Brian Armstrong Calls Account Freezing a ‘Major Issue’ for Coinbase, Says Problem Reduced by 82% With More Improvements Coming

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says that the top US-based crypto exchange has dramatically reduced the instances of account freezes.

In a new post on the social media platform X, Armstrong says Coinbase has made fixing unwarranted account freezes a top priority, while acknowledging the issue has lasted longer than it should have.

“Account freezing has been a major issue at Coinbase for longer than is acceptable. I could list a bunch of the underlying reasons why it got so bad in the first place, but what’s more important is that we’ve made it a priority to fix, and we have been making good progress…

The issue has been reduced by 82% so far, with more improvements coming. We’ll keep you updated as further improvements roll out.”

Armstrong also promises a more timely response to customers whose accounts are frozen.

“If your account is still restricted (not for sanctioned or illegal activity) please direct message @coinbasesupport and we’ll prioritize getting it looked at ASAP.”

Armstrong gives credit to Coinbase’s product team member Dor Levi, who was hired in April, for achieving the fix.

Says Levi,

“If you’re on CT (crypto Twitter), 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 freezes should be rare, limited to situations that warrant them, primarily when we’re legally obligated (e.g. sanctions or court orders) or protecting users (e.g. from scams or account compromises). We’re committed to getting this right.

Recent releases have enabled us to make huge improvements without sacrificing our legal and regulatory obligations or our commitment to safety.

In short:

• We’ve reduced the frequency of account locks by ~82% so far, and new changes are currently rolling out that will bring further reductions.
• We’ve made significant investments in our ML (machine learning) models, infrastructure, modeling, and teams. So far, we’ve improved the precision and recall of all our models, and are seeing fewer restrictions/freezes as a result.
• We’ve established guardrails and checks/balances to ensure we maintain focus on this and won’t stop iterating.
• We’re also tackling this problem from the other end by moving processes like source-of-funds verification and enhanced KYC (Know Your Customer) into the app. This means most restriction types will have self-service flows to remove restrictions, which is much more efficient than previous options.”

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Check Price Action

Surf The Daily Hodl Mix

Generated Image: Midjourney