The Boy who cried Wolf - The new updated Coinbase Terms of service

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Avatar for Heruvim78
3 years ago

I was just mentioning all the waves made by Coinbase CEO online, on Twiter, complaining about Apple being unfair to their App. But then, what we have here? From 15th of November, Coinbase will have a new shiny Terms of Service. Do you like to read the small print? I do. Let's see what changes it will bring. 

In November 2020 you may need to accept the new User Agreement, and after that you may need to verify and update all your identity and account information. If you need to provide new data regarding your identity or account information, then you will need to follow the instructions received from Coinbase.com or/and Coinbase Pro. You have 30 days, and if Coinbase cannot verify your identity, your acces to Coinbase will be restricted, and your accound will be deactivated. 

Why they collect all the new data? First, to comply with anti-money laundering laws, as it is mandatory in most of the countries. Second, to verify your identity and protect you from potential fraudulent activity (at least this is what they say). I think Crypto.com or Binance card may be a good replacement for Coinbase services, but i did not research this possibility yet. At least they say that they will never provide our data to third parties without our consent. Funny, this is exactly what the new GDPR law is stating, long before they said that (May 2019). 

Once you go into your account in November, you need to accept the new user agreement in order to acces your account. Once accepted, if you do not update your identity data required, you have only 30 days until your account is deactivated. If this is against your beliefs, you have until November to remove all your crypto from Coinbase. You can also close the account from the activity page. 

The new user agreement is (only) 31 pages, and i will treat the EU version in this post (as i am a resident here). First, they warn you that Coinbase Europe is not a regulated financial service provider, it is not registered or regulated by any bank, competition services or protection comission, and there are no investor or protection schemes associated with the account (at this point i think, plus points for Blockfi and Celsius). 

Second, you are fully responsible for any change or permission granted to any third party to your Coinbase account. 

Third, you may need to provide proof about your name, residential address, phone number, email address, date of birth, taxpayer identification, government identification number, bank details (name of the bank, account type, routing number and account number), network status, customer type and role, billing type, mobiler device identifiers and, if needed, details about yourself and your bussiness, relevant records and even meetings face to face to establish the source of your wealth and source of funds for the transactions carried on their up. Not much for privacy, isn't it?

Forth, any bank related instruction made after 4.30 PM is treated as it was received the following day. 

If you have an unauthorised transaction made from your account, you need to contact Coinbase no later than the next 13 months. 

This is a good one, if you opened a Coinbase account, you gave explicit consent to them in relation with your E-money (read crypto). If you chose to withdraw consent, you need to close the account. 

The Buy price exchange it is not the same with the Sell price exchange, as they will ad a margin, and the additional fees, and you accepted that when you authorized the transaction. 

The can change the network fees (miner fees and they will calculate them at their discretion, but they will notify you about them before authorizing the transaction. So, always check your fees before doing a transaction. 

They can end any cryptocurrency support when they want, providing they give you 10 day notice, unless the law requires to do it faster.

They can suspend, terminate or cancel your account if they believe they need to protect their reputation, if it is required by law, if they suspect you of breach of this current agreement or breach of their 'behaviour policy', if they suspect you are doing money laundering or fraud or any other crime, or if you have multiple accounts. You may have a two months notice, in the best case. 

Another good one: they provide no guarantees that the service provided will be continuous, uninterrupted, timely or error free. And with this they can tell people to stop complaining when, by coincidence, the app is down if Bitcoin suddenly goes up or down by 20%. They strive for excelence, but cannot quarantee that the service is available without interruption during times of significant volatility or volume, for safety issues. 

If you are from a Sanctioned country (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria etc) you can say bye bye to Coinbase access. If you travel to one of these countries and use your wallet in there, your account may be closed.

If you do not login for 7 years, the cryptocurrency from your account may become unclaimed property, and you will pay a dormancy fee. 

If the account holder dies, the account will be frozen until your designated trustee open a new account and all the funds are transferred. This is the only way to inherit the money, and you need to provide a will or a similar document. 

They can close your account also if you violate the law, if you are abusive to the coinbase staff or others (defaming, extortion, harrasment, stalking, threatening, encouraging hate or racial intolerance. Fraud and gambling is also on the list, and this can be open to a wide interpretation. Prohibited bussiness is also a thing (investment and credit services, counterfeit goods, regulated product (marijuana, alcohol tobacco) or drug and drug paraphernalia (including pseudo-pharmaceuticals - unverified health claims products), adult content, multi-level marketing, high risk bussiness. With this, there should be no DEFI  on your transaction list, right?

There is a conditional usefor in-game currency, charities, religious organisations and games of skill

Coinbase  Pro has similar limitations, the only difference being that trading fees are added to the mix. 

As for staking, they do not guarantee that you will receive any staking rewards, any specific staking reward or any staking return, including the staking reward rate. 

And with this, i hope you had an interesting lecture, see you tomorrow through my pink glasses!

G.

 

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Disclaimer: This text also can be re-published on my personal blogs, such as this one.

 

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3 years ago

Comments

These updated terms and conditions are simply outrageous. I do hope most users of coninbase get enlightened about them before November, else they will be caught unawares. It is a good thing that you studied the updated T&C's because the typical attitude is for people to just click skip skip and accept without paying attention to the details.

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User's avatar M3i
3 years ago

Lots of good info friend! Thanks for doing the reading of 31 pages!

Are you still going to continue using Coinbase? Upvoted!

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3 years ago

Tezos staking in there...

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3 years ago

i do not know, i have only few dollars there anyway.

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3 years ago