Bitcoin Forum

My routine has been pretty simple.  30$ Of btc per week on coinbase where I am also storing it.  How safe am I?  What else do I need to do protect my btc.  I know I'm not getting a massive amount, but ya never know. 

Holliday will be around shortly to tell you how to store it safely. Until then, transfer your btc from coinbase into a wallet on a computer that you have control of, recently virus scanned and shut down the computer until you have properly researched the subject.

I don't have much experience with Coinbase to say whether or not they're trustworthy. If you're concerned about them, you could use them for purchases that you then transfer to a computer or paper wallet for storage.

If you are cool with storing them online, coinbase is definitely one of the more reputable wallets. Most people here will recommend cold storage

Only online wallet I would use.

you should store them in cold storage when you know more about BTC. if you have only little money, you can leave it at coinbase for a while.

If the price is going up a lot and your small amount of btc becomes a sizeable part of your savings or simply if you want to be safe you could split your btc holdings between coinbase, bitcoin-qt client and cold storage

Coinbase is very safe since it is supposed to do cold storage of most funds + it seems to be doing well and be managed correctly but you never know you still have third party risk and bitcoin is a lot about avoiding to have third party risk so i would suggest to split your btc holdings

This.

spread the risk.

Local wallets, maybe some on an online wallet, but they can both be hacked. If you don't install any programs except BTC on a clean install you should be ok on local computer, and run an older OS, open source eg ubuntu.

online wallets can always substitue your send to address, ala strong coin...be careful

Coinbase is pretty safe in my opinion and like others said I would say the safest of the online wallets. Recently they have hired some facebook and amazon people to bolster security. The texting your phone before logging into your account helps a lot since I caught people trying to log into my account a few times. In terms of reputation I have had 1-2 problems with them but thats it and they were fixed rather quickly. I have been dealing with them for a long time now.

Blockchain.info is better than Coinbase because blockchain doesn't have access to your private keys.   The one scary thing about Coinbase is that they work hand in hand with the government with their compliance.   While that is good on some aspects, the government can easily come in and tell them what accounts to freeze, or what transactions to cancel.  With blockchain.info, the government cannot do that.   Even if they managed to cause blockchain.info to shut down, you could load your backup into a different client.


I like both blockchain.info and Coinbase, but I definitely feel like you should have money spread across both, rather than just one wallet.

Coinbase is the only place that I ever stored much BTC on and had no problem. All the other places I would have an ulcer if I had 10 cents in their wallets. :D

I recommend getting a new laptop with a good virus program and only use it to store and send BTC.  Use Bitcoin-Qt. And if you are really serious use the Armory program.