Aggrieved Coinbase Customers Locked Out of their Accounts Drag Exchange To Court

Leading crypto exchange platform Coinbase has been sued in a proposed class action accusing the company of locking six users out of their accounts.

Coinbase Users File Complaint, Seek $5Million

According to a complaint filed in San Francisco federal court complaint, the Coinbase users allege that the company prevented them from accessing their accounts. This stopped them from investing during peak trading periods or withdrawing their funds. The complaint reads,

"Coinbase" engage[d] in a scheme ... [that] prevents its consumers from accessing their accounts and/or funds for arbitrary reasons and arbitrary amounts of time, and thereby ... unable to 'invest, spend, save, earn, and use,' or even withdraw their funds."

One of the plaintiffs, Joseph Treseder of Oklahoma, said he deposited $30,000 in Dec 2020 to purchase the XRP token only to receive an error message saying his login credentials were invalid. Treseder said he contacted the company severally through different means to verify his identity, but the Bitcoin exchange has still not rectified the issue. Another complainant, Michael Leone, also said he sent over 100 emails to Coinbase's customer service email address but never received a response. All six Coinbase users who filed the complaint recounted similar tales of being unable to reach the company. The users seek over $5 million for damages. They also claim to be representing other aggrieved Coinbase users who have been unable to access their account for a long period.

A Look At Coinbase's Past Lawsuits

Coinbase is not new to lawsuits. Last year the company settled a legal complaint filed by the victims of the now-defunct crypto exchange Cryptsy for around $1 million. Cryptsy accused Coinbase of being involved in laundering funds that made it lose around 13,000 Bitcoin (BTC) and 300,000 Litecoin (LTC) to hackers in 2016. The former exchange alleged that Coinbase abetted the theft and facilitated the laundering of approximately $8.2 million in digital currencies. [coin_stats_table symbol="BTC"][coin_stats_table symbol="LTC"] The company faced another over its handling of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fork and one more in December 2020 over the sales of XRP tokens. [coin_stats_table symbol="BCH"] Coinbase was sued by an investor after the US SEC sued Ripple. The lawsuit was proposed alleging that the exchange sold XRP after knowing it was an unregistered security and not a commodity and also gained commission on the XRP sales. [coin_stats_table symbol="XRP"] Crypto platforms have faced class-action lawsuits several times. Last year, California-headquartered Ripple was sued by investors who alleged that the XRP token falls under the category of securities.