As Crypto Crashed, Coinbase Stopped Some Notifications

An anonymous reader shares a report:Back in November 2021, cryptocurrencies, which saw a huge surge during most of the pandemic, suddenly began to nosedive. Joe Hovde, a New York-based data scientist, decided that this might be his moment to buy into crypto: He took a risk on the price plunge and bought some Ethereum, the next most popular crypto asset after Bitcoin, on Coinbase, a crypto exchange. A couple of months later, Hovde started getting emails from Coinbase notifying him of swings in the prices of Ethereum, Bitcoin, and other tokens. Though already a steady consumer of financial news and current events, Hovde used the notifications to passively keep tabs on his investment while juggling other things. So when crypto assets began to take another nosedive in April 2022, Hovde noticed that at some point, the emails seemed to have stopped coming. Hovde, who has worked on projects culling trends and patterns from large data sets for both tech companies and media outlets, scraped his inbox and confirmed that he'd received no emailed price notifications from the end of February to when they started back up again at the beginning of June; during that time period, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other currencies lost dozens of percent worth of value in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Coinbase's decision to stop email notifications in the middle of a dramatic cryptocurrency crash has not been previously reported. But academics who spoke to Mother Jones note that Coinbase's decision likely contributed to losses for retail crypto investors who may otherwise have sold their holdings ahead of further devaluation. The change to price updates could run afoul of federal or state consumer protection laws, they said, particularly if it hurt the wallets of any of the relatively inexperienced traders who flocked to crypto in droves during the pandemic.

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