Coinbase is dealing with criticism on social media after it was found that the US-based trade is proscribing the accounts of customers who entry the platform by way of a VPN.
Yesterday, EthHub co-founder Eric Conner complained that Coinbase locked his account after he tried to ship $25,000 in USDC. When Conner mentioned it was obvious that his use of a VPN was behind the restriction, many customers started to complain about the identical VPN-related points with Coinbase.
At this time, Coinbase product designer Scott Shapiro mentioned, “PSA: Don’t use a VPN to access Coinbase.”
He added, “Attackers always use VPNs, so our risk models take that as a negative sign even if you’re legitimately using your own account.”
Customers on X, nonetheless, didn’t react effectively to the trade’s VPN stance. One consumer mentioned, “It’s our privacy right to use VPNs. If you’re telling us to not use VPN to access Coinbase, the choice is to just not use Coinbase.”
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One other posted, “This just shows your incompetence. Users should not have to disable their VPN to use your exchange. Period.” Kraken’s chief safety officer mentioned, “You are making some of your users choose between financial freedom and physical safety.”
Debanking dominated dialog on X this week with some evaluating it to Coinbase’s VPN stance. The corporate’s CEO Brian Armstrong supplied his tackle the topic final Sunday, claiming that “anti-money laundering regulations have been a policy failure,” that prices roughly $213 billion annually and harms customers.
Conner posted, “Wasn’t @brian_armstrong just talking about debanking???” after his account was frozen.
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Nonetheless, not all people took situation with Coinbase’s method to the account freeze. Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz recommended that the corporate is simply attempting to guard customers from hackers, whereas former Coinbase worker @LukeYoungblood agreed, stressing that Coinbase isn’t debanking him.
In response to Yanowitz, Conner referred to as the method “a lazy implementation,” saying, “There are plenty of better ways to handle this than just nuking my account.”
After regaining entry to his account, Conner famous, “I’m lucky with my reach. Others, not so much…”
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