Coinbase CEO says unnecessary account freezes cut by 82%

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the crypto exchange has reduced unnecessary restrictions on its users by 82%, which has been a “major issue” for the exchange. 

In a June 6 X post, Armstrong acknowledged that account freezing has been a problem “for longer than is acceptable,” and that it has become a top priority for his firm to improve.

“The issue has been reduced by 82% so far, with more improvements coming. We’ll keep you updated as further improvements roll out,” Armstrong said, before asking all customers with frozen accounts to contact Coinbase Support.

Coinbase users have expressed frustration over account restrictions for years, reporting sudden freezes lasting several months or longer, prompting some to abandon the platform. 

Customer confidence in Coinbase was also recently shaken by a mass data breach that exposed the details of more than 70,000 customer accounts.

Armstrong credited the progress to Dor Levi, a member of Coinbase’s product team, who came on board nine weeks ago with the primary goal of fixing the account restrictions.

In a post of his own, Levi said much of the progress has come from making “significant investments” in Coinbase’s machine learning models and infrastructure.

“We’ve improved the precision and recall of all our models, and are seeing fewer restrictions/freezes as a result.”

Coinbase will continue to implement account restrictions imposed by court orders and sanctions to remain compliant with the law, Armstrong and Levi noted.

Despite the progress, much work remains, said Levi, who admitted that as a Coinbase user himself, the experience with account restrictions still doesn’t meet his “own bar.”

I joined @coinbase 9 weeks ago with a vital goal: fixing unnecessary account restrictions.

If you're on CT, you know how significant this issue has been for users. I myself am a Coinbase user and our restriction experience is not meeting my own bar.

The goal is clear: Account… pic.twitter.com/zvGuM3QSZi

Coinbase users say they’ve been locked out for several months

In response to Armstrong’s post, one X user said they have been completely locked out of their Coinbase account for over two years, while another said they abandoned the platform after enduring an eight-month freeze.

Another X user attributed the lengthy account freezes to Coinbase’s customer support team.

“At Coinbase, it is extremely hard to speak to a live customer service person,” they said, adding that it “can take forever to track someone down.”

Coinbase is also planning to strengthen its security measures after illicit actors bribed some of its overseas customer service agents to access government-issued ID photos and home addresses of around 70,000 Coinbase customers last December. The incident was only disclosed in mid-May.

https://t.co/evpIBMFvRW pic.twitter.com/f6UPdkL5R0

One X user even claimed that a family friend of theirs lost Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in a scam that they believe was linked to the recent Coinbase data breach.

Coinbase remains one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, with over 100 million users and is the largest custodian of the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.