Coinbase Loophole....?

My first post on steemit and I hope I make a big splash!

So I decided after much research to finally look into all these  blockchain, bitcoin, distributed network, smart contract, etc concepts.  That is why I rushed to get my steemit account set up so I could share my experiences on this journey.

Dilemma 

Citizenship: USA

Residence: Japan

American driver's license: Expired

= hours of frustration

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Only later do I find out that Coinbase does not accept a passport as a form of identification, leaving me with an account I cannot use and a bit of frustration after trying to upload my documents a bunch of times.

Discovery

In the process of trying to get money into Coinbase I had been researching several other exchanges and technologies (e.g. Dapps).  I setup xbtce, poloniex, kraken, metamask, and others and was trying to figure out how to get my USD/JPY into crypto gold so I could start investing and exploring things like steemit.

I stumble across the MetaMask "buy" button which connects me to the Coinbase API.

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I enter my desired cash value, my email, my verification code.... thinking to myself that there is no way in hell this is going to work.  

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The payment method screen pops up, the same screen that rejected my inputs at Coinbase.com asking me to complete ID verification.

......

....however this time I'm able to proceed, going through the menu step by step I get a confirmation dialog saying "success!"

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Somehow, someway I was able to transfer money into coinbase through my bank, with a slight delay the ETH reached my metamask address.

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Reluctance

If this is a feature I want the world to know, because I have seen that many people were frustrated with the new ID stipulation. 

On the other hand if this backdoor breaks some international laws I would hope Coinbase fixes it asap.

I'm at least happy I was able to get a few $ into ETH allowing me to get started on my journey.