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Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

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Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#161

Post by Fnoord »

amenghra wrote: post #83
blhack wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days ago it felt so much easier to answer this question, haha. Coinbase puts a lot of work and effort into their security models. Storing coins yourself means that you now have to: 1) Physically secure your private key 2) Secure the machine that you use to interact with that private key 3) Ensure that that private key was generated in a secure way 4) Ensure that the ways that you interact with that private key…

If you have small amounts of crypto currency and want a secure machine and don’t want to buy a hardware wallet: You can take your old phone or tablet, apply any available upgrades, factory reset it, use it only for crypto currency stuff. Our mobile operating sysmtems are pretty secure (in the grand scheme of things)

You can, but you shouldn't. What if you lose your mobile phone...?

> Our mobile operating sysmtems are pretty secure (in the grand scheme of things)

Not yet. Maybe after Android One / Project Treble runs on the majority of smartphones in the world. Which won't happen since Google made Android Go for low-end devices.

That's three problems. Security of the device(s), the lack of redundancy, and the physical security of the device.

A hardware wallet (such as Trezor or Ledger Nano S) together with a smartphone (or PC) yields you 2FA. "(Or PC)" could mean an offline Linux distribution on a USB key which is used as backup. The hardware key suggests a paper backup which should be safely stored at a notary or safety deposit box. Same for the USB key with the backup Linux distribution. Though it can also just contain some config files (stored encrypted).

Such a hardware key costs These costs are peanuts for the average BTC user, but for people in poorer countries its sadly quite an investment. Worth it though.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#163

Post by teekert »

ceejayoz wrote: post #82
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of non-technical person is trying to buy and manage a bitcoin wallet in the first place? If the user is only willing to learn enough to keep the coins in Coinbase, then this person has no business dealing with Bitcoin at all.

> What kind of non-technical person is trying to buy and manage a bitcoin wallet in the first place? I've had half a dozen non-technical friends ask me about getting into Bitcoin in the last month or so. Media attention, get-rich-quick, scams, etc. are all attracting hordes of people, to the point where the Coinbase app was #1 on the App Store for a while. Even the people running exchanges are getting hacked. What ch…

Ah man I had the same, how did you handle it? I regret helping anyone now, it was stressful and they underestimated the risk despite my constant nagging. Last week in BTC land was insane.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#164

Post by earenndil »

esaym wrote: post #74

So if we shouldn't be leaving our coins on coinbase, where do we leave them? A full wallet is not an option for many of us. I don't want to have to download 100's of gigs of data just to store my coins... I even tried to move from bitcoin to etherum since I thought that wallet might be smaller. And it was, but after leaving it running for 2 days it still had a ways to go and all the IO it was doing was really trashin…

Electrum.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#165

Post by earenndil »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #122

It's so mind-bogglingly fucked... they're freezing the market exactly when the clever investor would like to be buying.

Clever?? Crypto is on its way down right now. You go right ahead and buy, but for everyone else I recommend you SELL.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#166

Post by conanbatt »

quickben wrote: post #31
conanbatt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not what bank regulations have achieved.

They have achieved trust is system. If my bank stops existing right now, I still have any money. If gets hacked, tough luck.

Thats federally insured. You are paying taxes for your 'still have your money'.

Not as clear cut as you think it is. If the government insured bitcoin 'for free' you would also see a major surge in confidence.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#167

Post by akhatri_aus »

defo_nonconvex wrote: post #140
akhatri_aus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Insurance companies almost always win, that's how they make money Not exactly. They make money off pricing their insurance higher than the chances of it happening.

Err, a big chunk of their bottom-line comes from reinvesting the float, or just re-insuring and taking the spread.

To do this you can only make money if the insurance is priced at more than the chance of it happening. Or the reinsurer wouldn't be able to offer any insurance either, & the float wouldn't exist because it would be paid back in claims.

Insurance runs on the same premise of making money a casino does. If there was no casino edge, there would be no cash for the casino 'float' back into bets.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#168

Post by ceejayoz »

teekert wrote: post #163
ceejayoz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of non-technical person is trying to buy and manage a bitcoin wallet in the first place? I've had half a dozen non-technical friends ask me about getting into Bitcoin in the last month or so. Media attention, get-rich-quick, scams, etc. are all attracting hordes of people, to the point where the Coinbase app was #1 on the App Store for a while. Even the people running exchanges are getting hacked. What ch…

Ah man I had the same, how did you handle it? I regret helping anyone now, it was stressful and they underestimated the risk despite my constant nagging. Last week in BTC land was insane.

My stock response is "treat it as gambling - put in only what you can afford to completely lose, because I feel like it's a massive bubble, but it's impossible to predict when it might pop".

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#169

Post by conanbatt »

abakker wrote: post #41
conanbatt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not what bank regulations have achieved.

Are you sure of that? In many ways bank regulation has achieved exactly that. We have an SEC, we have mandatory filings, we have disclosure requirements, conflict of interest requirements, bank capital requirements, stress tests, and many rules about types of financial products which cannot be sold. Those create much more uniformity and trust in the system. (of course this comes with some cost, but, arguably the thin…

We also have immense global money laundering from banks.

And in return, each bank account cost of regulatory compliance is pretty large.

Im not saying all bank regulations are bad, but its not like bank regulation is an example of policy success.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#170

Post by demachina »

beavisthegenius wrote: post #132
SilasX wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and then we had 2008, where you can violate all of that with reckless abandon and still get bailed out.

2008 was about over leverage and speculation.

It was also about mortgage fraud ... bond rating fraud ... multinational banks selling fraudulent mortgage backed securities based on the previous two frauds. Almost no one went to jail for any of it, the few who did were little fish. The SEC, Fed, Treasury and DOJ were asleep at the wheel before and during the crash and did almost nothing after other than reward the perpetrators: A. threw $700 billion in tax payer funds at them B. forced mergers that made some of them even bigger C. the Fed printed $4 trillion dollars and handed it to them to plow in to the stock market and juiced an 8 year bull market which enriched all of them.

Cryptocurrencies certainly have their problems but the last 10 years have been a case study in how horrible fiat currencies and the current global financial system really is. Japan's central bank has printed so much money they own something like 65% of all the ETF's on the Nikkei.

China, EU, U.S. and Japan have printed something like $16 trillion dollars since the crash. If banks leverage that at a conservative 12X that's $192 trillion. The world is awash in fantasy money.

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