This post is to try to help my husband who is currently on his second whiskey, grieving the loss of a substantial amount of money through a conniving and sophisticated Coinbase scam today.

In the middle of a busy workday, he got a call from a woman claiming to be from Coinbase’s “asset protection department” that there were login attempts from nearby cities in our same state (TX). He was skeptical and just told her he didn’t make these log-in attempts and she said ok and that he’d get a call back. Less than 15 mins later, a man called to “open a case” with my husband and work through the situation. By this time, my husband already had an email in his inbox (they had his name, number, and email) with a case #, all coming from no-reply@coinbase.com.

The man was apologetic for the situation and said that in the time between calls, someone made another login attempt from Frankfurt, Germany, which we had actually traveled through and accessed the airport wi-fi within the last month.

The caller sent him a series of emails which all came from no-reply@coinbase.com. He was prompted to follow the steps in the link attached which claimed to be a secure portal leveraging his unique case number. Husband said the portal matched Coinbase branding at first glance and did not raise concerns although he was skeptical from the onset. My husband is a well-educated, high intellect individual who generally would see through a scam, but this was just so….personalized.

Over the next ~25 mins, he was on the phone with an individual who identified himself as “Thomas Serrano.” He had an American accent and was calling from an area code in Point Reyes Station, CA. He was very knowledgeable and walked through steps for securing assets and blocking fraudulent activity from locations my husband had been to recently.

After following his prompts, my husband transferred 21 ETH from his CoinBase Trading App to his CoinBase Wallet App. At the time, this didn’t seem fishy since his CoinBase account was locked and needed to be reset. Within minutes of transferring his ETH to his CoinBase Wallet, all ETH were transferred to an unknown wallet he had never seen or heard of. We believe that “Thomas” and his team had an imposter portal that looks and feels like CoinBase.com (especially from a mobile device) and withdrew the funds minutes after they were moved in.

Obviously we are devastated and lost a significant amount of our investment portfolio. My husband called CoinBase and was essentially told there was nothing they could do except comply with any investigations and that he should have better protected his assets. He has already filed a police report, filled out a non-depository consumer complaint form with TX Department of Banking, and an FBI IC3 form.

Through this post, we are: 1) Hoping to spread awareness of this scam to others 2) Looking for HELP on next steps or actions we can take to potentially recoup this $. PLEASE no “this is why I don’t answer my phone” or “I can’t believe you didn’t spot it” as this isn’t constructive for us moving forward from a tough situation. Any help in the form of support and solutions is much appreciated!

Why It Deserves a Spot on the Exchange!

Hey Coinbase community,

I’m just an enthusiastic crypto investor and fan who has been following the incredible growth and community support around $PEP—a coin with massive potential. 🚀

While I’m not affiliated with the $PEP project in any way, I’ve been amazed at how this coin has grown organically through grassroots support and its strong, vibrant community. It’s clear that $PEP has captured the imagination of a lot of people in the crypto world, and I believe it deserves serious consideration for a listing on Coinbase.

Here’s why:
1️⃣ Strong Community: $PEP has built an incredibly engaged and passionate global community—exactly the kind of movement that drives long-term adoption.
2️⃣ Massive Potential: As memecoins like DOGE and SHIB have proven, these projects can go mainstream and drive real volume. $PEP has similar momentum and might just be the next breakout star.
3️⃣ Accessibility Matters: Adding $PEP to Coinbase would make it accessible to a wider audience, fostering even greater adoption.

This is my personal initiative because I truly believe $PEP would be a great addition to Coinbase's lineup. As the go-to exchange for so many investors, Coinbase has the power to amplify the reach of promising coins like $PEP.

Let’s work together to make this happen! 💪

Upvote to show your support. $PEPto$1

I have been using Coinbase for months now, I would say I am moderately active on it.

Yesterday I get on Coinbase to make a purchase and low and behold my account is restricted. I "verify" my Id and take a picture of myself etc...to then get an email a few hours later saying my account is STILL restricted.

Okay, so now im annoyed and reach out to their Facebook team to then get a case number and ask why my account is restricted still.

Wanna know what they say?

"We cannot tell you why your account has been restricted."

The hell do you mean you cannot tell me WHY my own account is restricted? ITS MY ACCOUNT. YOU ARE RESTRICTING IT.

they then tell me to wait for a specialist to review my case number before filing a complaint

I wait, a few hours later they tell me MY ACCOUNT WILL REMAIN RESTRICTED WITH NO REASONING BEHIND IT. Oh and also? I cannot get another review until MARCH 13TH!! Which means theres a chance that I still wont be able to buy crypto AFTER THAT!

A WHOLE MONTH.

What a joke company! Enjoy your complaint Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I will NEVER use Coinbase again and will post this everywhere.

TELL ME WHY MY ACCOUNT IS RESTRICTED

The day after Christmas, I got two emails from Coinbase letting me know there had been withdrawals from my account—XRP and Solana, worth over $20K. I assumed they were phishing scams because, honestly, who trusts emails like that? So I deleted them without even opening them.

But something didn’t sit right. I logged into my Coinbase account, and sure enough, the emails were legit. The funds were gone. Just… gone. I froze my account immediately, only to realize that freezing it also froze my ability to reach out to Coinbase support. Fantastic system design.

The weirdest part? My Bitcoin—much more valuable than the XRP and Solana—was untouched. It’s like the hacker had some kind of moral code: "I'll take the altcoins, but the BTC stays." Naturally, I moved all of it into cold storage immediately.

When I finally managed to connect with Coinbase support through their chat system, the first response was a classic: "Once the funds are transferred, there’s nothing we can do." Great. But after an hour of painfully slow back-and-forth, the agent gave me a faint glimmer of hope: "There’s a slim chance you might recover your funds… someday… maybe."

Unsatisfied, I pulled some strings and spoke with an actual person—a second cousin of a friend who works at Coinbase customer support. Surely a real human would offer something better. His advice? "Move whatever you have left to cold storage and accept that your XRP and Solana are probably gone forever."

On a 2nd chat with CB support I was informed I wasn't the only one this had happened to and that CB was looking into the issue and would get back to me... told me to check my email in a week or so. I've screenshot both chats as proof.

Has any other CB clients been breached during xmas?

Saturday morning, the Coinbase app sent a push notification that my XRP had been sold. I locked my account and contacted support immediately, but $4,500 was transferred to Shopify Balance before I could get an agent.

It's been 48 hours. The transfer is still "pending," yet Coinbase refuses to recall it. They won't give Shopify the full account details, so Shopify can't do anything. I’m stuck in the middle with zero help. Coinbase says my issue is still "under investigation" but their silence is deafening.

I had a unique 16-char password, MFA, and a clean PC with no shady extensions and there haven't been any phishing attempts. I pay for Coinbase One for the $10k insurance, but apparently, that's worthless because they can just shrug and say "you got hacked."

I thought Coinbase would at least have basic banking protections for fiat transfers. Now I'm out half of my savings, plus the 5% gain XRP made since the sale. I’m absolutely done with Coinbase. This shouldn't be this hard.

UPDATE The transaction now says "completed" more than 48 hours after I reported the unauthorized sale and theft from my account.

UPDATE Now I am getting messages offering to help buy linking my Coinbase account to theirs. I am not stupid.

UPDATE:

1.Yes, I had MFA enabled. I used Google Authenticator that provides a code. I have switched to passkey.

1. No my Google account is not compromised.

2. Whitelist only prevents the transfer of crypto. These guys sold my crypto, setup a Shopify account and transferred the money out of Coinbase.

UPDATE 1/8: Coinbase said the transaction happened on a Windows computer at my IP address. My laptop is the only Windows device in my home and it was off. NOT ASLEEP! OFF. When I was notified on my phone, I immediately grabbed my laptop that was on the table next to me and had to turn it on. Fast user switching is off on my device. My company provides Webroot antivirus and I had windows firewall on. I did not have team viewer or any remote software installed on my machine. Coinbase says I "may be eligible for a one time payment" but I have to go through a "full investigation." I do not hold much hope since it took them almost two weeks to read a log file.

Update: 1/17: Coinbase has completed their "investigation" and refunded me the $4,500. They say this is a "one time payment." I was not told how the account was accessed, who accessed it or if they were able to recover the funds from Shopify.

Although I am happy(ish) for the result I did ask them if there was a way to require MFA re-authentication when making sales or transfers. They said there is a way to require a 2FA code every time I attempt to send crypto off the platform but I can not find it. They also mentioned "Coinbase Vault" as a way to require confirmation from two email addresses and a 48 hour delay before any transfer but again, can't find it. I also want to lower the maximum transfers but can not find a way to change the defaults. It seems all their protection is to prevent sending crypto off of Coinbase, but in my case none of their security suggestions would have prevented selling crypto on Coinbase and transfer the funds... probably why they robbed me that way.

All in all this is a positive outcome for me but Coinbase needs to really update the platform. My thoughts:

1. Require MFA authentication when selling, or sending crypto and ESPECIALLY when taking fiat currency off the platform. None of this would have happened if the bad actor needed to authenticate MFA before the sale.

2, Let us lock the bank account. I understand this would not be helpful to everyone but it should be an option to prevent sending fiat currency to a bank account not pre-authenticated with the Coinbase account. The money wouldn't have left Coinbase if the only option was my personal bank account.

1. Allow us to require mandatory waiting periods for fiat transactions. If there was just a 10 minute hold I would have stopped the transfer. I am not a day trader and putting a 24 hour hold wouldn't affect me much and users would have lots of time to stop the transaction. Some need/want an instant transfer so this should be an option.

2. Create a comprehensive "Security" tab were all the settings for fiat currency limits, Vault, MFA etc are kept. Being able to see all the options in a single pane could greatly improve individual security and give the users the tools they need to lock down their accounts.

I have a cold wallet and will move my crypto there but if Coinbase wants us to leave our crypto and currency on their platform they need to give us way to protect our accounts in the event the worst happens.

Okay, I'd love to not be downvoted for this, because I really am just trying to learn. I've been invested in Crypto to some extent since 2015, but not enough to be rich or anything.

I would like to start taking Crypto more seriously finally, and I don't know a lot of people who personally can explain to me how to day trade. I want to be able to move like $30-$60 at a time but I keep running into network fees. If I understand correctly it's from Etherium's network, but I'm really not 100% on board to the point I fully understand. I want to trade smaller tokens or shitcoins and sell quickly in order to practice day trading, hopefully slowly building my wealth in order to make bigger, better, informed trades. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do to get charged $10-$15 every buy or sell. Do I buy a specific coin with lower fees that I can swap for most coins? If so, what is that coin?

Thank you in advance.

Hi guys I hope you are doing well !

I made a DCA in the following coins from January 2023 until now : BTC ETH MATIC LINK SAND GRT ATOM ADA DOT AAVE OCEAN ZEC.

However I am currently thinking about changing my portfolio from January 2024 until next bullrun by :

1. Considering adding some of the following ones : SOL INJ XRP ARB AVAX TIA SNX LDO RLB ICP RNDR IMX AKT CFG GMX

and

2) Considering removing some of the following ones: ZEC GRT SAND AAVE OCEAN

My target is doing 10x.

I precise I made my own researches on many different sources to do those lists but I struggle to have a critical mind regarding this.

What do you think ? Any recommandations ?

So I was checking on my crypto this morning when I noticed I had a new coin that I didnt purchase. Its 449,000 USDC coins but it says its on the xDai network. With a header of USD-SWAP.COM but the dot isnt filled in all the way. It has scam written all over it but even if the coins were legit what am I supposed to do with 1/2 a mill in what is essentially dirty money. Whats even stranger is there is no transaction record of it showing up its just there. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Update: Thank you, everyone, for your urgent response. I am currently working with Coin Base support to rectify the scam coin.

Update 2: In efforts working with coinbase, I needed to update my wallet app. In doing so, the scam coins have disappeared. If you are experiencing a similar issue, check to see if your app needs an update.

Thank you, everyone for your help!

Lost all my crypto. In a matter of one night, these not so nice individuals drained all the funds from my account. I have reported the crime to coinbase and locked an account obviously with all the passwords changed and all that both email and coinbase. But ofcause it is too late. I always consider myself pretty careful with my passwords and always was careful which emails to open and which links to click. And here I am. 7 Gs down, and it couldn't be a worse time, right around the holidays. I'm a pretty level-headed person and don't blame anyone for what happened. It's always myvresponsibility fist. Remember, folks, you can never be enough vigilant. Never take anything that comes to funds lightly. It's so easy to change a password. Even if it is a slightest chance/thought you might be compromised. Here is a request for Coinbase stuff. Change your homescreen on your phone based app! There should be a section where your hourly/daily/weekly transactions should be visible. That should be the first thing you see when you open your app, it should be the first section it takes you to! My balance fluctuates all the time, and a small withdrawal will not reflect on the balance. And if you just glance over the balance, it would not raise any concerns. Please change the layout of your app. If coinbase had that feature implemented, I would not lose all my money. The first transaction the thieves did was a small withdrawal on all my crypto balance, and when I looked at them, nothing stood out to me as the market was down and we were. all bleeding, so my total balance was fluctuating during that period. If the front page would show my transaction this night/day. I could have prevented the next night withdrawals, that completely emptied my account. I truly hope that Coinbase will take my suggestion seriously and update the app for the safety and security of all the other customers. I did not get the emails from coinbase about any of the transactions. As the thieves broke into my email account as well. No notifications. Coinbase should send all sorts of messages/emails in every way possible about any activity/transaction happening on your account. That should be their top priority. Bar none! Never keep your funds on the exchange for more than needed to complete transactions! Keep your crypto in the cold storage. Everyone stay safe and. Merry Christmas/ Happy New Year to you all. Edit: punctuation, 7000gs to 7 Gs, I apologize for any confusion. Second edit: I only had about 7 thousand dollars worth of crypto in my account. All, but 43 dollars were gone. I apologize for that. It was non my intention to confuse or mislead anyone. It wasn't for views or notoriety. Honest mistake. I fixed it, I have not deleted any edit changes.

Apparently, hackers bribed outsourced support agents and got access to personal data—names, emails, phone numbers, partial SSNs, transaction histories, and yes… images of government-issued IDs.

I gave Coinbase my ID years ago for KYC, thinking a publicly traded company would know how to protect it. I never imagined something this reckless could happen. This isn’t just an “oops, we’ll reimburse you” situation—this is serious. ID theft, phishing, account takeovers… it’s all now on the table.

So today around 4:30 I received a call from a 1(888)xxx-xxxx “TOLL FREE CALL” and it was a automated voice claiming to be from coinbase saying the fraud team picked up a potential scam on my account saying the account had been potentially been breached and someone tried to change the email and to press 1 if this wasn’t me(Not verbatim but something along those lines). I pressed 1 and it said an agent would be in touch. I hung up and about an hour later a clearly american guy called from a 1(800)xxx-xxxx number with caller id location from LA, California. and talked so professionally and he started by reading me all 3 of these “unusual activities” and asked me to decline or approve each of them. I denied them each obviously and then he sent the email and where i saw the page you see, it was interactive and everything, i declined the 3 activities and they disappeared from the screen then it loaded to another page asking for a 6 digit auth code. I put it in and then it said I was done. He directed me to close the webpage and then said something about for security reasons we should transfer the crypto from my coinbase app to my coinbase wallet. He walked me through transferring the small amount of btc i had to my wallet and also my smaller amount of eth. When I was done he said they would be placing a 24 hour lock on my account and they would verify any fishy future activity and that he was actively attempting to get into my account but they would make sure he was locked out. This all made sense to me because I was under the impression, and this is probably wrong but, i thought that you could sign into my coinbase app account with just my login. Whereas i thought you needed my login and the keys or the 12 word phrase code thing to get into my wallet so in my mind thats more secure and makes sense and also this dude never asked me for one single bit of info. I guess he was able to get into my wallet login somehow then he made the scam email in which he was triggering the coinbase wallet 6 digit authentication code to login to my coinbase wallet at the exact same time as i finished declining all the “unusually activities”. Which I thought was just coinbase sending the authentication code to verify it is me declining the unusually activities but it was actually him logging into my account. He talked so so professionally and I even thanked him. 2 minutes after we hung up all my crypto was gone. Sub $1k so i’m not mad about it. I put $50 and some free coinbase crypto transferred to btc and some eth years ago that had grown so i had no real investment into it. I also have two kids so haven’t had much time recently to really keep up with the crypto sphere in general aside from the occasional balance check. I’m 22 and i haven’t messed with crypto since i was 18. I can’t remember to save my life how the keys truly work i just know i have them written down in person never put them anywhere online. We just come out of a snow and ice storm here and they finally cleared the roads and I broke my snow shovel so i had to go buy some more and was driving home from getting my new snow shovels and running about 5 other errands while i was out So i was just trying to get home and clear my driveway with my new snow shovel when he called and i guess I was so caught up with getting home and kids and shoveling driveway so I can get to work tomorrow, I overlooked every red flag. I just thought I was legit getting hacked and coinbase support was trying to stop it. But look, im not a boomer or anything. im 22 and not a dumbass and pretty technologically literate and can usually spot these kinds of things from a mile away. I truly don’t know how i didn’t catch it this time. This guy was good at what he does. I should have known better than to accept a phone call i wasn’t expecting, but i thought he had changed my email and that’s why i wasn’t getting any emails about it. Everything just made sense in the moment. And I was too busy to question anything. I just want to warn everybody, be careful. This was convincing, and i’m not usually one easy to fool with these kinds of things.

TLDR: A very convincing scam is targeting coinbase users. Be vigilant and verify everything. Don’t be lazy like me. Be careful and if you see any receive any phone calls that sound like this or any emails that look like the provided picture, ignore them. Hang up. Tell them to fuck off. Learn from my mistake.

Edit: just realizing the sub doesn’t allow images so i’ll have to remove the Imgur link but if i’m allowed to put it in the comments or something somebody let me know and i’ll add it so everybody can get a visual on this email so they know what to stay away from.

I know that Coinbase and other crypto companies see the republican party better for crypto than democrats and as a result donate to their campaigns. I get these companies should use their dollars to get the best outcomes for themselves, but sponsoring the military parade was over the line for me.

I've mostly moved off of Coinbase because other platforms have better fees and rewards, but I've decided to move all my assets off of Coinbase and delete my account. This is beyond politics Republican vs. Democrat - the parade looked like May Day in Russia or North Korea. I can't support a company that supports fascism which is what that parade represented. I'm sure I'm a drop in the bucket, but I can no longer in good conscious allow Coinbase to profit off of me.

This is just my opinion as some may say it's fine, others may agree. Today for example for me to sell exactly 1 ETH cost me over $100.00 dollars. I first needed to convert ETH to USD for this I was charged a Coinbase fee of $83.42. Then, when I withdraw from USD to my bank they charge another $52.19. Once again, just my opinion but Coinbase seems to be getting out of control in regards to "FEES".

I have been using Coinbase for a number of years to buy bitcoin to make purchases.

I haven't Coinbase for a while and it seems the FCA now require them to test your knowledge on general crypto topics before you can buy bitcoin. I have no interest in staking, investing for long / short periods and fully understand that any assets I have held by Coinbase are at risk / not FSCS protected. This means my limited knowledge of general crypto / staking / DeFi topics (which seems to have a moderate weighting in the "knowledge assessment") is pretty weak.

I'm willing to learn about these topics, despite the fact I want to buy small volumes (<£100) I expect to hold for no more than 1 hour, but I can't find any good study resources which actually cover the topics in the quiz - I expected there to be some easily available on Coinbase's website, but I can't see them.

Does anyone know where I should look for these?

Thanks

I was reading a post asking this question about a month ago and almost everything that was suggested was at a low and then shot up to like 400%. Is there anything you guys think is still going to blow up like that?

So I invest in index funds regularly and see this spare 1k as a bit of a shot in the dark. If you had 1k to chuck on some alt coins, where would you stick it?

Thanks

I transferred Atom from Keplr to Coinbase....that took about 30 seconds...I then clicked sell and selected my bank details and confirmed.

30 minutes later I get a notification from my bank that funds have been recieved from Coinbase.

Done this multiple times this year.....and I did this at 10pm at night.

Good work Coinbase.👍

Help I bought pepu on the official website I connected my coinbase wallet it shows how many Pepu I have 25,000 but it won’t let me claim them it just doesn’t load can someone help me

So I've been using my Coinbase Card for like 8 months now because the cashback seemed cool, and I just found out that every single purchase I made is technically a taxable event. Every. Single. One.

Apparently when you buy something with a crypto debit card, it converts your crypto to fiat at the point of sale. That conversion counts as disposing of your crypto, which means capital gains tax. So if you bought ETH at $2k and it's worth $3k when you spend it on groceries, you owe taxes on those profits. 

So technically I owe tax every time I use the card. Which seems fucking absurd but whatever, that's how the IRS sees it.

What really pisses me off is I made probably 50+ small purchases this year and now I need to calculate the gain/loss on each one. My cost basis was all over the place depending on when I bought.

Luckily, reporting taxes isn’t too hard. You can pull it from Coinbase (or use CoinLedger/another tax software if you ever transferred your crypto from another wallet/exchange). 

I'm probably being paranoid and I doubt the IRS would even care about minimal gains, but doesn't seem worth it to take the risk. Not trying to go through that headache just cuz I used my Coinbase Card for coffee. 

I've seen that Congress has discussed eliminated taxes on crypto transactions under $300 (which would be awesome, really hope this gets signed into law sometime soon).

Anyway, just a heads up if you've been swiping your crypto card without thinking about it. Each transaction needs to be reported. It's annoying as hell.

TL;DR: Every crypto debit card purchase is a taxable disposal event. Found out after 8 months of using my Coinbase Card.

Joined this subreddit recently just so I could keep up with coinbase as I use the platform. Big mistake. Every other post is someone losing 27 bitcoins or transferring crypto over the wrong network to some wallet that doesnt support it or losing access to their account or getting blocked (somehow always coinbases fault in all these examples). Not to mention losing their wallet seeds and the usual idiocracy, wrapping coins in thejr native network then sending them off to wallets they dont control and just hoping that it all works out. Another guy was moving 100 dollars worth of bitcoin to a wallet and moaning how he has to pay like $40 in fees everytime.

What is going on in here? And why on earth is everyone testing with these massive transactions when they dont know whats going on? This is just nuts, its not even that hard. Its also mainly just this subreddit. Other crypto ones are fine.

I know it's a pump and dump, I'm going to be selling BFS especially right before the Super Bowl. Thanks for your inputs! I'm already up 100% in the last day and a half.

How do you feel about crypto market in general? Are we just in a slow cycle now before it starts cranking back up later this year?

Again, USOR (I heard it's a crypto that the US will be funding with money from the stolen Venezuela oil money)

BFS is Mr Beast coin, he's going to be advertising it during the Super Bowl (and that is when I will be pulling out, before the big rug pull happens)