An anonymous reader shares the message:Back in November 2021, cryptocurrencies, which had experienced a huge surge during most of the pandemic, suddenly began to fall. Joe Howde, a New York data specialist, decided that this might be the moment to buy crypto: he took a chance on falling prices and bought Ethereum, the second most popular crypto-asset after Bitcoin, on Coinbase, a crypto exchange . A couple of months later, Howde started receiving emails from Coinbase reporting fluctuations in the prices of Ethereum, Bitcoin and other tokens. Although Howde was already a regular consumer of financial news and current events, he used notifications to passively monitor his investments while juggling other things. So when crypto assets began to fall once again in April 2022, Howde noticed that at some point the emails seemed to stop coming.
Howde, who has worked on projects picking out trends and patterns from large data sets for both tech companies and the media, checked his inbox and confirmed that he hadn’t received any pricing emails since late February until when they again started working at the beginning of June; Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other currencies lost tens of percent of their value in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars during this time period. Coinbase’s decision to stop email notifications in the midst of the cryptocurrency’s dramatic crash had not been previously reported. But academics who spoke to Mother Jones note that Coinbase’s decision likely contributed to losses for retail crypto investors who might otherwise have sold their holdings before further devaluation. They said the price update changes could run afoul of federal or state consumer protection laws, especially if it hurts the wallets of any of the relatively inexperienced traders who have flocked to crypto during the pandemic.
