“I could list a bunch of the underlying reasons why it [account restrictions] got so bad in the first place, but what’s more important is that we’ve made it a priority to fix, and we have been making good progress.”
Armstrong added that the exchange will continue to make improvements, announcing them as they are rolled out.
Levi stated that he joined Coinbase with the sole purpose of helping fix the platform’s issue with account restrictions. He noted that the goal is to ensure that account freezes are “rare.” Restrictions on accounts should be limited to circumstances that necessitate them, such as legal obligations to adhere to sanctions or court orders, or to protect customers from scams and account compromises, he added.
Levi wrote:
“We’re committed to getting this right. Recent releases have enabled us to make huge improvements without sacrificing our legal and regulatory obligations, or our commitment to safety.”
He also listed certain measures that Coinbase has adopted to reduce account restrictions. This includes “significant investments” in machine learning (ML) models, infrastructure, modeling, and teams. These investments have helped improve the “precision and recall” of Coinbase’s models, resulting in fewer restrictions and freezes, Levi said.
The exchange is also moving processes like source-of-funds verification and enhanced know-your-customer (KYC) validation into the Coinbase app to speed up the process of removing restrictions. Levi wrote:
“This [moving processes into the app] means most restriction types will have self-service flows to remove restrictions, which is much more efficient than previous options.”
He added that the exchange has also established guardrails to ensure that reducing account freezes remains a primary focus.
