Just 7 People Complained to the CFPB About Bitcoin in 2016

New knowledge reveals American shoppers filed a complete of simply seven complaints with the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in 2016.

The CFPB was created in the wake of the monetary disaster of the late 2000s as a part of a bid to extra intently scrutinize monetary services and products in the US. The company began accepting complaints associated to digital currencies in August 2014.

Now, scholar mortgage market LendEDU has scraped data from the CFPB’s public complaints database, discovering that, of the practically 190,000 complaints filed over the course of 2016, solely seven of them associated to digital currency companies. Four of these have been filed towards Coinbase whereas three have been submitted towards Circle.

According to the CFPB database, just one grievance – filed towards Coinbase on 29th November – is in-progress, whereas the remaining six have been closed.

The quantity of complaints in different classes dwarfs these in the digital currency bracket. For instance, LendEDU discovered that 43,841 complaints have been made concerning credit score reporting; 40,965 for mortgages; and 39,759 for debt assortment.

But why the low quantity, in contrast to the others?

The knowledge may merely be reflective of a comparatively low variety of shoppers utilizing bitcoin companies. Conversely, shoppers might not know that the CFPB – itself solely a five-year-old company – even takes complaints associated to the tech, that means that different elements of the authorities may very well be on the receiving finish of complaints.

Still, in its weblog submit, LendEDU famous that the knowledge suggests authorities don’t have a lot to examine.

“Fortunately for consumers, virtual currency doesn’t seem to be a huge issue,” the firm stated. “Or at least not an issue garnering too many complaints.”

The findings echo previous deep-dives into the CFPB knowledge in this space.

The nonprofit advocacy group Coin Center reported in July of final yr overview of grievance knowledge from 2011 by means of 2015 revealed 37 complaints filed towards firms in the digital currency house, together with Coinbase in addition to different corporations like the now-defunct GAW Miners and Butterfly Labs, amongst quite a lot of others.

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