things like the theft of Mt Gox, the internal compromise of Shapeshift, the social engineering of BitPay, and others, we must put security as the paramount concern. As such, our exchange is setup in such a way that nobody within Kraken can unilaterally move funds. We believe that this is a very important protection that makes it extremely difficult for client funds to be stolen by external or internal parties.

Only a very small group of people at Kraken (devs) have the ability to access your funds given an auditable thorough process of checks and balances. This makes the process extremely resource (time) intensive for the devs that have very full plates and very little time to dedicate to any specific task. They must prioritize all of our tasks internally and the requests of clients as best they can. We think that the prioritization of improving our UI/UX as to avoid these type of mistakes will show the greatest dividends for our clients."

bittrex takes another approach. although they refuse to recover coins in a bunch of different scenarios and will deny any request at their discretion, they will usually recover coins in this case if your deposit is big enough and they are informed immediately. they will charge a sizeable fee:

But what they should've said here is that we'll sweep a load of our addresses at some point, as they clearly have in this case, and sort you out when it happens with no guarantee of when it'll happen.

they can't just "sweep" the addresses though. they have to dump and import them into a different wallet on a different blockchain. that carries very, very serious security implications for their bitcoin hot wallet.

tbh, i wouldn't like the idea of customers fucking up and exchanges constantly manually dumping private keys to bail them out. it puts the security of all user deposits at risk.
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18748
But what they should've said here is that we'll sweep a load of our addresses at some point, as they clearly have in this case, and sort you out when it happens with no guarantee of when it'll happen.
Coinbase obviously have the private keys to all the addresses on the incorrect chain as evidence by them sweeping them all, and they obviously have a database of which customer is linked to which address on the correct chain. It would be trivial, therefore, for them to write a few lines of code which identifies how much BCH came from which address, which customer is linked to that address, and to credit their account with the correct amount of BCH. And vice versa for all of that with BTC sent to BCH addresses.

Once they've done that, they can just set up an automatic sweep of all incorrect addresses (just like they sweep all correct addresses multiple times a day) and credit customers accordingly. Their whole "too time consuming" argument is complete nonsense. They are stealing from their customers and they can't be bothered to fix it.

Delete Coinbase.
legendary
Activity: 2590
Merit: 3015
Welt Am Draht
That's the point though - the funds are recoverable, and easily so, as evidenced by the fact that Coinbase have now swept OP's misplaced coins in to their central wallet. It's just that Coinbase only care about their own profits and don't care about their customers at all, and so they are quite happy to steal coins from their customers like this and simply take them as profit for themselves rather than spend 2 minutes to send them back to their rightful owners.

I can certainly see why Coinbase wouldn't bother digging out private keys for individual customer screw ups, it's time consuming and may involve security disruptions. Other exchanges will but they can charge up to $200 an hour.

But what they should've said here is that we'll sweep a load of our addresses at some point, as they clearly have in this case, and sort you out when it happens with no guarantee of when it'll happen.

I'd be making a bit of a fuss though I presume they have a T&C to hide behind.
legendary
Activity: 2324
Merit: 1604
hmph..
OP should try to contact them, and try to publicize the issue on reddit, twitter, medium, etc. The threat of legal action also sometimes spurs their customer support to actually do something.

Yes, of course, OP can do it, especially it concerns of his important assets. But, OP must also have more support to be able to win this case. unfortunately, it concerns sending errors from BCH addresses to Bitcoin addresses (although recovery can be done), with that rules, coinbase can win easily. Hopefully, OP can get the best results from this case and get a lot of support from the community to change CS coinbase's decision and be willing to return their assets. I can't imagine anything about the results if based on those rules.
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18748
Any cryptocurrency that is sent to the wallet address of another cryptocurrency will be lost (if you send BTC to a BCH wallet address, these funds will not be recoverable).
That's the point though - the funds are recoverable, and easily so, as evidenced by the fact that Coinbase have now swept OP's misplaced coins in to their central wallet. It's just that Coinbase only care about their own profits and don't care about their customers at all, and so they are quite happy to steal coins from their customers like this and simply take them as profit for themselves rather than spend 2 minutes to send them back to their rightful owners.

10 BCH is over $2,000, which is not an insignificant amount of money. Usually with Coinbase's customer support, it all depends on how much a fuss you cause and how much negative press you will give them if they just ignore you, like they do with most complaints or issues. OP should try to contact them, and try to publicize the issue on reddit, twitter, medium, etc. The threat of legal action also sometimes spurs their customer support to actually do something.
legendary
Activity: 2324
Merit: 1604
hmph..
Since you are sending BCH to Bitcoin address, on this page it has been explained that when there are customers who make mistakes by transferring different coins (BTC to BCH vice-versa) there is no refund. It looks like your efforts will remain in vain despite contacting them. Here, I quote what Coinbase explained.

Please note, Coinbase only supports receiving specific cryptocurrencies. Any cryptocurrency that is sent to the wallet address of another cryptocurrency will be lost (if you send BTC to a BCH wallet address, these funds will not be recoverable).
hero member
Activity: 2366
Merit: 793
Bitcoin = Financial freedom
now we know what happened to the coins.I will message Coinbase and hope for positive news.

The amounts worth is relative to the owner, but in case anybody is wondering it was 10.5 Bitcoin cash, which would be very useful now

Hope you will get a reply. Cheesy Because coinbase never replied to few of my support tickets until now they just skipped it I guess.

The amount is really worth it? Depends on the people who see it but if you feel like its is really needed for you then try to contact them via other social platform as well like twitter and also don't forget to post about your issue on Reddit as well so they will give attention to you.
full member
Activity: 428
Merit: 107
When they say "there is nothing that they can do", what they mean is "it isn't worth our time to fix this error". They absolutely could recover your coins - they have the private key to the BTC address, so therefore they have the private key to the BCH address. They just don't because they are a terrible company.

It is unlikely that a malicious Coinbase employee stole your BCH. More likely is that Coinbase simply did a batch recovery of all the BCH sent to BTC addresses and all the BTC sent to BCH addresses, and decided to pocket all the coins as profit rather than go through the effort of returning them to you.

Your only possible solution here is to contact Coinbase again and demand your funds back. If it is a large sum of money, consider taking legal action against them.

I think you have weak password and someone has the access to it and it looks like to me someone has access to your wallet and used it.
Even if an attacker did manage to gain access to OP's account, the attacker wouldn't be able to access OP's BCH that had been sent to his BTC address either. As Coinbase is completely custodial, the only people that can access the private keys of the addresses, and therefore recover BTC or BCH sent to the wrong address, is Coinbase themselves.
quote]

Thank you and everyone else,

now we know what happened to the coins.I will message Coinbase and hope for positive news.

The amounts worth is relative to the owner, but in case anybody is wondering it was 10.5 Bitcoin cash, which would be very useful now
sr. member
Activity: 1932
Merit: 442
Eloncoin.org - Mars, here we come!
Well, the only way to solve your problem is the Coinbase support team, --ask them in a legal way to refund your money back to your account or less beg to them perhaps one of their staff will understand your situation. This is the same scenario to my friend, he contacted the support team and after 30 days they will return the accidental purchase of BCH and send it to the BTC address.

If the reply above [  o_e_l_e_o ] was right, perhaps you need to move on and forgot your fund if that is willing for you to lose.
There is nothing wrong if you try to contact them and show all your proof.
legendary
Activity: 2422
Merit: 1451
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
A very informative thread:

How do I get my public and private keys on Coinbase?

And I really do not think that coinbase will take your money, I think you have weak password and someone has the access to it and it looks like to me someone has access to your wallet and used it.

Can you check the log history?
This is a very old thread that you linked. Coinbase has long ago stopped supporting the importing/exporting of private keys. They stopped pretending to be a bitcoin wallet after the buy/sell business started becoming a much faster way to part customers from their funds without having to play custodian.

Long story short for OP, is that there is no way for him to extract private keys from Coinbase now. What happened most likely is that after his message from Coinbase, some things must have changed and he wasn't notified.
copper member
Activity: 2170
Merit: 1827
Top Crypto Casino
Who took the Bitcoin cash from that address ?
The coins were probably later sent to one of their cold wallets. The only thing you can do is try to remind or continue pestering them while showing them how the funds moved from your address.
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18748
When they say "there is nothing that they can do", what they mean is "it isn't worth our time to fix this error". They absolutely could recover your coins - they have the private key to the BTC address, so therefore they have the private key to the BCH address. They just don't because they are a terrible company.

It is unlikely that a malicious Coinbase employee stole your BCH. More likely is that Coinbase simply did a batch recovery of all the BCH sent to BTC addresses and all the BTC sent to BCH addresses, and decided to pocket all the coins as profit rather than go through the effort of returning them to you.

Your only possible solution here is to contact Coinbase again and demand your funds back. If it is a large sum of money, consider taking legal action against them.

I think you have weak password and someone has the access to it and it looks like to me someone has access to your wallet and used it.
Even if an attacker did manage to gain access to OP's account, the attacker wouldn't be able to access OP's BCH that had been sent to his BTC address either. As Coinbase is completely custodial, the only people that can access the private keys of the addresses, and therefore recover BTC or BCH sent to the wrong address, is Coinbase themselves.
legendary
Activity: 3500
Merit: 6320
Crypto Swap Exchange
Over a year ago I messaged Coinbase to ask what happened with my Bitcoin cash, going back and forth I was told that I had sent my Bitcoin cash accidentally to their Coinbase Bitcoin wallet and there is nothing that they can do.

Okey I though the coins are lost forever but now I looked up if the Bitcoin cash is still on that ( supposedly inaccessible address ) and I upon looking at transaction history it is visible that the coins where accessed and sent out about 4 months later

--------

Only now I googled if it's possible to recover Bitcoin cash if it's sent a Bitcoin address and the answer was that if someone has the private keys to that Bitcoin address where the Bitcoin cash was sent then it would be possible

Now I googled if Coinbase has access to their users Bitcoin address private keys and the answer was yes ?


Who took the Bitcoin cash from that address ?

Should be in altcoins.
But, Coinbase will sweep all wallets to their main cold storage ones.
So if you send BTC, BCH, BSV, whatever to an address that belongs to Coinbase it will be moved.
If that address is not associated with your account then it is not credited to your account.
IF another currency has that same address that is associated with your account they have the ability to credit you.

THERE ARE HOWEVER SECURITY IMPLICATIONS AND TIME INVOLVED WITH DOING IT.

So if you are talking 50 BCH you can probably get someone at Coinbase to eventually help you. They usually charge a fee for this.
If you are talking 0.1 BCH it is going to cost them more in time & effort and not be worth it for what they can charge you.

-Dave
copper member
Activity: 110
Merit: 2
Total Exchange (TEX) and Luxury Ledger (LXRY)
A very informative thread:

How do I get my public and private keys on Coinbase?

And I really do not think that coinbase will take your money, I think you have weak password and someone has the access to it and it looks like to me someone has access to your wallet and used it.

Can you check the log history?

TEX-LXRY
full member
Activity: 428
Merit: 107
Over a year ago I messaged Coinbase to ask what happened with my Bitcoin cash, going back and forth I was told that I had sent my Bitcoin cash accidentally to their Coinbase Bitcoin wallet and there is nothing that they can do.

Okey I though the coins are lost forever but now I looked up if the Bitcoin cash is still on that ( supposedly inaccessible address ) and I upon looking at transaction history it is visible that the coins where accessed and sent out about 4 months later

--------

Only now I googled if it's possible to recover Bitcoin cash if it's sent a Bitcoin address and the answer was that if someone has the private keys to that Bitcoin address where the Bitcoin cash was sent then it would be possible

Now I googled if Coinbase has access to their users Bitcoin address private keys and the answer was yes ?


Who took the Bitcoin cash from that address ?
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