Why Your Account Got Banned on Coinbase

Have a Coinbase banned account and wondering why? Let’s make one thing clear. Coinbase can do whatever they want.

Here’s a quote directly from their user agreement (you know, that thing no one reads):

“Coinbase may suspend, restrict, or terminate your access to any or all of the Coinbase Services, and/or deactivate or cancel your Coinbase Account(s), with immediate effect for any reason at its sole discretion and is under no obligation to disclose the details of its decision to take such action with you.”

If you’ve opened an account on the trading platform, you agreed to these terms. So when your Coinbase account got banned, they are under no obligation to tell you what you might have done wrong.

To give you some insight into that decision, let’s go into a couple of common reasons for account suspension, and then examine ways you might avoid it in the future.

Why did Coinbase suspend my account?

First of all, some legitimate security reasons may force Coinbase to temporarily disable your account. For example, if you’re trying to log in from a new device or location, they may flag your account as potentially compromised and put a hold on it until you can verify your identity.

If there has been suspicious activity like multiple password resets, account recoveries, or unexpected logins, Coinbase will also put a hold on your account for security reasons.

But otherwise, Coinbase banned accounts are likely because of:

• Regional legal restrictions

• Suspected fraud

Let’s take a closer look at these reasons.

Regional legal restrictions

This is the simplest explanation of a banned or suspended account. Coinbase only operates in a handful of regions – currently only the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Europe – so if you’re trying to use their services from a restricted country, your account will likely be banned.

Even within those regions, certain areas are not accepted. Hawaii, for instance, is not supported.

This is a constantly-moving target. In early 2022, just days after launching in India, Coinbase suspended trading because of pressure from the Reserve Bank of India. So one day you may be able to use Coinbase in your country, and the next day you may not.

Violation of terms and services

There are several ways you can violate Coinbase’s terms and services, but the most common these days is suspected market manipulation. Multiple accounts were once a popular way to get around Coinbase’s withdrawal limits, but this is no longer possible.

If you’re caught trading with a duplicate account, or using multiple accounts to circumvent restrictions, your account will be banned. This also includes any attempts to artificially inflate prices or engage in other prohibited activities.

Some users, though, will still want to use multiple accounts for different purposes. For example, you may want to use one account for trading and another for long-term holding. Or you may want to use an account in your home country’s currency, and another in a foreign currency.

Below, we’ll examine the ways to successfully operate multiple accounts on Coinbase.

Sophisticated detection

Everything in our world is becoming more complex and interconnected, and that includes the systems that detect fraud and abuse. Banks and other financial institutions have been using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for years to detect suspicious activity.

The same is true of Coinbase. They’re constantly improving their detection methods, which means they can catch more sophisticated attempts to violate their terms of service. So even if you think you’ve found a way to get around the watchdogs, you may still get caught and banned.

Browser fingerprinting

On first blush, it might seem like blocking an IP address or requiring a phone number verification would be enough to stop anyone from creating multiple accounts. But there’s a way around that, too.

There are many ways to uniquely identify a browser, even without cookies or other traditional tracking methods. This is called “browser fingerprinting”, and it’s how sites like Coinbase can tell that two different accounts are being used on the same computer.

So, then, is the answer to try and scramble your fingerprint?

No! These changes can also be detected, and will likely just result in your account being flagged for manual review. Blocking it entirely is like wearing a mask in a bank – it’s going to attract attention.

How to avoid getting a Coinbase banned account?

The answer, then, isn’t in blocking information, but by feeding Coinbase the data they need to see distinct profiles.

Setting up multiple accounts on one computer with profiles that aren’t interconnected – meaning no fingerprint is the same –  means you can trade and manage your accounts without raising any red flags.

But what if you want more than two?

The scalability problem

For the average person, keeping two accounts separate is a challenge. More than that is simply impractical. The problem is, most people don’t have the time or resources to set up and manage multiple accounts on their own.

With every additional account, the chance of detection will increase substantially, as will the work required to maintain each – especially if you’re not very tech-savvy.

This is where a company like Multilogin comes in. With native profiles that are siloed from each other, you can log in and out of all your accounts with just a few clicks. And because each profile is independent, there’s no risk of one account affecting the others.

Plus, Multilogin comes with many other features that make managing multiple accounts easier, like password managers and autofill forms.