Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 473 posts

Re: Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

#311

Post by vmception »

AlexandrB wrote: post #257
yreg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A. speculation B. diversification against more tradional assets C. store of value if you don’t have access to any better financial instruments D. keeping some ready on hand to pay off ransomware attacks

Regarding B, Is there any evidence that BTC is countercyclical? It seems to have followed the conventional market down over the past week.

> It seems to have followed the conventional market down over the past week.

Bitcoin would be $3 per Bitcoin if it only correlated to the NASDAQ over the last 10 years

It does its thing

Re: Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

#312

Post by ar_lan »

bogwog wrote: post #127
skizm wrote: post #100

I feel like saying "We have no risk of bankruptcy" is the same as Musk saying "Funding secured" on Twitter. The statement is provably false and will directly impact stock price.

If I had any cryptocurrencies in Coinbase, I’d be transferring it out ASAP after reading this and the CEO’s response on Twitter trying to downplay the risk. That’s a red flag.

Coinbase has locked a lot of people's ETH2 funds - there is no way to currently withdraw them. This was always a strange concept to me, but there are a good chunk of customer's who are literally just stuck with Coinbase, like it or not, with their funds being held hostage.

I know it's a choice, but it's also been like that for many, many months at this point, when I can imagine most people thought "this would only be this way for a few days/weeks".

Re: Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

#313

Post by pjbeam »

3np wrote: post #295
pjbeam wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you download this in the UK? My question is sincere, I'm surprised to read that.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-org-blocks-access-to-... Craig Wright (obviously falsely) claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto and thereby copyright on the (MIT licensed but whatever apparently) Bitcoin whitepaper. A UK court ruled in his favor and bitcoin.org are therefore not allowed to distribute it in the UK. They responded with restricting access to both the whitepaper and the software for UK IPs.

Interesting thank you!

Re: Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

#315

Post by 3np »

chill1 wrote: post #274
CyanDeparture wrote: post #161

Can anyone tell me how to set up a wallet on my Mac in order to get my coins off coinbase. Is there any clear guide on how to do that. Every link on Google seems to be spam or downloading potentially malicious software. It's very fustrating because so many people seem to know how to set up a wallet on their computer/Mac however I cannot for the life of me find a clear wallet to download and move my funds to or a guid…

I usually don't bother to login to comment, but I felt compelled in this case. The other replies include a lot of bad advice. You sound like you don't have much of experience actually using bitcoin (or cryptocurrencies). So the best (most secure and easiest) solution is to buy a hardware wallet and use the wallet app which they provide. I suggest either Trezor [1] or Ledger [2]. Do not buy a hardware wallet from seco…

This is good advice. Notably, you don't need to use the vendor wallet software either but can use either with e.g. Electrum.

If you really don't want to get a dedicated hardware wallet, the poor-persons choice would be to (in order of preference):

* In case you're really just holding and won't be wanting to transact with it anytime soon, a paper wallet can work. Generate it on an airgapped device and never let the private keys touch a connected device.

* Use a dedicated boot environment. For example: Set up Tails on a USB drive and boot into it on your laptop, or make a fresh install on a raspberry pi or similar. Use Electrum (or bitcoin core qt / cli), store the wallet file only on a separate encrypted USB drive. Don't use this OS install for other things. Prefer connecting only over Tor, I2P, or cjdns.

* A reputable smartphone wallet. A downside here is that you will have to be very diligent with your system updates and have to keep a peripheral eye on if the author gets acquired or goes rouge etc. You'd have to do your own research but Bluewallet seems decent.

* Ignore all the advice and access the keys on your PC anyway. It's possible to do safely but as noted above it has increased risks and requires a lot of diligence.

Re: Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

#317

Post by yreg »

AlexandrB wrote: post #257
yreg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A. speculation B. diversification against more tradional assets C. store of value if you don’t have access to any better financial instruments D. keeping some ready on hand to pay off ransomware attacks

Regarding B, Is there any evidence that BTC is countercyclical? It seems to have followed the conventional market down over the past week.

Well it of course doesn't corellate S&P 500 1:1, so it provides some diversification (same as everything else).

Gold has been down over the past week as well, it is normal for all instruments to move together at times of uncertainty (and when many folks are getting margin called).

Re: Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

#318

Post by lumost »

post-it wrote: post #258
lumost wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised that customer positions aren't considered loans with first rights over all other lenders in a bankruptcy proceeding. The company shouldn't be playing around with these, but based on this statement it sounds like they are doing something odd and trying to run a fractional reserve system, or leveraging customer deposits for other high risk activity such that the money may not be there. Makes me think that I s…

You probably should. You wouldn't give Coinbase your SSH private keys, crypto keys are no different.

They don't have my keys, but they are holding the asset as a custodian. From a practical perspective, I'm not certain they are actually holding my BTC in a dedicated wallet or a central wallet with an off blockchain ledger.

Re: Coinbase warns that bankruptcy could wipe out user funds

#319

Post by uncomputation »

einpoklum wrote: post #280
chaosbolt wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost sure Coinbase practices fractional reserve and other forms of market manipulation, let's see how that bank run works for people. Some examples: - NuCypher goes up quickly on binance (a few months ago) because a whale is buying there, lots of people try to withdraw on CB to sell on binance, withdrawals start off working but then get locked for 5 hours straight, reddit and other social media had people compl…

> I'm almost sure Coinbase practices fractional reserve I'm not a crypto guy, so excuse the naive question: Can coinbase loan out money without actually transferring some sort of single-ownership keys for the amount loaned? If so, then indeed, they should be able to engage in fractional reserve "banking". > and other forms of market manipulation Modern money markets are based on fractional reserve banking. That's how…

The issue isn’t that modern banks all do this. It’s that crypto was supposed to be different, a response to the financial crisis where people were affected that didn’t even gamble on housing, a way to truly own and prove your money is your money.

> Modern money markets are based on fractional reserve banking

Bitcoin was developed to solve this.

> That's how most money gets created these days

Bitcoin is a deflationary asset. It’s not supposed to be “made” because a bank/Coinbase says so, but only via mathematical proof of work.

> I'm no fan of the prevailing economic system but…

Satoshi wasn’t either. That’s why he made Bitcoin. If the argument for Bitcoin becomes “it sucks but we need banks to lie to us for the economy” then there is no core argument for Bitcoin.

Post reply on HN