Topic: Something I noticed when sending USD from Coinbase to my bank account (Read 3099 times)

Thanks for the info, figment.  It makes better sense now but it is still really SLOW.  My transaction is over with though.

in the USA we're still using the archaic ACH system. that requires settlement of interbank payments. a cash withdrawal from an ATM doesn't require interbank settlement.


isn't that one of the selling points of cryptocurrencies---avoiding banking delays?

in all likelihood, it's the recipient bank (your bank) that's causing the delays, as a matter of risk management against fraud. that's the primary reason coinbase can't guarantee an effective payment date. the recipient bank generally waits out the "settlement period" for an ACH payment before crediting funds to your account. otherwise they are effectively extending you credit if the payment doesn't end up clearing. in other words, your bank is worried that coinbase's bank might be defrauding them and is taking steps to mitigate that. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-shortest-ACH-debit-settlement-period-that-is-needed-to-avoid-fraud/answer/Faisal-Khan-1

The banking system we have is a mess of pretty little lies.

Sending fiat from Coinbase into my bank account should be instant and anybody who justifies it is pushing lies. It should be the same speed of going up to an ATM machine to get cash.  The amount of money I withdrew from Coinbase was not a huge amount, and I have never had any suspicious activity on neither my Coinbase or my bank account.  It's almost the year 2020 with drones flying around in the air and we are sending space shuttles to Mars for cripes sake.  The banks should have caught up with the rest of the speediness of the world by now.

I don't have to click links and I rarely do. It is your duty to answer in detail since you did jump in the discussion without being asked.
Then again I admit that I was wrong as I didn't believe that EU banks could have adopted so fast and didn't wire-transfer money since 2018. The information you provided was valuable.

Did you look at the link I provided? 50% of payment service providers in Europe are already using this system to make transfers in under 10 seconds right now. They are "in the process" of rolling it out to try to reach 100% adoption.

As of right now, there are payment service providers in the following 20 countries using this instant transfer system: Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Malta, Cyprus, and Monaco.

I'd be interested to know which countries have right now these systems you are referring to. SEPA as you are saying is "in the process" of creating an instant wire-transfer processing system, which in banking terms means 2-10 years.
So you are basically saying that their is no system available to process transactions in the same day.

I don't understand why you don't answer my question with a simple yes you are right and you are starting with "There are some countries with systems in place to allow instant transfers."

Which countries are these? Can you go in detail?

Today I checked my bank account and I have verified that the funds were finally deposited. The transaction posted as pending in my bank ledger on the day I submitted my order to move funds out of Coinbase, however it did not post for probably the 3 days. I say probably because I did not see an exact date for when my bank received the funds -- it could have been 3 days less or more, I really do not know for sure.

Obviously Coinbase, well, let's just say that Coinbase leaves it's clients in the dark best they can. If you need to argue and defend Coinbase just read this whole topic over again. They leave clients in the dark best the can in the form of little bits and sneaky pieces of darkness here and here. Who knows where the money goes? Nobody. Don't bother asking because Coinbase is like a box of financial chocolates. You just never know what you are going to get.

i don't think they actually know for sure. initiating a withdrawal triggers fraud/due diligence checks which differ on a case-by-case basis. then there are possible delays from the customer's bank (or intermediary banks in the case of wires).

so they give you a time window that indicates the latest time you'll receive it, which seems like the best we can expect. anytime i've confirmed a bank withdrawal from coinbase pro, the confirmation says "coinbase_payout_at: xxxxx" where xxxxx is the latest date the ACH will hit my account. it's always hit my account earlier than that.

doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Let's just say that I am a concerned customer and I am leaving really excellent feedback for their company. Coinbase is now potentially bigger than a lot of big banks in the world. The same thing goes with Binance. They are both simply huge now. All I would expect from Coinbase is a little pop up box confirmation saying Your funds will be transferred in 3 days, would you still like to proceed? Or Your funds of $XXXXX of dollars has been sent and processed, thank you.

Being used to international transfers as I'm banking in a small country, I'm not surprised. Within the SEPA zone, transfers are fast, some banks even proposing same day service at extra cost, but elsewhere, it's quite normal for a transfer to take 2 business days.

Coinbase also do not know for sure, unless they are also able to log in to your bank account to check. Think of the ACH system like mailing some physical cash to someone, via standard non-tracked shipping. The sender, in this case Coinbase, processes your transaction and puts it in the post immediately upon receiving it. Their part is now done, and there is nothing they can do from this point onwards to speed the process up. You now have to wait several days for the postal system/ACH system to deliver your transaction. Coinbase don't know when your transaction arrives - all they know is when they processed it and how long on average these things take.

Yes. The same with any payment or bank transfer. If you transfer money to someone else's bank account, does their bank email you to say the funds have been received?

Again, I have no love for Coinbase, but this has nothing to do with them.

For some reason, you seem to want Coinbase to be the bad guy here. They aren't. Coinbase has no way to know when your bank will credit the money to your account. I'm sure that they dislike the delays as much as you do.

Well it has been 4 days now and my Coinbase transfer was probably sent to my bank account. I say probably because I do not know for sure unless I log into my bank account. Why? Because Coinbase did not send a confirmation email that confirms whether or not my money was sent. I guess it is up to me to log in and see what's there?

By the way, after a 3 days wait, I would totally expect Coinbase to send me a confirmation email stating that my funds we successfully sent. I guess they just like to leave that little bit of mystery for their clients. Little surprises!

Most SEPA transfers reach no later than the next business day these days, and depending on the bank/country transfers under 15k EUR are near-instant as in your link. It only applies to EU/EEA/EFTA+microstates, though, other European countries such Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and a handful of Balkan countries aren't covered (...yet).

There are some countries with systems in place to allow instant transfers. The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) are in the process of setting up a European wide payment processor called SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-instant-credit-transfer) which should allow instant transfers between accounts at any time of day or night. Whether or not exchanges will start using this is another matter, but it is certainly possible.

Fiat banking systems are generally pretty slow and archaic, but the US banking system is very poor even by those standards. Perhaps the growth of bitcoin might force them to actually modernize a little.

Where have you seen wire transfers processing instantly? It takes 3 days minimum. This is the traditional banking we are speaking about. Who the hell told you it is instant???
Even the money you sent from your card to buy on Amazon they are not delivered instantly. Amazon sees them on their account on the next working day! So if you buy something at Friday Amazon will have the money available only on Monday.
What is actually instant is only transfers between accounts of the same bank.

That's the justification they use for mass surveillance, but it just isn't true. Terrorists aren't communicating via Facebook or GoogleMail. They are using encrypted lines of communication.

This can be known from sale figures, it doesn't require mass surveillance.

I don't use Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media. I use encrypted email providers which are free. I don't use Google Maps, but use a free alternative which doesn't track me. There are free and privacy conscious alternatives for pretty much everything. Even Tor is free to use.

There is no good invasion of privacy.

Yeah, but in OP's case he's withdrawing from Coinbase to his bank account. If it was the other way around that would have been understandable, but in his case it doesn't make sense unless it's the fault of USA's antiquated banking systems taking their time to process bank transfers.

Right I think depends on the volume of transactions how long the confirmation of the money funds transfer.
Herein my country I use local wallet to transafer my fund into bank process time 24 hours before the transaction completed to cofirm.

This is where user friendly features comes in count also knowledge is vital.


Use Linux instead of Windows.
- I never used Linux and I do not think I will ever consider it too.

Use Firefox instead of Chrome.
- I feel Chrome service is better and using it however changing it to firefox is that that hard.

Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google search
- Not user friendly. Google is bringing exactly that I want but in DuckDuckGo every time I am going from the start.

Use ProtonMail instead of GoogleMail
- Never tried ProtonMail. Guess I will give it a try.

Problem is that - the alternatives are not very much up to date with the comfort lever the regular services offer. It's like your phone company. In your circle if everyone is using service A then you are using the same because service A is giving some specific offers which you can not find with other service to communicate with your friends.

You make a very valid point, but there are also positives to this...

Because the NSA keeps tabs on the entire world, they are able to find the source of terrorism. They share this information with the 'five eyes' and in a way keep much of the world safe.

Because companies know so much about us, they know what kind of technology we use, what kind of technology we will buy. This is not only good for the economy, but also technological advancement of the whole world.

Because companies sell our data, we are able to use their services for free. How would you feel if you needed to pay a subscription for google maps, facebook, twitter, email, or pretty much any free service that you use? If companies were not able to make money on our data, then the services that they offer would never be as developed and userfriendly as they are now, because they would have a smaller userbase due to the subscription model.

There is good and bad to the invasion of privacy. Where to draw the line?

All of that being said, I agree with you and I am also one of the few who are concerned with privacy. I am just trying to argue the opposing side.  I use proton mail myself, and I will definitely check out the links you posted!

You know, banks don't accept Bitcoin right?

What I am saying here is that they are sending fiat in your bank account. The cryptocurrency you sent is being sent not as crypto but a fiat then obviously, it will be fiat and they will deal with it the same as the fiat in the world though in our country, when I am sending my crypto to my bank account it only takes half a day depends on the time that you send it.

Every transaction between classic banks in this world takes 3 days. In the USA  a human does these transactions and they take 3 days, in Europe they are automated (a PC does them).

In day 1 , the transaction is initiated (is started), in day 2 the money are transferred between the banks, in day 3 the receiving bank deposits the money into the receiving account.

 There is a possibility for these transactions to take 2 days (in USA and in Europe). The money is transferred the day the transaction is initiated, in day 2 the money are deposited into the receiving account.

You sure about that any bank in the world would make transactions immediate? Most banks I know when sending across border takes 2 working days if not 3 or more. Send it on a long weekend plus holiday and you can end up waiting a whole week.

And you're saying treating fiat like crypto I don't get that. Crypto is as fast as you want it to be.

It is standard practice in the Banking sector for inter Bank transfers of Fiat to take up to 48 hours. The Banks combine transactions and reconcile the balance sheet between Banks every other day and it is done via services like for example the "Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS)" in the USA.

It will not be cost effective for them to use these services for every individual transactions, so they combine all the transactions together and then balance the transactions that are combined by other Banks with their Bank and settle the difference. direct Bitcoin use is much more effective than the Banking system, but when you use services like Coinbase to covert & transfer Fiat, these limitations are once again applied to you.>  

<< Blame the Banks systems, not Bitcoin>> 

You do have options though. Use Linux instead of Windows. Use Firefox instead of Chrome. Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google search. Use ProtonMail instead of GoogleMail. For every service you use which invades your privacy, there is an alternative which doesn't. Here are a couple of great resources for finding said alternatives:

https://prism-break.org/en/
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/wiki/de-google

It's far worse than just targeted advertising. It's a surveillance state. Snowden's revelations showed the NSA is collecting all your data. Do you trust the government not to do anything shady with your data? Do you trust all future governments? Cambridge Analytica used your data to illegally influence elections. Some countries use data to punish dissidents or anyone who speaks out against the government.

I don't see anything "abnormal" over here. You are converting your bitcoin to fiat currency and then transferring it to a bank. Well, bank transfer never had a reputation for being instant. And there are lots of security check coinbase has to go through before making your transaction. Again, doesn't bank transfer normally take around 3 business day to process any money transfer?

Why are you even using them? Can you not use anyone else?
Can you not use localbitcoin?

One more reason to never give away KYC. Not even an exchange can protect you.

"The crypto was meant to protect ones privacy" Exactly the point. 


That is not really true. Google collects info to help us shop, it works well. KYC is to scam you. Giving KYC is really a bad idea.

I get it, people worry about their privacy and all, but it is all quite silly really. You just get adverts which are more relevant to you, and quite franky I don't think that's a bad thing unless you are a terrible impulse buyer

If you think about it, your data is just 1's and 0's in a database which no human will ever look at, any processing of your data is automatic and handled my complicated algorithms. As long as it is not used for malicious purposes, or sold to your friends - who cares?

Don't get me wrong I am not saying you should be sending pictures of your ID, name and address without second thoughts, because there are many bad things that can happen if such data goes in the wrong hands.

In the US, we have limited options to buy/sell cryptocurrency by linking our bank accounts:

• 1. https://coinbase.com and https://gemini.com. They have the custody of your coins.
• 2. https://abra.com. semi-custodial. They have synthetic coins.
• 3. https://evercoin.com. non-custodial. Your keys, your coins. You can link your bank account. Currently cheaper than all other options but only available in 9 US states: "CA", "MA", "NV", "MI", "MO", "MT", "NE", "UT", "WY"

Regardless of your choice, bank transactions (ACH) take time. Actual transfer happens at midnight every business day and the settlement takes a few days. So USD withdrawal from any of these options will take at least one business day. Deposits can take up to 6 days because the company will have to wait for the bank transaction settlement and banks don't work during the weekend. If you do your transaction before 5pm you will save yourself a day.The worst time is Thursday after 5pm and Friday because the bank transaction will wait through the weekend.

And that is one of the many reasons why we have to make sure bitcoin (cryptocurrency) wins and we won't need banks. It is insane.

Everything has its cost. We see all those multi million dollar company are letting us to use their service for free but without any catch? We are their product. Without us there will be no Facebook, no Google, no Yahoo. But the only way for them to hang us with them is to provide us the service. And they are doing the exact thing that they were suppose to.

Problem is - we are so dependent with those service that knowing our privacy is being compromise, we are still using their service.
For example: To make this post I am using Google chrome firefox (Not using google chrome though). I am logged in with my gmail account which means google is tracking all my moves. Constantly they are storing my information in their database so they know me very well. I know all these things but why I still let them to do that? Because of the comfortless of using their system. They are customizing their serving for me which makes my life easier.

I see an ad on the Tele where one guy is saying why don't I see that you see in my phone. The other guy proudly saying because google knows what I want. I am in the same situation but not proud because I know I have no option but use their service knowing that my privacy is in stake however we try our best.

Lol, do you know how much users Google's services still have? Their entire business strategy is based on selling people's data and nobody cares.
You'd be wrong to assume that crypto users care more. Everyone is more than willing to send personal information (including IDs) for KYC etc.

Only a very small minority of people actually care about their privacy.

i'm not sure what the regular coinbase interface looks like, but the coinbase pro/gdax interface says this in the withdrawal prompt:


last time, i withdrew on friday and received my money on tuesday. this is in the USA. can't complain with that for a free ACH withdrawal.

Your anger is misdirected. I am hardly one for defending Coinbase, and I think everyone would do well to avoid them at all costs, but this has nothing to do with them. They can't transfer USD any faster than the system allows them to. If you want to be mad at anyone, be mad at the fiat banking system and the automated clearing house network for being so unbelievably slow. Coinbase make it pretty clear in their support pages how long a withdrawal is likely to take. There are some countries whose ACH system will process transaction on the same day - the US is particularly bad in this regard.

Using third party services to store your coins for you is ill advised. There are simply too many potential ways in which you can lose access to your coins. You would be better served learning how to securely store your coins yourself.

Okay? You sound like a child who can't wait tell Christmas time to open their presents... You have to wait for things in the real world... Do you actually think that Coinbase gives one fuck about your opinion (that is completely unavoidable btw)? Be done with Coinbase, they won't miss you, and you aren't going to find another exchange that's any better. You should know how banks and investing works before using something like Coinbase... you would already know these things if you did.

Coinbase should pay me for bringing this stuff up. I am serious. Same thing with my Binance comments here and elsewhere. They have company staff reading this stuff posted from normal clients like us and they often implement stuff they hear from us if it seems right.

I mean, I'd post this at the Coinbase user forum at their website, but wait, there is none! So don't be surprised if CBase users come here to talk about things, even if it is stuff you don't like to hear it is going to happen. Another option, I could just email their company my questions, and wait a few days to get a response from one person, but here at this forum I get multiple responses right away from regular people who are speaking my language and they aren't all slanting their responses in Coinbase's favor and being required to be company advocates.

Unless sites like CBase and Binance pay me, I'm done with this stuff. It's pretty simple. When you are getting ready to send money from Cbase over to your bank account, have a pop up box BEFORE submitting the transaction, "Your funds will be sent in X amount of days". That is what any other financial institution does. People everywhere around the entire world just want to know 1) How much will this cost? and 2) How long will this take? It is just that simple.

Please read the below link before raising any concern to a public forum,

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1392026-how-long-does-a-sell-or-withdrawal-take-to-complete-

In US or EU, it is written that it takes 1-2 business days for a bank withdrawal! Probably a weekend/holiday comes in between which makes it 3 calendar days! It's nothing shady or unprofessional!

Of course, if you do not like the way that coinbase works, then the best thing that you can do is to stop using it. I use their services only for wallet purposes, but i am not using them for exchanging or to send money to my bank account, i prefer to keep crypto far away from fiat.

I don't know, the info is pretty public:


Some methods are faster than others, according to this page. Here is some information as to why bank transfers (Coinbase or not) take a few days. They could be doing something else behind the scenes, but the delay is well accounted for from what I can see.

That's because coinbase is a complete piece of shit, they fucked me during big moves on price too many times, I moved on to gemini and never looked back. Get with a decent exchange and dump coinbase.

Exactly, it's all about regulations. I'm sure Coinbase would love to have things done as fast as possible but that's not how the world works. Anyone who thinks any exchange is that much "different" from Coinbase is delusional.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's sitting there doing nothing, which is why it's FDIC-insured. Some of it may be in high yielding accounts that aren't immediately liquid but nothing outside the bounds of their numerous money transmitter licensing requirements. Coinbase occurs to me as a company that is very by the book.


There's a big difference between the Coinbase/Gemini tier of exchanges and the Bitfinex/Binance tier. I wouldn't lump them all in the same basket.

It's to prevent fraud a lot of the time if they didn't have that people would abuse the system... Unfortunately, a lot of the inconveniences that come with Bitcoin are because it was abused in the past. One good example I can recently think of was the "one confirmation" rule. Why was that created? - It's because people were abusing it by sending a transaction, receiving the product instantly, and then double-spending to get their money back. It's annoying but it's for their own protection against criminals.

Just to add on to the topic of "privacy", Bitcoin isn't private and never was. People who think that things like Bitcoin which involve a "blockchain" are private are absolutely delusional. If you want privacy, don't use anything online, AKA cash? Anything that involves the internet compromises your privacy, whether you like it or not. Never give any company any data that you wouldn't want a random person to see. If you really want to use crypto still, just use something like Monero which is completely built around being anonymous.

This is a real gem right here. A couple weeks ago I happened upon some news article about this but when I logged in today, the website did not notify me that their company compromised peoples privacy and personal data. It's just like another Surprise! You heard it on the internet by word of mouth by some stranger on a message board, so now you know?

I did not receive any email from Coinbase saying that accounts were compromised. It was just heard through word of mouth. That is awful business. It's worse than Facebook. At least everybody under the sun knows Facebook is up to no good. These providers like Coinbase and Binance are just the same only the veil has not been removed yet.

It has nothing to do with Coinbase. That's how long it takes to transfer money between bank accounts in the U.S.

Probably is the key word there because Surprise! Nobody knows because Coinbase does not tell it's clients! The money is probably being funneled into real estate or insurance companies or really again, nobody knows for sure but the money is likely not just sitting there doing nothing. Big companies move money constantly like it is water in a stream.

These providers are not "upfront" at all. There is way too much secrecy from them when their main business is providing secrecy (=crypto) for their clients. That is a big reason why adoption with Bitcoin has been so slow. The big providers themselves are up to no good. They cloak all of their activity even for the simpleminded end user it is blatant.

The providers are ass backwards. They are not providing secrecy for their clients. That is the entire point of cyrpto. I'd like to see Coinbase and Binance both replaced by better providers.

It's probably for fraud and AML checks. Once the bank transfer settles -- especially wires -- they can't claw the money back. If your account doesn't get flagged for suspicious activity in those few days, then they release the funds.

It's annoying but I've never faced any issues. They've always been upfront about the delay.

Another thing I noticed is that you really do not know how long it will take until you submit the transfer order.  e.g. SURPRISE! It will take 3 days to get your money!  Where is the money right now?  Nobody knows.  It could be at Coinbase, it could be in a secret wallet, it could be in a secret bank account. Nobody really knows.

It reminds me of how Binance gives clients all these little Surprises.

I think that 3-days is the standard processing time for bank transfers. It could be less but since you are receiving a generic message then it will state 3 days. If it is just local bank transfer, it can be faster like one-day processing.

I visited a country where a wire transfer among different local banks can take up to TWO weeks, so no...

In my country, it would normally take about one to two working days, but we can't do any international transfers.

Bitcoin? A mere hour at most, border-less, tax-less.

Fiat and banks we don't need, they get in the way.

It's their procedure. Like it or not, you have to accept it.

Anyway, I still wonder that Coinbase has customers even after they admitted that they sold their customer data. The crypto was meant to protect ones privacy.

Today I sent a small amount of USD from my Coinbase account, to my bank account. It says I will not receive those funds for 3 full days. Any other bank in the world would make that transaction almost immediately. Why does Coinbase take their sweet time? That is cruddy. Coinbase treats fiat like it is crypto. I am glad I do not have funds in Coinbase anymore, well, in a few days I won't.