Locked Out of Coinbase: What Happened & Why I Recommend Bitkey

I am locked out of my Coinbase account. It doesn't work at all. Here is what happened and what you can do to avoid this happening to you, which is mainly keep most or all of your Bitcoin on BitKey bitke website bitkey.world. Uh because Bitkey doesn't lock you out like Coinbase or any other online service. Okay. So, all of the online services, mostly Coinbase, uh, but technically this is possible with others, but it seems to happen with Coinbase way more than others. Periodically, they do popups where it's like, hey, you have to verify your, you know, identity documents or you have to upload your driver's license or you have to do something to make sure that you are compliant and you're still a US citizen or whatever it is they need to check. And usually they're just checking that your, you know, social security number is still the same or whatever it is. Contact information hasn't changed. Anyway, so I was in Coinbase, got one of those popups, and uh well, actually, the first thing that happened is my Coinbase debit card stopped working. Uh but I have the credit card and the debit card. The credit card still works because it does not do an automatic uh real-time Bitcoin conversion, but I like using the debit card because it does a real-time Bitcoin conversion rather than just having to pay it off at the end of the month. Um anyway, so I prefer the debit card. That's what I carry with me, but it stopped working. So, I went in Coinbase and I was like, "Oh, I have one of these little popups that says for regulatory compliance reasons, I got to fill out some, you know, survey." So, I click on it and the the app updates a few different times and the screen flashes and then it goes back to that same message that says, "Click here to update it." So, I'm stuck because I need to fill out some form, but the app will not let me fill out the form. So, I tried the mobile browser, which bypasses the iOS app entirely. I just tried the mobile Safari browser on my iPhone. That had the exact same problem. I was like, "Okay, well, usually when a problem is happening on mobile, it doesn't happen on the desktop version." So I went to the desktop version on my Windows computer and I tried Microsoft Edge browser and I tried Google Chrome browser and it does the same thing. So basically every conceivable way of accessing Coinbase whether on a desktop or laptop computer, whether via mobile app or whether mobile web browser, they all have the same problem which is a glitch in the workflow for this exact workflow. Now, who knows? Maybe I'm the only person in the entire world that is having this problem because maybe I'm the only person in the entire world that needs to fill out this one, you know, regulatory compliance, whatever it is. So maybe I'm the only person whose account is locked right now. My guess is that's not the case because they have hundreds of millions of customers. And so my guess is this you probably applies to, you know, some meaningful number of people, but still a very small percentage of the total customer base. Okay. So, I am locked out. What does that mean? It means I cannot buy Bitcoin. I cannot sell Bitcoin. I cannot withdraw money to a bank account. I can't deposit money. I can't do anything. The account is absolutely locked. I can log in. I can see my Bitcoin, but I can't do anything with my Bitcoin. Now, how much do I actually care? Not actually that much because I don't keep very much money on any online platform for exactly this reason. Even though this uh you know is a bigger problem with Coinbase uh due to just the size and scale than it is for example, I've never had this problem with uh you know with any other service. Um but the other services are much smaller. Uh but anyway, the the the greater the size and scale and international reach and all of that and the greater the you know focus on regulatory compliance and all that uh it just is going to happen more often. But the truth is, every online service, River, Strike, Robin Hood, every one of them has the ability to just freeze your account because you're supposed to fill out a form and you can't fill out the form because the user interface on the app and the website and all that is broken. So, you're supposed to fill out a form, but you can't fill out a form and your account is restricted until you fill out the form and there's nothing you can do about it because you can't fill out the form. So, I escalated it to tech support. They were not able to fix it. So they escalated me to tier 2 technical support uh who was also not able to fix it. So I escalated it to uh a person I you know got introduced to that runs the whole payment card part of Coinbase and he said the team is looking into it for what is the problem. So I appreciate it. They're certainly very responsive and I've been treated well but my account is frozen. It is locked. Okay. So why do I recommend Bit Key for most or all of your Bitcoin? The answer is because this never happens on Bit Key. There is no form you're supposed to fill out. There is no, you know, there's nothing that allows an a third party to just block your ability to get to your Bitcoin. Like, that's just not how it works. With BitKey, your Bitcoin is in your own self-custody the whole time. It's yours. You're the only person who can move it. Nobody can move it without your permission. And there's no way to throw up some error message saying you're supposed to check some box and you didn't. Sorry. That's just not how Bit Key works. With self-custody, the benefit of self-custody is you own the keys to your Bitcoin, which means you can't get locked out if you have the keys. And Bit Key is set up where it's basically impossible to not have the keys for you because there's a key in your iCloud account, there's a key on your phone, there's a key on the BitKey device itself, and then there's a backup key that the company Block keeps, but it requires two keys to move your Bitcoin. So, their key does not do them any good by itself. they have to have one of the three keys. It's actually two, but technically it lives in three different places uh that you have. Uh it's it's technically three key or it's two keys, but one of them is duplicated between your phone and an encrypted copy in Apple iCloud or Google uh the Google Drive. So anyway, so all that to say, without one of those three keys, uh the the company behind BitKey can't do anything with your Bitcoin and it requires your action. And if you do take action, nobody's going to block you. So, it's just a totally different experience from being locked out of an account staring at Bitcoin that there's literally no way you can get to and nothing you can do to get it as opposed to Bitkey where it's like that that Bitcoin is mine. It is just mine. There's nobody can block me. There's nobody that can take it away over the internet. There's nobody that can make one phone call to Coinbase or River or Strike or Robin Hood and tell them to freeze my account. It just doesn't work that way. Self-custody is beautiful because the power is in your hands. Nobody can take it away from you. The Bitcoin is yours. You can do whatever you want with it. It's secure out of the hands of hackers and scammers, which again is why I only keep very low balances on Coinbase or River because again, your account can just get restricted. So, I keep my sort of spending balances and my walking around money on those sort of platforms. And if that gets frozen, so what? I'll just use another one. So, uh, I, you know, mainly I was using Coinbase for payments with the debit card, but the credit card still works. The problem is I can't pay off the credit card bill at Coinbase from my Coinbase Bitcoin balance because that is restricted on the account. So, I'm in this bizarre situation where, you know, on January 27, I'm supposed to pay a credit card balance with the Coinbase credit card, but I can't pay it with my Bitcoin balance. But guess what? It doesn't matter because I still have my River account. So, I can push money from my River account to a traditional bank account and then pay off the card that way and that will still work. Um, so it's not like I'm really in a jam because again, I keep a low balance on on Coinbase. So if it gets locked up, which it is right now, it's kind of like, so what? I'll just use River for everything else. And if the Coinbased debit card stops working, which it did, I'll just use Coinbase credit card until it's working again. And if it's not working by January 27 when the credit card bill is due, I'll just pull some uh Bitcoin off of River, push it to my bank account, and pay the Coinbase credit card from a bank account, which you can also do. By default, I have it set up to pay from my Bitcoin balance. But and then I just keep enough of a Bitcoin balance in there that the credit card payment will clear. Uh but you can also pay it from a bank account, uh traditional bank account, which is what I'll do. I'll just move Bitcoin from River to a traditional bank account, pay off the Coinbased credit card that way. Um, anyway, so all that to say, nothing like there nothing really teaches you the value of self-custody until you suddenly don't have access to the Bitcoin. So, huge numbers of people experienced this with the Mount Gaus Mtaus uh exchange blew up in 2014 because of a massive hack that drained most of their Bitcoin. a bunch of people who thought they had Bitcoin suddenly woke up in the morning and realized they didn't have the Bitcoin. It had magically vanished. Um, that's happened at Quadrega and you know, I don't know, there's like a gazillion of them. Uh, Bitcoinica, I mean, there's just in the early days there was hacks all the time. Not that really didn't happen anymore, but it used to. But anyway, all those people thought they had Bitcoin that they suddenly didn't have anymore. And if you want to have an account, again, it's the same thing. It's like you think you have the Bitcoin, but do you really have the Bitcoin? because if you can't get to it, it's not really yours. Um, also, um, a friend of mine lost 1.5 Bitcoin, currently valued at, you know, round numbers. It was a little more round numbers at the time. It was $178,000. So, a friend of mine lost $178,000, um, to a scam/hack uh, co on Coinbase. It was a scam. Scammers accessed his account and drained the funds from his Coinbase account. And I checked with him the other day and he has not gotten it back. So he will I mean he has lost 1.5 bitcoin which at the time of the scam slash you know the h the the let me back up at the time the hackers and scammers got to him. Um again that was worth $178,000 which was obviously a huge financial blow for him. And he actually owned a Bitkeye but he hasn't he hadn't actually transferred his Bitcoin to it yet. So he he had a Bitkey. He was planning to transfer it over from Coinbase at some point. And then he had a technical issue with Coinbase. Uh called a phone number online that he thought was Coinbase and it wasn't. It was a it was a a fake ad by a company pretending to be Coinbase that was run by scammers and they guided him through the process of you know pretending he was securing his account when the truth is they were opening his account to access. And so he lost $178,000 of Bitcoin which was at the time 1.5 Bitcoin. and he has not gotten it back and he will not get it back. It's just gone. Um, and again, it's gone because they drained his Coinbase account. Had that Bitcoin been on BitKey, they would not have drained it because the way hackers and scammers work doesn't work on BitKey. It just doesn't. Bitkey is architected in a way that all of the the tricks and the you know the the ways hackers get access to your account doesn't work with BitKey unless they can just sweet talk you into sending them straight up Bitcoin out of the blue. But nobody does that. Everybody who gets hacked or scammed accidentally gives access to their account without realizing it and then the the hackers or the scammers, they drain the account. Uh again, Bit Key does not work that way because there's no way for you to give access to a Bitkey to a hacker or a scammer. I mean, they can call you and they can try to trick you all day long, but at the end of the day, the keys on your phone and they can't get it. And the other keys on the Bit Key device that you have to touch to the back of your phone and they can't get that because there's no way to move either of those keys over the internet. So, and if you lose either of those keys, there's a backup mechanism with the 7-day waiting period to get it back. But, of course, in the course of seven days, you're going to realize somebody's scanning you and they're going to tell you that's what's happening. And actually the the way it's architected uh you can't even give hackers and scammers access to one of those keys even if you tried unless you gave them access to your entire Google account or your entire Apple account at which point they have a lot you know they have access to a lot more than just Bitkey. But even then there's a 7-day waiting period and even then you're going to be told someone is trying to access your account for seven days and you got you know the ability to cancel it at any time. So Bitkey is just way better. Uh, if Bitkey would have saved my friend from losing $178,000 of Bitcoin that he's not going to get back, Bitkey is what's making me not care that my Coinbase account is locked because again, who cares? Like, I don't have that much in there anyway. And I can pay off the bit, you know, the Coinbase credit card through a traditional bank account if I have to, even though that's not what I want to do because I don't want to have to convert Bitcoin to fiat to pay off a credit card. That's just stupid. I want to pay it off with Bitcoin. Um, but anyway, there's not much, you know, there's not much in there, so who cares? So, the advice I have to everyone is acquire as much Bitcoin as you can, hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible, and buy yourself a Bitkey. It's only 150 bucks and they often run sales for $99. And if you use coin uh you know discount code stories s t o r i s uh which is Natalie Bernell's uh podcast which is uh coin stories or if you use discount code WBD which is uh what Bitcoin did which is another podcast. Either of those discount codes gives you 20% off. So if it's on sale for $99 and you get another 20% off it's 80 bucks 79 bucks. But regardless, even at 150 bucks, you should buy one right now. Don't let your Bitcoin get tacked or scammed. And don't let your Bitcoin get locked in an account that you have no access to and no recourse other than to just wait and hope they fix the technical glitch that will unlock your account, which is what I'm doing. There's nothing I can do. My hands are tied. There's nothing I can do. I mean, I guess I could email, you know, I could email the CEO of Coinbase, but obviously, you know, as one of a 100 million plus customers, I don't want to like email the CEO every time I have an issue. So, um, anyway, the tech support team will get it done. They'll fix it. It'll be fine. But right now, it's locked and there's nothing I can do about it. It's locked. Tough luck. It's locked. It just is. So, buy yourself a Bit Key. keep most or all of your Bitcoin on Bit Key and then you don't have to worry about your account getting locked or scammers and hackers getting a hold of your stuff because that's not going to happen if you have your Bitcoin on Bit Key and that's where it ought to be. That's just where your Bit Key uh Bitcoin ought to be for the long term for your long-term savings Bitcoin that you're not planning on using for the next six months. Any Bitcoin that you don't think you're going to need in the next six months or any large balances, even if you are going to need them in the next six months, they need to be on Bit Key. Don't play around with Bitcoin on the internet. Take self-custody. It's safe. It's secure. You're not going to lose it. There's tons of recovery options built in to make sure you're not going to lose your Bitcoin somehow. And it's just way better all around. So, I recommend BitKey. The link is in the description. Go buy yourself a BitKey, please. and makes the whole world a better place, especially yours.