My Coinbase horror story! (get out the popcorn)

I'm relatively new at investing in crypto assets, although I'm an engineer and have known about bitcoin almost since its beginnings. I came into a windfall recently and decided to put a large amount into bitcoin as a hedge for the next 5 or 10 years. Being ignorant of exchanges, I decided to "test" three exchanges and see which ones offered the best fees and service.

I'll skip the comprehensive review of all three exchanges and get to the point -- Coinbase took my money, let me buy a single bitcoin, and then refused to transfer that coin into my own wallet. They have blocked all "sending" of crypto assets from my account and are keeping my coin hostage.

Going three rounds with their ironically-named "customer support" they say they're "doing it to protect me." As though it somehow protects me if they force me to sell my bitcoin (with their relatively high fees) and suck the fiat currency back out. So, that protected me how??

For a variety of reasons, I'd rather have the coin than the fiat. For one thing, they have limited my account to only $1000 bank transfers per day. So it'll take 24 or 25 days to transfer the value of a single bitcoin. It also creates a taxable transaction, which will force me into doing a crypto tax return for this year, when my intent is to HODL which will require no tax form for any year in which I do not sell or convert coin. (Stupid US laws, which I have every intent to follow.)

I don't know how common it is to have a new account where the exchange refuses to allow you to withdraw your assets after you've bought them. The other two exchanges I've tried so far are Bitstamp and Kraken. Both exchanges were relatively pain-free about exchanging fiat for crypto and withdrawing the crypto. Kraken won my little contest, by the way.

My pain is your gain. Think long and hard about signing up with Coinbase. They are a big company and I'm sure not everyone has a horror story like mine. But why take that chance? Steer clear unless they have some service you really need and can't get somewhere else.

Submitted August 16, 2022 at 06:02PM by liv2cod https://ift.tt/LsTCyMd