I have been on steemit for 29 days. I have done much better than I expected. This being my first dance with cryptocurrency, I decided to test the waters and cash a portion out. After all, if steem didn't translate to real dollars, then it was little more than Monopoly money to me.
The process as I understand it:
The steem dollars needed to be converted to bitcoin.
The Bitcoin is sent to a second site to exchange it for dollars and then deposit to a bank account or use it on a debit card.
Step one- I sent the steem to OpenLedger. The process took a few minutes and was pretty straight forward.
Step two- I sent the Bitcoin from OpenLedger to the garbage can.
Garbage Can?
Yes, Coinbase. Nine days ago I sent roughly $200 in Bitcoin to Coinbase. That is where my $200 became worthless and where I realized that the bitcoin industry is still run by people that give no shits. I contacted OpenLedger to try and cancel the transaction. Pretty naive, but I am new to the process. I recieved a message from OpenLedger stating that the money had been sent to Coinbase and that it was out of their hands.
Coinbase has a customer service email. Coinbase answered my first inquiry by pointing me to their FAQ page related to delays. Nowhere on the page did it indicate that the transfer should last more than a few hours. I sent coinbase the memo/address I used and asked them to confirm that the process was correct but just a delay in the system. 10 days later I still have no response.
Any other industry, including traditional banking, one instance of this type of customer service would have customers running. Not so with the cryptocurrency. Disappointing. One way to ensure that I stay powered up is to have no reliable way to cash out. That is also one way to kill a currency altogether.
Ideas on how to fix the situation? Is this standard?