Customers rumble as Coinbase claims it is now a decentralized exchange

U.S. crypto exchange, Coinbase, recently made an incredulous claim that it has become a decentralized exchange because it no longer has a physical head office. In a blog post on Feb. 25 titled “Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters”, the CEO, Brian Armstrong, stated that the firm has moved to a ‘remote-first environment’.

Brian added that 52% of employees in Coinbase have joined the company in a ‘post-office world,’ and 95% of them have the option to work from home. Many of its employees have also dispersed across the globe since the beginning of 2020.

“It has helped us attract top talent. One of the best parts about being a decentralized company is that we can hire more of the best people.”

However, many of the company’s customers did not welcome this development, as they took to Twitter to unleash their displeasure.

Coinbase customers express displeasure over the new development.

Despite being one of the largest fiat-to-crypto companies globally, Coinbase has garnered a reputation for terrible customer service, high fees, and questionable reliability when markets are volatile. It was as if its customer-base has been waiting for a time to pour out their rage, as the barrage of comments came thick and fast. Customers aimed everything—from customer support to the now predictable service outages during large crypto asset price movements plus other issues.

A Coinbase customer claimed that he had lost almost a thousand dollars in trading fees with just an $8,000 investment. Someone else also questioned the suspension of XRP, stating that the company is still very centralized in the United States. The majority of the complaints were centered on unanswered emails, bad customer service, and frequent service outages.

“No headquarters, no customer service. No service at all when the market moves. Good for you, Coinbase.”

One respondent asserted that it was just a ploy to use a popular word at the moment just like the last bull run when companies added blockchain to their names. At the time of writing, around 12 hours after the blog post was published, there were too many replies to read, and the vast majority of them were negative. Apparently, it appears that Coinbase, which still has several whale investors, has also decentralized itself from its customers.