Coinbase is mistakenly draining customers' bank accounts, and people are freaked

All your money is gone. Whoops! Sorry for your loss.

The world of cryptocurrency trading is notoriously risky, but it wasn't supposed to be like this. Some Coinbase account holders are losing their shit today as they look to their bank statements to find that the exchange has withdrawn excessive amounts of money from their accounts.

Like, a lot of money. And no, there wasn't just another huge cryptocurrency crash that caught a bunch of margin traders flat footed. Instead, it seems that Coinbase has been mistakenly draining the non-cryptocurrency bank accounts of its customers.

Panicked individuals have taken over the Coinbase subreddit with stories about the exchange double and triple charging them — leaving them flat broke.

"You drained my bank account and now I have nothing," reads one post from this morning.

"Welp officially broke," reads another, "charged 17x1000$ on my account."

"FREAKING OUT," posts another user. "Coinbase drained my bank account. Took 5x the amount I authorized from debit. I am now broke, cannot afford rent, food, gas, bills."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

People are pissed, and Coinbase staff are flooding the subreddit to tell everyone to remain calm.

"We are actively investigating some reports from our customers about unexpected credit or debit card charges appearing on their statements from previous Coinbase purchases," a staff announcement explains. "We can confirm that the unexpected charges are originating from our payment processing network, and are related to charges from previous purchases. To the best of our knowledge, these unexpected charges are not permanent and are in the process of being refunded."

The company's assurances aren't doing much good, however, as telling someone whose bank account was just emptied that "to the best of our knowledge" the charges aren't permanent isn't a way to make any friends.

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Like, for example, saying that you are "actively investigating" the matter probably doesn't immediately help the person who is now "completely rekt" with a "healthcare bill coming up in 8 days."

Investing in Bitcoin has always involved some element of risk. That that risk would reach its hand out from Coinbase and into your linked bank account to pilfer your savings? Well, they always said cryptocurrency was going to revolutionize banking — it appears that Coinbase got the message.

This story has been updated to include tweets from Coinbase.