GDAX/Coinbase Reverses Trades During Etheruem FlashCrash & Funds Missing

in gdax •  8 years ago 

First off let me just state that trading is inherently risky, trading on a new unregulated market is even riskier and finally trading on margin on that unregulated exchange can be devastating as we saw.

Neither of those two things apply to what occurred within my account during the crash on June 21st 2017. Let me go over what occurred in detail and my entire trust in Coinbase is fully shattered.

I Day-trade for a living and decided a while back to run $1500 into nearly $40k via some of these exchanges. I was wise enough to spread the funds around and slowly cash out these funds based on, well, not trusting any of these sites and knowing another Mt. Gox could happen at any time.

The morning of June 21st my GDAX account was at $14,800ish, I then placed the following trade on ETH during a pullback and sold for around a $340 profit.

I then check my balance as sure enough ~$15,140

Then disaster hits the ETH market and I see the flash crash happen before my eyes. Being a trader I get super excited and place some random lowball orders praying that I get filled as these things can happen again. Sure Enough I did. EtherFlashCrash.png

The only fills that I actually got (and proceeded to cancel all other orders) was a fill for 25 ETH at $215. Immediately the price ramped back up to $292 and I sold instantly for a $1925 gain, not a bad 5 seconds of work I must say.
Fills2.png

Then the site crashes, as we all knew. I was full cash my balance was reading just over $17,000 and It was a nice day of work for me. EVERYTHING FROZE for two plus hours.

I waited patiently, got a coffee, and as I come back to the desk. My balance reads $14,241 ummm WTF. I give it a few minutes, a few more and then hours go by and nothing.

The VP states that all trades are final in a recent post, ok as they should be..but where did mine go? and were the hell did an extra $1,000 go?

These are all open tickets with Coinbase in which I have at the moment zero confidence or credibility. I know some people lost everything, but the trust that you should be feeling with this company after today will soon be determined in how they handle all of these issues.

People lost it all playing on margin, that is the risk you play, these events can happen, but when this sort of stuff happens it shatters the entire model of the company.

I will keep you all posted on what, if any, resolution happens.

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I dont trust centralized exchanges as a principle , but coinbase even less !

ya I know, which is why I spread the $ around...oddly enough I trusted them the most. Guess we will see what happens.

Same for me , sometimes yo have to use them
Although probably is not the best for quick trades I will recommend you to use Openledger in case you have not given it a try

Very interesting article. I had the same thing happen to me a few times when i used to trade Forex, at the end of the day Coinbase is just a corp like any other. Although you was didled out of $1k it may turn out to be tuition fees for saving or making you more money in the future (i hope thats the case), certainly makes a fellow Steemian more distrusting of crypto exchanges. Thank you for sharing your experience.

After about 28 Days Support was able to locate the issue and ALL FUNDS were corrected back into the account.