Coinbase inquiry again

Context : 2.5 years, 15 transactions, $7500 total

Last order, while logged onto CB trying to buy coins, I get a bunch of prying questions - which I answered, a little vaguely, and I got my coins - but they followed up a few days later w/ email about employer and LinkedIn. I answered last week. I got no reply but yesterday I got an email from CB saying my buy limit was increased.

I figure these 2 things are unrelated and I may still have my account closed - not sure. Recently someone suggested that the problem is likely buying coins and immediately sending all of them on - which I do every time. This seems plausible. The language in my CB inquiries never mentioned tos and prohibited actions though, they just referenced me as high volume user - maybe there is threshold from total # of transactions or total dollars over account life ?

Mostly just a experience to add here - curious what others think

Thanks for the comments... some follow up if anyone reads ... it seems reasonable to believe, that many CB customers experience these kinds of inquiries and they seem to be triggered by two kinds of activities - one is volume of purchasing and the other is detection of probable TOS violations, likely related to suspicion around one or more send/receive addresses. It also seems reasonable to believe that the flagging processes are automated, along with the inquiries that are generated, since everyone seems to be getting the same language. However, I note again that in my case, there was no suggestion of TOS violations, or citing of Sections 17&18, which seem to deal with using funds to purchase illegal goods. These kinds of accusations were present in other CB inquiries that resulted in banned accounts as discussed in this sub and elsewhere. The inquiry I received was about the sources of funds I use to purchase bitcoins - it wasn't about where I'm sending the coins. As I understand it, CB is obligated by KYC to take a number of measures to prevent their services from enabling illegal activity and one of the substantial risks is money laundering. DNM users generally think of obscuring the destination of funds but there is also a concern about using the service to obscure the source of funds. Tumbling or no, (and with DDs for one year plus, as several noted below, I likely piggyback on vendor opsec anyway in this regard) but regardless, I don't think it was a factor here anyway, I believe I was likely flagged by an automated metric that triggered, perhaps with a random component, on the volume of my activity.

Sorry - another comment though for anyone interested - for a lot of us the downside of getting caught is likely a locally rendered possession charge unless we somehow get caught up in something bigger which is possible with this method of purchasing. The main additional exposure is the use of USPS and the potential for federal charges generally. Although unlikely, I think we all generally understand that this is potentially much more serious. And the other trappings of this hobby, bitcoins, dnms, tumbling, pgp, etc, have the potential to expose us to additional tangential risks of this kind - financial crimes, telecommunications violations, identity theft issues, or other conspiracy type charges. In the end though, I believe 99% of the risk for most of us starts at the blue box and ends at our mailbox. The biggest opsec issue by far for us is just selecting the vendor.


Comments


[2 Points] CynicalElephant:

Are you tumbling or sending directly to the markets?


[2 Points] TelJanin_Aellinsar:

Woah they sent you an email about verifying employment via LinkedIn? That's kind of crazy. I'm glad I didn't lie when they asked me about my employer hahaha. That said I still don't consider it a big deal. It's standard KYC controls, it's not getting sent to the Feds unless you get actively investigated by said Feds


[1 Points] Mrjbsir:

When I first started out I didn't know any better and would send directly tothe markets from coinbase and like you I only bought small little stuff. It took about a year but they finally closed my account. So it took them that long and I wasnt even hiding it, ever since I opened new accounts in both circle and coinbase and I never go on markets anymore. I just do DD with two of the same vendors for the past year and I buy and send coin directly to them with no issues. You should be ok if your doing DD with a legit vendor bc atleast the two I deal with wash the coins in their end and give me a legit wallet to send to so if circle/coinbase were to track all they would see if me ending coin to a legit wallet and then poof nothing leads back to me. You can always argue that your not responsible for where your coin ends up 3 or 4 wallets down the blockchain. In the future even with DD im going to start circle > electrum > vendor just to be even safer. If you go through the darknet id def recommend tumbling or at the very least bounce the coin around in a couple of legit wallets before sending. Atleast that way its not direct.


[1 Points] beverage_hot:

Coinbase has blockchain analysis companies that run algorithms on everybodies transactions. Your transactions may be tracked a few address transfers downstream, or even upstream for cases that you are sending in to sell.

As long as there are one or two transfers from you to other addresses between the actual transactions, then it will make it impossible to actually link you to the transaction rather than someone you might have sent the coins to.


[1 Points] None:

the whole point of btc is to be anonymous as possible and you niggas are scanning your ids and sending your linkedin profiles just to have the convenience of using your credit cards... good job!!!!


[1 Points] unbeatablechems:

coinbase sucks for some reason they only let me buy 10$ a day wtf


[0 Points] None:

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