Coinbase Faces Hack Cover-Up Allegations as Customers Claim Huge Losses

A public dispute over how Coinbase handles customers who say they lost funds on the exchange has grown over the past week on X, drawing in one of its own executives, a former employee and Ari Paul, founder of crypto investment firm BlockTower Capital, who alleges the company concealed repeated hacks.

Paul has not made any evidence public, and Unchained has not independently verified his claims. Coinbase has denied hiding hacks.

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The thread began on Sept. 26, when a trader who posts as kuno alleged that Coinbase “stole $1,200,000” from them a year earlier. The trader said they had opened more than 30 support tickets, and gave the exchange 24 hours to fix it before posting a recording of a call with Coinbase staff and taking legal action. In an earlier post, kuno said their account had been locked “without explanation.”

Jordan “Cobie” Fish, who joined Coinbase through its $375 million deal for his fundraising platform Echo and took over the consumer Base app in July, replied that he “Can’t find any account matching this description” and asked kuno to send him the account’s email. Hours later, Fish wrote that there had been “no response to any outreach by CB to the user over the last 6+ months,” and that the dispute was being used to promote a token, saying it looked to be “an entirely fake/scam report/engagement farm.”

Paul replied to Fish’s thread on Monday, alleging that Coinbase “lost” $25 million of his firm’s funds “a couple years ago” and was “actually covering up massive and repeated hacks.” He said his firm had traced the matter to at least a dozen other affected firms and more than $1 billion in concealed losses.

Replies to Paul turned to Coinbase’s support more broadly, with several users describing their own account problems. Unchained could not verify their claims. One X user wrote that “you have to tag Cobie to get anything done.” Another, who posts as Shitcoin CPA, claimed to have lost access to about $45,000, writing that “4 years later, I still don’t have my account back.” A third user wrote in a post on X that Coinbase “froze my funds for several months, based on alleged suspicious activity” and “would barely communicate” during its review.

In a follow-up post on X on Tuesday, Paul wrote that he could not share proof because “multiple legal processes” were still unfolding, and alleged that Coinbase “already tried to sue me into silence” without success. In another, he apologized for moving slowly, writing that he had never before taken on “such a politically powerful and aggressive legal bully” and that he had “fiduciary obligations to prioritize fund recovery” at a time when recovering the funds by negotiation looked viable. He said he no longer has those duties.

Coinbase responded on Tuesday through its support account, saying it could not comment on specific clients. “Coinbase is not hiding a series of hacks and we certainly didn’t lose $1B,” it wrote. The company added that it advises customers on how to secure their API keys and that, like most companies offering API access, it does not “retain the information necessary to transact on customer accounts.”

Justin Mart, who previously worked in corporate development and ventures at Coinbase, questioned Paul’s account on Wednesday, saying he would “bet a ton of money the accusations are far far worse than reality.” Mart said it was more likely BlockTower’s credentials were stolen, the Lazarus Group used them to withdraw funds, and Coinbase processed the withdrawals. He added, “Obv I could be wrong.”

Paul called that “Very wrong,” alleging that “external forensic firms, secret service were involved” and that his team traced the attack to “a specific Coinbase codebase.” He said the attacker was “likely Lazarus group, but we’re not 100% sure.” He said he would publish “the full dossier with full detailed proof” if Coinbase agrees not to harass or sue him over it.

In May 2025, Coinbase disclosed that criminals had bribed overseas customer service agents to steal customer data and demanded a $20 million ransom, as Unchained reported. Paul has not said whether his claims are connected to that breach.

Related Listen: How the Bitget Hack Reopened Crypto’s Fight Over Neutral Infrastructure

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