Our Recent Issues with Coinbase

After about 3 ½ years of relative harmony, once again, Coinbase’s lack of concern with developing a strong, effective customer service department has led to unnecessary challenges for PROHASHING.

Our last conflict with Coinbase took place in Fall of 2018 when their API, which PROHASHING had been successfully using to conduct business for 4 years, suddenly ceased to function as expected. Due to unresponsive customer service, that issue took about a month and a half to resolve.

Now, we find ourselves in a similar situation. On March 16, 2022, Coinbase began placing a 72 hour hold on payments made from PROHASHING to PROHASHING miners. Chris contacted Coinbase’s customer support on March 19. The first responses were sent to Chris that day but in the form of automated replies, as shown below:

Chris received another form reply on March 20 requesting more details, as seen below:

He responded that same day with the requested information and then heard nothing else back from customer support on this issue.

At this point, the problem continued and worsened. The number of customers affected by the holds increased to the point that it now appears to encompass most PROHASHING miners receiving payouts through Coinbase.

After receiving no communication from Coinbase about any attempts to resolve this issue, Chris contacted Coinbase again on March 28th. He tried a different tactic and asked whether his ID was somehow invalid rather than asking again why withdrawals were delayed. The first response that day was as follows:

The second response arrived the following day, March 29th, and read as follows:

This response is perplexing, as a reasonable person would not expect a payment from a business to come directly from the business’s CEO. Changing the display name would show the transactions as coming directly from Christopher Sokolowski rather than from PROHASHING as a company, which is inaccurate. Again, for the last 3 ½ years, PROHASHING has been using this configuration with no issues. Chris replied asking for Coinbase to find a way to fix or work around this issue and has not yet received a reply as of March 30th.

Also on March 29th, a customer took to Twitter to publicly ask @CoinbaseSupport why direct payments from other Coinbase customers are being delayed up to 72 hours as well as to seek clarification on why the “Delayed until” date displays code, rather than an actual date. The question was met with yet another Coinbase Support form response, linking to the same “Why is my cryptocurrency send delayed” article that has been sent out repeatedly to each of the customers experiencing these delays as well, which asks the recipient of the payout to reverify their ID as was requested of Chris. If the purpose of Chris reverifying his ID as the sender is to confirm that we, indeed, meant to initiate the transaction to this individual, why would the reverification of the recipient’s ID also unlock the transaction?

The customer tagged us and commented, “it seems #Coinbase thinks you didn’t send all these thousands of transactions each day.” I replied with the following:

He answered that, while we await a resolution, he will be switching to another wallet. This is proof that Coinbase's inaction is costing them customers, even if only temporarily.

In the absence of a resolution from Coinbase, Steven, the senior engineer in charge of the PROHASHING trader, tried changing our display name to Chris’s full name as a test of whether this would, in fact, fix the problem. We received some reports that some payments did go through that day with a person’s full name on it instead of PROHASHING, but this did not work on all transactions sent by PROHASHING that day, so even if this were an acceptable solution, it is not a comprehensive solution.

At this point, Coinbase’s inaction is not only impacting PROHASHING, as a business, but it is also inconveniencing thousands of PROHASHING miners, who are using direct-to-Coinbase payouts for the convenience of those payments being nearly instantaneous, as should be the case. In addition to, again, failing to maintain the promised functionality of their API, Coinbase is displaying a strong level of indifference by also failing to keep in contact with PROHASHING with any assurance that the problem is being investigated. Coinbase, as a company, has developed a reputation for automated and form responses to support requests and inaction regarding the issues addressed in the inquiries.

PROHASHING, as a Coinbase customer, and by extension, PROHASHING’s customers, account for thousands of Coinbase transactions per day. Essentially, this means that what matters to us needs to matter to them.

UPDATE: We are also now hearing that customers are being shown a button to "Cancel payment" from us. Please do not click this. Your payment will eventually come through at the end of the 72 hour delay. We did have one report that someone tried clicking on it, and it didn't appear to do anything, The screen still read, "pending until '{date} at {time}'", so there are clearly more bugs that Coinbase needs to look into. If you are experiencing these things, please contact Coinbase's customer support.