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Coinbase introduces Vault

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#31

Post by arasmussen »

I disagree with the direction Coinbase is going. Of all the things they could have built next, this is what they chose? Why not develop a button that says "Pay with Bitcoin by Coinbase" that allows one-click payments on third party websites/mobile apps? Or why not compete with Bitstamp and btc-e on the exchange front? There's definitely tons of room for competition there.

Consider a traditional USD/EUR bank account. If your bank offers you a "vault" option to store your large balance to offer better reassurance that it won't get stolen from your "regular account"/wallet, aren't you going to have some serious concerns about security of the regular account? Instead of offering a "more secure account" why don't think just work on the fact that people feel that their regular accounts are insecure. This seems like a bandaid on the problem rather than the proper fix.

It's also overcomplicated. Now I have two account types and have to worry myself over what the differences are for accessing my money in each and how to use each. They're increasing the amount of friction it takes to get started rather than basing their model off a bank's model of "your account is as secure as it needs to be, just use one".

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#32

Post by AndrewGaspar »

kolev wrote: post #27
wmf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat model here is people leaking their own Coinbase passwords (via phishing, compromised PC, etc.), so the 48-hour delay and out-of-band verification ought to actually help.

So, 72-hour delay is even more secure?

Yep, and if you dump all your coins into an account with no private key, nobody can get your bitcoins ever, so that's really what everybody should do.

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#33

Post by veemjeem »

arasmussen wrote: post #31

I disagree with the direction Coinbase is going. Of all the things they could have built next, this is what they chose? Why not develop a button that says "Pay with Bitcoin by Coinbase" that allows one-click payments on third party websites/mobile apps? Or why not compete with Bitstamp and btc-e on the exchange front? There's definitely tons of room for competition there. Consider a traditional USD/EUR bank account.…

I don't really agree here. A bank is safe because your money is FDIC backed even if a robber raided their coffers, BTC doesn't have that level of security yet and given the number of thefts in the last few years, I think security is something that is on everyone's minds when they choose a bank to hold their coins.

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#34

Post by vijayboyapati »

Multi-sig is a very powerful innovation for corporate use of bitcoin. Not because you can have arbitrarily many M of N signing a transaction, but that you can outsource complex policy in a trusted way. E.g., create policy that lower level employees can control a small percentage of a company's holdings, while higher level employees can control a higher percent. It allows you to implement flexibility that exists in the credit system, without giving up the trust/control that comes from the blockchain system.

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#35

Post by jerf »

arasmussen wrote: post #31

I disagree with the direction Coinbase is going. Of all the things they could have built next, this is what they chose? Why not develop a button that says "Pay with Bitcoin by Coinbase" that allows one-click payments on third party websites/mobile apps? Or why not compete with Bitstamp and btc-e on the exchange front? There's definitely tons of room for competition there. Consider a traditional USD/EUR bank account.…

I am at a loss as to why you think this is the thing they built.

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#36

Post by TheMakeA »

icebraining wrote: post #20
danielweber wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keys are stored offline, but the BTC are always online. They are relatively safe against someone compromising your computers remotely. Against physical intrusions or insider attacks, not as much.

Physical intrusions can be dealt with by encrypting the keys, which I hope they are doing. Using a secret sharing scheme with physical tokens (e.g. smartcards) carried by chosen employees should reduce the danger of both of those attacks.

They claim the physical copies are encrypted [1].

[1] http://blog.coinbase.com/post/33197656699/coinbase-now-stori...

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#37

Post by flexo0r »

arasmussen wrote: post #31

I disagree with the direction Coinbase is going. Of all the things they could have built next, this is what they chose? Why not develop a button that says "Pay with Bitcoin by Coinbase" that allows one-click payments on third party websites/mobile apps? Or why not compete with Bitstamp and btc-e on the exchange front? There's definitely tons of room for competition there. Consider a traditional USD/EUR bank account.…

I don't see how this is complicated or confusing and I completely disagree with you. I think this is absolutely the right direction to be going if coinbase (and bitcoin) want to become mainstream. An exchange is mainly for traders and most people like myself don't want to look at candlestick charts to know when to purchase or make a bid without any certainty of obtaining coins or worse compete with bots. On the other hand many people I know have kept away from bitcoin because of how seemingly complicated and confusing it is to supposedly keep secure -don't keep coins on exchange, use paper wallet, encrypt backups of private keys. This is definitely a step in the right direction towards attracting a more mainstream audience. As for a 'Pay with Bitcoin' button, are you kidding, how do you think overstock, newegg etc accept bitcoin payments - this is one of the first things they did.

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#38

Post by flexo0r »

kolev wrote: post #19

How about fixing the web app before adding more features? Their Ajax page loading hangs most of the time. Going straight to the URL works immediately, but it's not always possible.

I thought I was the only one experiencing this. My feeling is that the sometimes extreme slowness of their website is not unintentional, kind of like their arbitrary canceling or delaying of transactions and blaming it on false positives in their "high risk detection algorithm".

Re: Coinbase introduces Vault

#39

Post by mangoman »

arasmussen wrote: post #31

I disagree with the direction Coinbase is going. Of all the things they could have built next, this is what they chose? Why not develop a button that says "Pay with Bitcoin by Coinbase" that allows one-click payments on third party websites/mobile apps? Or why not compete with Bitstamp and btc-e on the exchange front? There's definitely tons of room for competition there. Consider a traditional USD/EUR bank account.…

They have the pay with bitcoin button

https://coinbase.com/docs/merchant_tools/payment_buttons

I've used it on overstock.com and it's pretty incredible. I think it's the least amount of information I've ever had to enter to buy something online. All I entered was the shipping address and my email address.

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