Complaints Against Crypto Exchanges Rise in US, and Coinbase Tops the List

As cryptocurrencies have become more popular, complaints against major U.S. crypto exchanges have increased.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, of the top three crypto exchanges operating in the U.S., Coinbase has received the most complaints during the past year.

Some 1,060 complaints have been registered against Coinbase, with gripes about domestic and international money transfers, digital wallets and foreign currency exchange, according to the CFPB's Consumer Complaint Database.

California residents had the most gripes, with 131 against the U.S.' most prominent exchange, while New York followed closely behind.

Washington, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas and Florida also registered larger shares of the total complaints about Coinbase.

Binance.US, which is operated by BAM Trading and is a separate entity from Changpeng Zhao's Binance, received 184 complaints, and Kraken, another major exchange, received 34.

The complaints stretch from the end of last June through the present time and capture a time when the market was beginning to shake off prior bearish sentiment as prices recovered from a sell-off in May 2020.

By comparison, the same period of the previous year saw far fewer complaints, with Coinbase receiving 241, Binance 17 and Kraken none, the CFPB's data shows.

Kraken told CoinDesk via email it had responded to each of the complaints received during the same period from 2020-2021.

Coinbase and Binance.US didn't respond immediately to requests for comment.

UPDATE (July 6, 2021, 3:00 UTC): Adds response from Kraken