An issue with Coinbase systems recently prevented users from Canada and a number of other countries from withdrawing funds, leading to frustration and concern among many customers.
The issue began around Aug. 1 and has reportedly also affected Venezuelan users.
This isn't an April fools' joke.@coinbase won't let me withdraw my coins cause i'm from Canada.
WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT??? pic.twitter.com/Bn2ok3mGkL
— ฿it฿it (@BitBitCrypto) August 3, 2018
A Coinbase spokesperson told CCN that a bug was identified as the cause of the problem and that the system is once again operational.
“The issue affecting cryptocurrency sends is now resolved. We identified a bug that affected Coinbase.com in a few countries and have successfully deployed a fix. Cryptocurrency sends through the Coinbase mobile apps were not impacted. We’d like to thank our customers for their patience while we resolved this issue.”
Seemingly, withdrawals were shut off for a few days, which was enough to cause an uproar among customers throughout social media.
Don't use #coinbase if you're in Canada. They'll let you buy coins, but not move them off their wallets or cash out to a bank!
— Ian Vecmanis (@Ian_Vecmanis) August 1, 2018
If you buy your bitcoin using coinbase and you are located in Canada do not waste your money with coinbase. Use a VPN to move your btc to a wallet that supports Canadian transactions. @cafreviews_com
— Carmen (@CarmenCar69) August 1, 2018
However, it’s at least notable that nowhere to be seen was an accusation of exit scamming despite it being a common conclusion to which members of the crypto-Twitter community tend to jump.
The recent WEX catastrophe began in a similar fashion with users being unable to withdraw funds, leading to many to cry exit scam as details of a shady history involving mass embezzlement and connections to paramilitary death squads in Ukraine began to unfold in the public eye. It’s still unclear whether the scheduled maintenance WEX claimed was the cause behind the withdrawal freeze was legitimate or not, although the official exchange Twitter account states that the maintenance is now over.
It speaks to the reputation of Coinbase in the space that the exchange was not suspected of trying to rob users, meaning that it may be one of the few cryptocurrency institutions that has achieved a size and tenure to finally be considered relatively trustworthy, no small feat in the wild west chaos of the cryptocurrency space at the moment. Coinbase recently added support for the British Pound to accommodate U.K. users and has been engaging with U.S. regulators to allow for the listing of security tokens on the exchange in the future.
While they may have lost themselves some customers in the recent technical failure, the exchange assures CCN that their site is now back in action with no issues for users in Canada or any of the other countries currently supported by Coinbase.
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