Bitcoin Forum

Is coinbase a reliable wallet? It's a centralised platform but someone told me he is been using this wallet since 2015 with no issue I don't just like the fact that I have no access to my recovery seed after reading a lot about not your keys not your asset online.

And you're right, you shouldn't trust them (or any other centralized platform) with your funds. They do have however a good non-custodial wallet[1] (which they acquired in 2018[2]) if you're interested in storing multiple cryptos and not just bitcoin.

[1] https://www.coinbase.com/wallet
[2] https://blog.coinbase.com/goodbye-toshi-hello-coinbase-wallet-the-easiest-and-most-secure-crypto-wallet-and-browser-4ba6e52e4913

Download Electrum (https://electrum.org/#download) and install it. Make sure you have verified (https://bitzuma.com/posts/how-to-verify-an-electrum-download-on-windows/) the downloaded file before installing. Then create as many wallet as you want. All wallet will have their individual word phrase (seed). Save the seeds in a secure place (do not upload then in any website not even in Google keep). Your funds are safe. This is the best solution if you have only BTC.

If you have other coins then buy a hardware wallet and you will be able to store those coins in the hardware wallet.

Coinbase is not secure, they have record to share your personal details to third party.

If you are talking about the Coinbase exchange, no it's not a good wallet. No exchange should be used as a wallet. It isn't. The name tells you that it's a place where you exchange one digital asset for another one. That's it. Once the swap is done, you are better off withdrawing the coins to a reliable non-custodial wallet. If you don't, you could be susceptible to various things:

• The exchange could be hacked causing you to lose your coins.
• The exchange could go rogue and steal your coins.
• The exchange might freeze your assets and ask you for KYC and explain how you earned your money.
• Regulatory frameworks could change preventing you from accessing the coins if there was a deadline that you missed to withdraw them

 
Etc., etc. 

This doesn't mean Coinbase is secure.
It's true that the person you are talking about hasn't had any problem with coinbase till now. But there is no guarantee that there won't be any problem in future.
Now coinbase is showing him a number as his balance and promise that he will be able to withdraw that. This promise can be broken at any time.

Centralized wallets are reliable until they are not reliable.
Coinbase exchange is the real owner of all coins, they are holding all coins with private keys, and they can block your account and freeze your coins if someone from government force them to do it.
You should hold coins and keys on non-custodial open source wallets, and you use exchange (decentralized Bisq is better) only when you are doing trading.
Good examples for reliable open source wallets are Electrum or Wasabi.

Centralized exchanges/wallet really won't give you the private keys or seeds for your wallet. And that's why it's discouraging to keep your assets there.

But if you're going to use them as an exchange, there's no problem but AFAIK, you'll be required to comply and be approved through KYC.

Make sure to choose your wallet for keeps --> https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet?step=5

Don't wait till someone have issue using coinbase before you look away it's a centralized wallet like Luno and Freewallet that's a red flag, also I heard that some people aren't always able to sell their assets when they are at ATH, manipulation at it's best isn't it? If you don't want this to happen to you pls use an open-source wallet like Electrum or Trust wallet.

The problem is the complete lack of privacy or security, your data being shared and sold across numerous third parties, and your activities being tracked, monitored, and reported to your government. If you are happy with all of that, then you can use Coinbase to trade coins, but you should remove any and all coins from it as soon as your trades are complete.

Trust wallet is not open source and is owned by Binance, so an all-round terrible choice of wallet.

Yeah, aside from the KYC, there goes those consequences that OP and the others who would like to do it with Coinbase.

Just for the sake of trading, should he be aware of those things so that he won't be surprised if something unexpected happens to his information being sent to them.

I don't like coinbase wallet but I use the exchange with no problem, the thing is I can't leave my assets to any centralized exchanges I just don't trust or can't trust because I believe that anything can happen to those exchanges at any time, better be safer than sorry.

I had used Coinbase a long time ago. But not for the holding funds, just to make the free transaction between coinbase. Yea, I had a problem with them. They restrict my account once, allowed me to withdraw existing funds. After that, I do not use coinbase anymore. Not only coinbase, but I also do not use any centralized wallet lately and bought a hardware wallet to store my assets. So, it's better to avoid a centralized wallet and use a non-custodial or hardware wallet to store your funds. I don't feel secure with centralized wallet services anyway.

Reliable maybe because they are secured and legit but not reliable because anytime they can freeze your account as they are centralized, they have the control for everything. They don't offer you recovery seed and pkeys because again they are centralized and they are already confident with their security but i think this has some advantage because no need to worry about your pkeys and seeds if where your going to hide them or if they are going to get damage or discovered by someone else however there are people that will be more confident if they have full control of their funds. Some coinbase users are lucky to not experience any issue and maybe they are following the rules accordingly.

Its legitimate wallet but its not an actual wallet its just like the bank who hold our money and give it based on our instructions but you may face issues at anytime and your funds will stuck there even forever. Their support system sucks so you need to wait for weeks even months to resolve any simple issue so go and download Electrum which is available on Android as well.