Bitcoin Forum

It's often discussed that, Hyip, ptc scams are normal. What happens if the wallets like coinbase and xapo and others decided to walk away with the money what will happen, though I am sure it will never happen but just out of curiosity

Already you've quoted that such thing won't happen at any instance, then no use on discussing on this. In my view at times due to network problems and other development issues the sites might go down for a short time but won't run away with the users earnings.

This has been asked before, about ten times every month.

Report it and move on. Very few people get their money back.

It's the first reason why It's never recommended to store your Bitcoins in an online wallet (certaintly not one that doesn't give you access to your private keys like both services you just mentioned) , If you believe that this unlikely to happen then google "Mt gox" and think again. As for what will happen , nothing much If they do it right. (having your funds back is unlikely btw)

Bitfinex hack had a big negative impact on Bitcoin and its price, if one of the big online wallets scams or hacked(It is more likely they will be hacked than run away with your money btw) the impact will be much bigger, I don't even want to think about it.
This is one of the many reasons that you should avoid using online wallets or at least don't keep big amount of money there.

Hey thanks a lot will check it. Sorry I did not know it was discussed before. But thanks for your input will see it.

Never say never, as mentioned above just check out the Mtgox nightmare although that was considered an exchange rather than a wallet provider there weren't as many options back then.
Just remember if you don't hold your own private keys then someone else is being trusted with your money and if you want that set up then you may as well stay with the Fiat banking system.

The good thing is that you have alternative, you are not forced to use any kind of online wallet at all.
In case of even shadow of doubt you should not use online wallet, casino, exchange - basically any 3rd party service.

I just want to add - if you are user of blockchain.info, then it is near impossible for owners to steal your bitcoins - as they don't have access to your account at all.

I have been using coinbase.com cause I was suggested that it was the best. Is it the best or should I shift to some other one. Ya I read about it, it's scary it could happen. Will there be any fees if I switch to Blockchain?

If online wallet or exchangers scam their users will many people use offline wallets and if  it happen will there are no people who believe into online wallet and bitcoin's price will be down. But the most dangerous is will many people who don't believe into bitcoins.

Well thats why you need to hold onto your own BTC private keys mate. Don't use services like coinbase. Hold your own private key and no one can steal it from you if you store it securely.

How can I do it? Is there some link or steps you could guide. Cause I only know very basic stuff about this wallets and this private key I am not getting it

coinbase and xapo doesn't give you the private keys. Those address belongs to them, you can't have control outside of their website. Even though coinbase allows to yo control the private key when you create multisig  (https://www.coinbase.com/multisig)wallet, But for normal wallet you don't have control of private key

In blockchain you can import and export private keys.

There would be very little to nothing that you could do, we can look at the recent examples with Cryptsy and Bifinex although some people might get a portion back you would be lucky to get anything back.

It is the chance you take when storing your bitcoins in these type of exchanges as you do not have full control.

Anything could happen. But, so far many exchanges or web wallet providers had closed their services with the reason of hacking, we were not sure about what really had happened to them.

The only possible solution must be : Use exchange or wallet only for its dedicated purposes. If using them for storage, regretting will be inevitable.

Talking about legally regulated exchange platforms like xapo and coinbase it will be hard for them to just run away however such wallets can easily make fake news being hacked by hacker and actually that will be insider jobs.

For other wallets which are not regulated or run by reputable company than they can just shut down and run away with completely anonymity. Better to have private key stored securely of all bitcoin address you will use anytime to hold bitcoin.

i'm sure coinbase and xapo know their stuff security wise but i'd be very interested to see what their alleged insurance would do if there ever was a major hack. bitpay tried to claim on theirs but were told to kiss their ass. i guess that was mainly down to the incredible stupidity of the employee who gave the coins away.

Well, if it happens, it's over... You lose all your money stored there, nothing do do about it. It would be like invest on a Ponzi HYIP scheme and the site closes some time later. There is no way to retrieve the money.

But online wallets are safest than fraudulent schemes, of course. So, you don't need to worry much about it. But you must know that your money isn't 100% safe when stored there and unexpected things happen.

In case it happens, you have absolutely nothing you can do left. This happened many times (I'm not talking about Bitcoin but generally), there are scammers everywhere around us. Although we're as careful as we can be, it still can happen. You can only report it to the police but the chances of getting your money back are low. This is why I'm using cold wallets.

don't be so sure about it. when it comes to bitcoin, as a general rule you should know that as long as you are not the one who creates the private keys and holds them, you are not controlling your balance. so even big wallets like coinbase can run away. nobody ever thought bifinex, cryptsy, mtgox, and so many others are going to do it but they all did. they can say it was a hack, or they can just disappear or the common thing with these wallets: "they can simply block your account and money in it"

it can be but i think with the official wallet nothing happened like this because the official wallets are making money through legit way og transaction so why they needs to scam .sonin my opinion they are no such chance to scam ( atleast for blockchain )

there is no "official wallet" for bitcoin. all the wallets are created on the bitcoin protocol by people and are all open source. those third party sites like coin base and xapo are running on their own code too but there is no such thing as official wallet.

and your reasoning is also wrong because the same thing was true about all those exchanges which were earning money through legit ways like trading fees but they scammed anyways.

There is official wallet for bitcoin and that is blockchain.info and we can't assure those big exchange or wallet providers if they are going to run with our money.

But it seems that trust of people is much more precious to them since that is real business so you don't have to think about and doubtful from them.

Haven't heard of a wallet running yet. But it happens with exchanges,hyip,ptc,etc , so who's to say it won't ever happen with wallets. Doesn't matter how long they've been operating or whether they're making enough money off of fees. So long as they decide to run and take off with all their depositor's money, nothing we could really do. Or, they don't even need to run, they could just say they've been hacked. lol. Nothing new there.

Which is why I personally only put enough on my web wallets for payments,etc. Small amounts only.

To prevent this kind of fear from users, the wallet owners should provide their personal informations, like business address and all other informations that can help users to find this person if they lose their money, be hacked... Surely it would be dangerous for wallet owner also, because someone could try to extort him for money. Complicated situation.

Coinbase is a online wallet provider, it should be fine to purchase some coins from them but just remember that as soon as those coins have been confirmed and sitting in your coinbase wallet you should really then move them to an address in which you hold the private keys too.
Mycelium is a good option, blockchain.info is OK too.

No you are incorrect, blockchain.info is not the "offical" wallet for bitcoin, there is no offical wallet.

They are registered companies and their details are available with the authorities so if they will escape away then FBI and other authorized agencies will try to find them out and will send them to prison and I think with this way we will get back our bitcoins.

Pretty sure if this happened, the value of BTC would drop tremendously. It's already an extremely fragile currency and the value is easily swayed so if there was a large amount of "theft", presumably the value of BTC would take a big hit.

Actually, the closest thing you can call 'official' bitcoin wallet is Bitcoin Core - first Bitcoin wallet, developed originally by Satoshi.
Bitcoin Core is the oldest and most trusted wallet (because its code is well known and has been reviewed many times) developed and upgraded to this day.

How if the btc stolen have been spent/used for anything by the thieves? Will we get our coins back even if FBI has caught them? I guess no, we wont get it back.
If a wallet run away with our coins then we cant expect much, all we can do is to be patient and let it go :) This is the reason why we should choose the most trusted wallet in this bitcoin community.

Nobody should have any worries about a wallet provider running away with users funds because you shouldn't be storing any coins on an online wallet that you don't control the private keys to.

Yes that is right, but now it is blockchain. As blockhain mininers process the transaction for bitcoin. It is also know in as the main bitcoin wallet im bitcoin.