Coinbase Buys and sells are currently paused.

I have been using Coinbase for a while now as my online Bitcoin wallet and have been pretty happy with the buying experience although selling is a different story. Many of us are getting the “Buys and sells are currently paused. Please try again in a few minutes.”  with the value of Bitcoin at over $122. They let you buy Bitcoin all day long as long as you stay under your limit although when the value of BTC goes up they always seem to have some reason you can’t sell until the price goes back down.

UPDATE: It seems that Coinbase is working smoothly now and there have been no issues since that day of stress.  I would like to note while this article was a rant of sorts that Coinbase is one of the best if not the best place to buy and sell Bitcoin.  There are long delays and this article was true at the time it was written.

As usual, today Bitcoin was at 121.68 when I hit the “Sell Bitcoins” button and there it was in yellow, “Buys and sells are currently paused. Please try again in a few minutes.”. Its been 20 minutes (updates below) now trying to sell at over $120 to be sure I get the profits that are required to keep me in the positives and no luck.

If you think about using Coinbase because of the ease of use be careful they aren’t as user friendly as they seem. Coinbase is still good for buying coins but I would recommend transferring them somewhere else to sell as you may only be able to sell for a loss when they say its ok. I know this is a rant of sorts but I want to be sure others are aware that once you buy them with Coinbase you may never be able to sell them unless its for a loss.

I will keep testing Coinbase and if things change and they stop blocking sales of BTC when you want to sell I will be sure to amend this article to say so.

Personally I will be looking and testing multiple exchanges to see who is the best and make sure I let those reading this blog know the outcomes of each. Please feel free to leave a comment if you have something to say about this.

I have submitted a support case and am awaiting a response from Coinbase to see their explanation of this issue as well as what this means for others when they are ready to sell.

Even though I am very irritated with Coinbase right now they do seem like a promising exchange/wallet.  We just have to keep hopes that they can get their system running the way we all expect.  Selling your Bitcoin when it hits a certain price is key to staying in the game and actually making them worth buying.

I also appreciate those that visit my sponsors at the top of this page as well as donations to the following Bitcoin Address – 1KHO1U1JJ5QNW4S7YNS9XK7FYVXDGR1UGW

UPDATES:

• 10:35 EST – Still can’t sell and the price has dropped from $121.64 (my initial attempt) to $119.22
• 11:20 EST – Still can’t sell and the price is now 118.99 (loses are getting worse due to this)
• 12:30 EST – Still not able to sell and the sell price has dropped to $117.22
• 13:53 EST – Ah Finally able to sell but instead of $121.64 its at $117.75 (still no response from support)

While everything seems fine now we will see when the price goes back up quickly how they handle our sales requests in the future.  Basically today if your Bitcoin are in a Coinbase wallet you potentially missed out on $3.89 per coin for unknown reasons.  Hopefully Coinbase responds so we can at least have a reason for this issue.

UPDATE (same day 15:30 EST):
So I decided to go back since the price of BTC went up on coinbase’s sell page to 118.64 and sell some coins and go figure there is that message again “Buys and sells are currently paused. Please try again in a few minutes.” so here we go again.  I’m willing to bet when it goes back below $118 everything will somehow magically allow selling again.