The US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has been under attack for supposedly suspending email price notifications just as currencies across the market began losing value earlier this year.
Experts quoted in a Mother Jones article say the decision may have contributed to losses incurred by retail crypto investors as they may have sold their assets on time, preventing a huge devaluation. Also, speculations suggest Coinbase's move may violate federal or state consumer protection laws.
Speaking on the issue, Howard University associate professor, Matthew Bruckner, (via Mother Jones) describes the move as “potentially illegal.” According to Bruckner, Coinbase's actions could land it in hot water under Unfair and Deceptive Practice (UDAP) laws.
"It could be unfair to do this, to sort of induce people to rely on the email alerts," Bruckner said, adding that if the exchange didn't give prior notice to users and its actions "caused substantial injury," they may be in trouble.
Bruckner also believes that users have the right to sue Coinbase, if it misled them into believing that they would receive email notifications, making them to stop checking for real-time price updates.
However, Coinbase says that it tested email notifications earlier this year, but only on an undisclosed class of users. According to a spokesperson, "we started testing email notifications for some users in January and have since rolled them out to all interested users."
The company said it paused the test in February, months before the bear markets began, and it appears that alerts were restored to all users in June.
However, a user contacted by Mother Jones claims he received no notification that the emails were being paused, and Coinbase did not notify users via its blog.
"All Coinbase customers have the option to be notified about certain changes to asset prices on their watchlist through push and in-app notifications," Coinbase told Mother Jones in an email.
She also mentioned that even if email notifications were disabled, users could still receive in-app push notifications if they opted in.
