Coinbase Canada - Not very Canadian

This is a brand new Reddit account. I signed up just so that I could post this.

I am a Canadian citizen, living in Kelowna, BC. I was using Coinbase to do minor BTC trading (a few BTC a month) and using my RBC & TD bank accounts. I've never been into any kind of legal trouble and I don't do anything that ever will get me into legal trouble.

I logged into Coinbase March 19th and was surprised to see that my account was closed. It'd been a few weeks since I'd logged in so I have no idea when they actually closed it, but they didn't even bother to give me a call or send me an email.

I tried to go to their support portal, which now just redirects to http://bit.ly/1VkAxhM ... so I can't create tickets on their site anymore, had to email support@coinbase.com:

I just logged in and it says my account has been closed? I hope this is some kind of mistake, I haven't received any notification whatsoever.

They replied:

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Coinbase. Our primary goal is to make bitcoin safe and secure for our customers. Coinbase is a regulated Money Services Business under FinCEN (FinCEN.gov), and as part of our responsibility, we are legally obligated to implement regulatory compliance mechanisms.

We regret to inform you that we are no longer able to support your Coinbase account as well as any other accounts you may have created. Please note, we have not blocked access to the bitcoin balance currently in your Coinbase account; while we can no longer process bitcoin brokerage orders via our banking relationship, you may still send your bitcoin balance offsite to an external bitcoin address.

I reply:

I am a Canadian citizen, living in Canada, under Canadian law, using Canadian dollars in my Canadian bank account. What does FinCEN have to do with anything?

What is the real reason you singled me out? How am I to address whatever misguided grievance you may have against me?

Thanks.

They replied:

Hello,

Unfortunately, our decision to close your account is final and there is no appeals process. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. FinCEN’s regulations apply to Coinbase and we are legally obligated to comply with them.

Bloody hell. If that's not frustrating I don't know what is.

I also noticed that I don't have access to my account records anymore. I'm going to need it for my taxes. I should have done it sooner. Now I'm going to have to email them again just for that. So not impressed.

If they won't tell me why they closed it, how do they know it's not based on a case of mistaken identity, lack of insight, making incorrect assumptions, or anything of the sort? The majority of issues could be cleared up I suspect.

Submitted April 02, 2016 at 08:07AM by kelownagirl http://bit.ly/21ZWIKi