Coinbase may have bitten off more than it can chew.

Today, June 22nd, 134 pages of complaints filed to the SEC and the California Department of Business Oversight against Coinbase have been acquired and published by Mashable. The complaints paint a damning picture of Coinbase, suggesting the San Francisco-based exchange is overwhelmed and under-prepared to handle the needs of its growing user-base.

The Mashable article suggests that the US’s leading cryptocurrency exchange has been disconcertingly nonchalant in its responses to serious user complaints—ranging from missing funds to incidents of fraud.

One cited complaint from January of this year reads:

“I have sent 17,023.00 from my Coinbase account to another Coinbase account on 12.21.2017. The other Coinbase account never received the funds as of 1/16/2018. I have contacted Coinbase over 7 times and all they say is that they have so many issues, they will get back to me and it is been a month.”

“I believe the company is holding funds to make money on top of my investment,” the complaint concludes.

Evidently, complaints such as the one above are far from unusual. Mashable reports that the SEC provided 115 more complaints against Coinbase accusing the exchange of intentionally withholding user funds for undisclosed reasons. Some complaints go as far to accuse Coinbase of  “acting criminally.”

Coinbase has declined to provide any substantive response to the public regarding these allegations, stating that the company’s privacy policy prohibits commenting on specific customer cases.

These recent reports no doubt come as a surprise to the crypto-community, as many have considered the $1.6 billion dollar company to be one of the more secure and respectable exchanges on the market. In the last year, Coinbase generated $1 billion in revenue, the Coinbase app became the most popular download on the Apple App Store, and the company acquired licenses to become an SEC-regulated brokerage dealer.

While refusing to address specific customer complaints from the Mashable article, Coinbase spokespeople are insisting that the company is working hard to improve its customer service. Coinbase has reportedly increased their customer support team by over 150 percent and reduced their average response time to under 10 hours in 95 percent of cases. The company also offers 24-hour phone support seven days a week.

In addition to missing funds, many users have filed complaints stating that they have been unjustly locked out of their accounts.

One complaint states:

“I am prevented from selling, buying, transferring or accessing my property and also cutoff from all transaction history and other information. After repeated prompting via emails and phone calls, Coinbase advised me that I am locked out of my account as a result of a security software error on their end and that they would look into it. That was a month ago.”

A report published today by Business Insider suggests, that while its unlikely Coinbase is engaged in any criminal activity, the company should be focusing all of its efforts into improving its customer service. The Business Insider article goes on to question whether Coinbase’s growth is outpacing its current resources.

A CNBC report from October, 2017, states that Coinbase has over 13.3 million users, 3 million more than leading brokerage firm Charles Schwab. The report further cited that on any given week, Coinbase signs up as many as 300,000 additional users.

Mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies heavily depends on exchanges like Coinbase maintaining a respectable reputation. Unnecessary negative attention, particularly from the SEC, is a very serious matter, and one can only hope that these issues are resolved quickly.

The post Hundreds of Complaints Filed Against Coinbase: Company Accused of Being Overwhelmed by Continued Growth appeared first on UNHASHED.

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