Bitcoin Forum

https://beincrypto.com/coinbase-holds-a-whopping-966230-bitcoin-7b-in-cold-wallet/

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I'm not sure they should be advertising this. I just hope they have really really FIERCE security and are guarding their stash like hawks.

Wow,  :o

It's not surprising since Coinbase is one of the early legit adopters, pioneers I bitcoin online wallet. This means that more people are trusting coinbase and any other exchange, especially in the US.

I hope they have data for Binance too.

If it's really cold wallets then there really isn't much that can go wrong so long as it stays in cold storage. I'd expect Coinbase, having never been a victim of a major hack, would know their stuff.

Imagine if coinbase went crazy and let loose this amount of BTC in the world. Well, by the end though, these amounts of BTC would still spread over the globe to various users to be used as a form of currency. We all are waiting for that time that Fiat is replaced by crypto, and well, holding or storing coins impacts the idea of replacement negatively. Besides, why store something that is supposed to be used right?

It's like their saying to hackers that there's a big pot of gold right here lmao. If someone actually managed to access their stash, welp, GG coinbase. Better luck next time.

That's a pretty big amount of money in equivalent, if that assets were deposited in a bank, it will have an insurance that deposits will get a certain maximum amount in case something happen to the money. I wonder what would be coinbase approach to ensured that big funds, Binance have a SAFU funds, how bout coinbase?

I am just concern about this a lot because of the trends that big exchanges are being hack, we have upbit recently.
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/48578/south-korean-crypto-exchange-upbit-gets-hacked-loses-nearly-50m-worth-of-ether

Whether they advertise it or not, they are always a target and advertising it does not make them less of a target however, being a business means they can use everything at their disposal to ensure they have the right narrative or in the news for the good reasons. Announcing that they have such huge amount is also to send a message that they can be trusted since a whole lot of people have trusted them already. Another angle to the message is that they security architecture is top notch for them to be so buoyant about it and the same time not shy of the responsibility that have been bestowed upon them by virtue of this announcement.

With this assets amount we have to set multi layer security to prevent hacker attack this wallet. Make previous case as important lessson for them , hackers now be very smart  and already developt new technique to break exchange security system. Dont let them success or crypto market will dump again and investors will left to another financial market.

Dont know why some people do talk about possible hack yet we've been talking these funds being stored on a cold wallet which its nearly impossible to hack unless if those keys are lost or being compromised.

Almost 1M btc possession of coinbase isnt really that surprising though and as said they have never been a victim when it comes to security breaches which something means that
they are aware of everything when it comes to that matter.

Agree with that, cold wallet is offline and there's no way hackers could get in touch with that except there's inside job doing an "accident" however, these many bitcoin being centralized into one place is kinda worrisome. When this news is published it feels like all these bitcoin are in possession of the exchange like they are owning it. I can't see how the users could get their money back if something happens to the exchange like for example the "accident" that I talked about. I only hope that people will store their own crypto into a more secured offline or hardware wallet because the security is a lot better.

They are discussing about coinbase storing its huge asset value on cold storage for possible hacking, why? Cold storage can be compromised if and only if it will be stolen but that is practically impossible to happen when a particular exchange handles it, I mean it never happened yet.
With almost $2 billion dollars in various cases of hacking and stolen funds that started on 2017, It's not surprising at all seeing these exchanges to use cold storage wallet for their customer's assets. Their system have never been compromised and they should prevent that from happening at all times, at all cost.

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The hackers are monitoring all these exchanges and if they are not careful with their security like binance and the rest of the exchanges then they will run away with the coins and if any of these big exchanges gets hacked then there will be a major shake up in the market and it is even possible that the entire market will crash.

Hackers are looking forward for these stash of coins and if they are not careful with the security then they will be looting everything and we have more hacks in the past and we do not want to hear another major hack yet again.

Coinbase operates from 2012, and it is, therefore, no surprise that people trust them. They have very rigorous procedures for generating private keys, which include special rooms, computers that are destroyed after use, and backup in multiple locations around the world. According to them, 98% of the assets are located in cold wallets, and fiat they hold for users is also fully insured by banks with whom they work.

Although security is at an enviable level, it is strange that so much BTC is not actually owned by its owners (they not own private keys), and they can only pray that nothing bad happens. I think most are still not ready to be their own bank, but I think that will change over time - we do not need another Mt.Gox.

I'm also quite skeptical about such kind of publicity. But I guess it attracts more investors and traders into their platform. It gives potential clients assurance and comfort knowing the reputation of Coinbase is backed up by the whopping amount of their holdings. I think they know what they're doing and whether or not they have that amount, it's an advertising strategy and positioning their dominance in the market, now that another halving would occur and an increase number of new investors are expected to eye on cryptocurrencies.

Destroying computers after use seem too much of a security measure, its a waste of money but probably because they know anyone can be computer forensic that can recover anything as long as it can possibly salvage. People actually use them for storage despite all the efforts of users reminding them that exchanges aren't safe. The number of exchange hacked and scam are in the news almost every year but yep no private key still something they don't worry.

That's hefty amount of money but sure they have a strong security. They know the responsibility that they should have for covering their funds together with the funds of their customers.

I'm thinking the same thing about this matter of information. What's the reason for broadcasting that? I guess to attract and gain trust.

I really doubt its worth revealing that kind of information for a bit of advertisement and publicity. that is unless they are completely sure about the security of their wallets. But well, we all know that no system is perfect, no code can't be decoded, no house can't be entered. Besides, their already an old timer, ngl. I see no need to further advertise their abilities to the public when the public already knows that they are quite reputable and a lot of users have trust in their company.

This does support the fact that it’s an exchange that can pay out withdrawals. I have used Coinbase and they seem to be very good.

wow, this is a very large number and if their cold wallets have problems then things will get really bad. I think if we have so much money, we should not hold too much at an exchange. We should split it for many large and reputable exchanges like Kraken, Huobi, Binance to minimize risks. or better yet we should send more in our own cold wallet. we only need to spend more than $ 100 and we have a wallet that no one can access, which is how I encourage people to hold onto their bitcoins. because if Coinbase is a greedy person, it will cheat and destroy the financial system of the crypto market by selling 966,230 bitcoins.

Good article about their practices - https://www.wired.com/story/coinbase-physical-vault-to-secure-a-virtual-currency/

It's a bonkers figure and I can't imagine it's going to shrink any time soon. Responsibility for billions of dollars' worth of something irreplaceable and probably uninsurable would have me waking up screaming.

That doesn't necessarily mean they can pay out withdrawals because only a tiny percentage of these coins are sitting in hot wallets, which means that whenever people try to withdraw coins together, they will say no.

It's similar to the money you have in your bank account. You will not be able to withdraw everything (unless you have a low balance) because there isn't enough paper money in the reserve of an ATM, and you are subject to a daily limit.

I don't think that they are advertising it but they are just showing how liquid their company. If they are holding nearly a million Bitcoin then this just shows how capable they are on paying their customers back on what they will withdraw or what they will buy. Even if they don't advertise such information they are still in the cross hair of hackers trying to infiltrate there system, it's how crypto exchanges/services work and they are aware of the risk involve running a digital and online business. That info might gain a lot of attention from hackers but I think they are well secured for any kind of attacks to steal it, this isn't even an official statement from Coinbase and this is just a report coming from another source.

Seriously.  Didn't Mt. Gox get most of their bitcoin 'stolen' from cold wallets?  I don't remember if it was Karpeles who stole it or someone else but I do remember that he'd had multiple cold wallets locked up in the offices and that they'd gone missing, which just shows you what can happen.

But coinbase is not Mt. Gox.  Gox was almost a one man operation and Karpeles shouldn't have been entrusted with a single satoshi, whereas coinbase is a big regulated exchange and I doubt they're keeping that much bitcoin in a cold wallet where an employee or someone else can steal it.  At least I hope they're not doing that.  But I also wonder where a safe enough place would actually be to store that much.  Anywhere you can think of can be robbed as long as someone knows where the coins are. 

Using multiple locations would be best in my opinion.  Hopefully coinbase has insurance on the coins they're holding.  I'm *almost* sure they're required to by the U.S. gov't.

Nah. There's no legal requirement for crypto insurance. The fiat will be covered by conventional banking policies.

Note the wording here - https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1662379-how-is-coinbase-insured- 'all digital currency that Coinbase holds online is insured' so that means hot wallets only which is 2% of all funds. For all the rest you're in their hands entirely.

And I wonder whether their policy would actually pay out for any of that 2%.

It's probably closer to 2 million Bitcoin if you add that they hold the Xapo 'bunker' funds and GBTC's funds.

Don't forget about Huobi holding ~300,000BTC and Binance with ~400,000BTC. Still no match for Coinbase, but they deserve to be in that list for sure.

With time, more legacy financial institutions will offer custody services, which should translate into a Coinbase exodus because it's more convenient for people to entrust the institutions they are familiar with than a native crypto company. More competition is welcome.

I wonder. It's definitely healthier to be spread around but there may be an element of 'you go first' that stifles it.

I would be more inclined to go with an operation that had been doing it for years with a flawless track record than some old stager that had recruited a bunch of cryptobro assholes and told them to get on with it.

If that BTC is gone it's staying gone. I'd want devoted monks tending to it, not some clueless newly created subsidiary with little emotional investment.

As we found out with Bitpay, it all depends on the circumstances. Their insurance claim was denied (https://www.coindesk.com/insurer-lawsuit-bitpay-security-breach) after they sustained a 5,000 BTC loss from a spearphishing attack.

It sounds like Coinbase's policy would cover a typical hot wallet hack scenario.

What is a typical hot wallet hack?

Most of the reported ones were probably inside jobs. It looks like Bitpay underwent what's likely to be the most common technique and blithely assumed they'd be covered. I wouldn't have paid them out either though.

I wonder whether Coinbase sat down with the insurer and spelled out or had it spelled what scenarios would be covered or not.

Coinbase's insurance policy apparently covers inside jobs too. :P

The devil is in the details. We obviously aren't privy to a line-by-line breakdown of their insurance policy. Hopefully we'll never find out.

The recent breaches at Binance or Upbit are two examples. It could be a physical penetration of their servers or something else but the point is fraudulent, unauthorized transfers where adequate duty of care was exercised.

It's worth noting, while Massachusetts Bay denied Bitpay's claim and took the matter to court, the two ended up settling for an undisclosed amount. (https://www.coindesk.com/bitpay-settles-security-breach-claims-lawsuit-with-insurance-company)

Interesting. I thought they'd gotten a flat refusal. I can't believe any employee would be stupid enough to do what they did and I can't believe their system was open to that type of entry from an office drone computer but I know nothing about these things.

Same. All these years I'd been operating under the assumption that the court tossed out the case, simply because it seemed so stupid and Massachusetts Bay was putting up a fight. It was only just now that I realized the whole matter was swept under the rug and the insurance company paid out something under the policy.

It'll be interesting when we finally see a case like this go to trial and get some real precedent.

Interesting to note that the article list the "major" exchanges but forgets Binance.


Binance has at least 155,000 BTC in cold storage  :
https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/3E35SFZkfLMGo4qX5aVs1bBDSnAuGgBH33
https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo

That’s a huge amount even if we’re talking about a major crypto exchange here, it seems that people there just deposit funds and forget about it. @alyssa85 they’re advertising it because they wish to tell people that they’re biggest exchange in the crypto industry and users funds will be safe with them.

Likely they are boasting their holdings and prove to other exchanges that they are the mammoth in the space. No wonder since they operated early and maintain good liquidity during their early operations. For sure its a nightmare for them to secure that accounts.

Coinbase have insurance for their hot wallets but not their cold wallets.

I'm astonished that users are storing so many coins with them. People keep trusting these online providers of wallets and then cry afterwards when they lose their coins.

If all the coins held by Coinbase is insured then it is a great idea that the rest of the exchanges should follow as the security of exchanges are a major concern and when the government legalize these exchange i expect them to insure all the assets and all the exchanges should be forced to enforce that rule and if that happens then the traders can trust keeping the funds in the exchanges even if we are not trading.

It's easier and more secure to make a Coinbase account, then to install BitcoinCore or download Electrum. Although owning private keys is something that every user should do, inexperience can sometimes cost too much. Electrum wallet users know it best, a phishing attack that is still ongoing caused thousands of lost/stolen BTC.

So in some cases, using Coinbase makes sense - because if you can't trust yourself, you have to trust someone else. Still the concentration of millions of Bitcoins at several exchanges it's nothing positive, far from it, it poses a major security risk.

That’s pretty amazing that they hold 5% of all Bitcoins mined at this point. They are one of the better exchanges and possibly the best.

Pay closer attention. 98% of their coins are not insured and it'll probably be impossible to obtain insurance for the cold stuff. If they could they no doubt would.

It is hoped that Coinbase will be a reputable exchange and will always hold speculative assets safely. because after announcing this information, it was a move that helped Coinbase be peeked at by money-loving hackers. Now they will find ways to attack Coinbase to get more bitcoins. I think exchanges should not publish such information, they should only send notification emails to accounts registered on their exchange.

They should really not be advertising it.

Who the hell did leak this numbers to those bloggers or Coinbase transparent about this numbers?
Now, it could be the reason for more attacks in their website. Although they might have a better security than other exchanges they could still be holes where hackers could get in.
Just one wrong move could risk every coin they hold.

really brave, but if we logically it seems like Coinbase won't leak it, maybe their workers are there or they are manipulating that number,
if all the bitcoin is sold at a low price I'm sure the panic sell will come

This is a very high number. Coinbase is a reliable exchange and can compete with most banks with their assets.
The amount of Bitcoin they hold is equal to 1/21 of the total supply.
I hope this exchange never comes across a hacking case. Btw, I didn't aware of beincrypto.com; it seems an excellent news platform.

 
How are they able to compete with the banks, both are two different asset class altogether and coinbase needs the help of banks to have a smooth transactions for their customer but the banking sector does not need a crypto company other than having more business, so you need to think about the difference in their business model and yes they are holding majority of the coins and i am sure they have taken steps to secure their assets and not like some shitty exchanges. Despite saying that i am not comfortable to see majority of the coins being held in one place.
 

Hackers are working on every exchange but since coinbase is good, they can't easily hack the system so I'm confident that investors are still safe in Coinbase despite of this advertisement. They hold a huge fund at a col wallet, and if you have bitcoin in coinbase you must still need to protect it and don't rely on coinbase system itself. I hope this numbers can help the market to survive, by that numbers we should start pumping.

Even though coinbase is holding their bitcoin at their own cold wallet. Its users still need to pull out their own cryptocurrencies there and try to store it by their own so even there will be an unexpected event in coinbase like hacking then there is no chance for them to lose money as they already stored their cryptocurrency safely.

They are actually holding large amounts of money and this is really lucky for the crypto community. Because I have known Coinbase for a long time, they are a reputable organization and have a great level of security. so hackers can't get into their cold wallets or security systems to steal coins or anything. If you have a lot of money, I recommend you send some at Coinbase to ensure safety, in addition, the transaction fee is 10 times cheaper than other wallets.

But is there advantage of the disclosure of how much they are holding? This is a good target for those hackers in case. Remember, the softwares are now getting sophisticated. Or if they have really great security, inside job would be hard to beat. If someone from those trusted personnel will change his mind and be driven by greed, such possible loss will always be imminent. So for those holding their coins in that exchange, don't be too confident that your coins are truly safe. Better store it in your own hardware wallet.

Just imagine how deep can coinbase drop btc

yes they can if that is thier own coin but coinbase is only a wallet and also an exchange now so all of those funds are only came from thier costumers  . only costumers can decide if they will sell or dump the market or if they will buy more and up the market .  those numbers of btc is huge but im not shock whatsoever  because this was not the only time i saw that kind of amount but other wallet/exchange company owns double or even tripple than that  .

Control and ownership are rather different things. Coinbase don't own any of it. It belongs to their customers. If all of those coins were their personal holdings this thread would probably set your computer on fire just by perusing it.

All the same you can't get those coins out without their permission and cooperation which is not a healthy state of affairs.

Hah! Famous last words.

Coinbase says they are safe, and they probably believe that. But all the exchanges believe they're safe till someone manages to break through. They just need one super-smart hacker to do it.

The whole point of decentralised cryptocurrency is that there isn't a single point of failure that can wreck the whole project. By centralising coins in an exchange like Coinbase, you bring the single point of failure back into play. Maybe we can trust coinbase, but what if we can't?

I am not surprised to see that coinbase is holding this huge amount of bitcoins. The users of coinbase has nothing to worry about because their bitcoins are in a cold wallet so even though there will be a lot of cyber attacks directly to coinbase then there is nothing they can get from coinbase because the funds are already in a safe place.

What where they thinking when they released this report? They seriously shouldn't have done it.
It's all about been security conscious and they will be blamed if anything tends to happen to users funds.
Of course, we all know that a long time exchange like Coinbase will be having millions of digital currency in their database but this public announcement is just a total ten off: worst marketing strategy.

I still can't believe how we managed to find a way to centralize bitcoin when it was something so decentralized. Guys literally collected over a million bitcoins, how? All because we gave it to them so they can hold our coins for us. Not only they are making so much money thanks to trading fees and withdrawals and purchases etc etc basically everything costs a fee, but they are also keeping peoples bitcoins on their own vaults. They could literally tell people there is 100 bitcoins when there is 50, who would be able to deny their fact?

I seriously think we should be focusing more on DEX exchanges where nobody really gives anyone any money until the trade, there is no deposits and no withdraws, just pure trading between two wallets, technology is there.

In that case Satoshi Nakamoto also holds one million coins. You can't say that Bitcoin is centralized, because 1 million coins represent only around 5% of the circulating supply. The other cryptocurrencies are much more centralized. For example, it is rumored that a handful of promoters hold somewhere between 80% and 90% of all the XRP circulating supply.

But anyone was free to out mine him and I'm sure he would've been delighted if that had happened from minute one.

For better or worse many people want centralisation. They want a company to whine to. They want them to do the hard stuff in terms of security. At least on the surface they appear to be doing an adequate job of it. I couldn't care less what others do with their coins and at least they're not like Bitstamp and make bullshit demands of outrageous invasiveness.

Coinbase cannot do that because most likely those are the funds of their clients and it is not up to them to decide how to use that money, the only thing that they have to do is to secure those coins properly, it seems to me that you have the wrong idea about what bitcoin represents, bitcoin is capitalist to its very core, the concept of a coin that no one can take away from you without your permission means that you have complete ownership of your money, something that you cannot do with fiat.

The concept of giving away your coins just so other people could begin to use them could have been a viable strategy when bitcoin was worth just a few cents but not now.

I think the point of "cold wallet" is both quite risky but also the thing that makes people believe its safe.
First of all its really really difficult to hack a cold wallet, the whole point of cold wallet is not being easy to hack, you have to have someone from the inside to be able to hack it.

However, let's remember mt.gox was hacked and they had money in cold wallets too, so inside work is still possible. Plus we heard just recently the owner of IDAX ran away with the cold wallet as well. So, from the regular hacks its safe, but from a bigger situation its still possible. Whats the difference between coinbase and idax? Coinbase is based in USA and if they ever do anything similar and run with it, they have to move countries because USA will not allow and will prosecute them, so they need to be in a country like Brazil or Singapore where there is no extradition.

When you hold $7 billion you for sure have good security. That is a yearly budged of not that small country. Their cold storage's are for sure secured by guns.

It looks like Coinbase wants to have a viable backing to their financial future to have any peg to value at all given the ponzi scheme of a fractional reserve banking system we are currently under.

At some point, it becomes a political threat. They already control 5% of the BTC supply. Let's imagine a hypothetical future where they control 25% of the supply and then get hacked for everything. Since their custodial holdings represents such a huge portion of BTC investors, there will be huge financial and political incentives to destroy Bitcoin's immutability and roll back the chain.

Sadly, markets usually become more consolidated over time, not less.

That's why you should be afraid of the concentration of bitcoin in one hand.Consolidation of a large number of bitcoins in one hand can lead to the collapse of the market literally in 1 night.

Well it's because people really like to centralize their asset into one exchange anyway. Imagine 25% of bitcoin circulated supply got saved in one cold wallet that's just frightening because once it got stolen by someone then we're done for. That's why it's good to see new quality legit exchange appear just for the sole purpose of competing with these dominant exchange and potentially decentralized their assets by attracting some of their users.

Hacks are definitely a worry but a more likely scenario is that percentage or higher winding up under the control of the 'banking class' who are all much of a muchness. If several major US corporations have 20-50% of the supply in their control which is conceivable that's about 10-15 dirty phone calls from the government to implement whatever they feel like.

The larger their stash of Bitcoins the more trustworthy they are as an exchange. I would trust holding my BTC, ETH, LTC and other cryptocurrencies on Coinbase simply because they have such a large stash.

Most banks operate in the same way.

hmm..
as far i know , to do re-org require pushing for consensus from major miners and mining pools to gather over 51 percent of the network’s total hashing power , and i guess its not a easy task.
but,since 25% is not a small value , probably miners will do it, but negative effect such as credibility for bitcoin will lose.
and i am sure , after it happen , people will lose interest.
but well, the only good thing about this is that cold wallets have very little chance of being hacked.

For sure there are already countless of attempts to get into these treasures. These attempts to hack wallets of large exchanges are constant. Well, at least these amounts are stored in cold wallets. But I still agree with you that information as sensitive as this should not be released to the public. This will only encourage the most skillful hackers out there to try knocking down the security wall of these wallets. It is much more secure if these funds are stored in different cold wallets in smaller amounts.

It doesn't work in that way. Having a huge stash of cryptocurrencies means that they are trustworthy, there is still a chance for them to get hacked or even run away with its user's cryptocurrency. If you are currently thinking about depositing your cryptocurrency which is a huge amount then invest in a hardware wallet and hold it by yourself to avoid complications.

Well I think they are just trying to show how They are on the top of the game in terms of bitcoins and how thus can change the game anytime they want ..
First they were just some company helping people buying and selling bitcoins and trading and stuff, now they are a whale too which is actually scary and this amount of bitcoins comes with such a huge security so people can actually count on them for this . Hopefully they have good intentions with it ...

they must have sold it back in 2017 too, if Coinbase bought it in 2019 it means they have good speculation going forward,
does anyone know when they started to hold almost 1 million bitcoin?

Do you guys read up on whats being discussed here or just simply talking about that almost 1M amount of bitcoin?
Those coins arent owned by Coinbase itself but rather those are coins from their platform users, so basically means they are just
holding up  in behalf of their customer.Thing here is that they've become big and even its heavily centralized theyre still being
trusted up by many.

It's unsurprising that these types of posters, the ones incapable or unwilling to invest 5 seconds of actual comprehension, never, ever, ever have any merit.

It would be interesting to guess how many people own a combined equivalent amount themselves other than Satoshi. It could well be less than 15-20.

That is a HUGE amount of bitcoins for them holding into a cold wallet ( even if its a multi-users wallet ) and I hope nothing wrong will go with that wallet as that would put Bitcoin into 1k$ without any doubts and its gonna be like a flashback when mtgox was hacked and Bitcoin touched 90$ into some exchanges.

So far we had a hack every year on exchanges and 2020 will be no different ...lets hope that users wallet on Coinbase will not be affected or Bitstamp / Binance.

It should not be very shocking or horrible to discover big exchanges holding huge amounts of bitcoin. That totally makes sense. No one can understand the power of crypto currencies more than these exchanges which played vital role in growing bitcoin. These can be expected to hold assets that are highly supported by them. Why won’t they have bitcoin when it can bring huge money and power? Obviously they would.

But we do know that it was popular wallet in the world of crypto and we can also believe on that because that was fame and not all wallet are that kind of coin.

If you want to know it really by the real value then do some research from Internet because there's a chance that there's some value from day to day in and out of coin.

This is an astronomical number at nearing one million bitcoins in cold storage.
I am with most here what is the point in advertising this to the public. Wouldn't it put a target on them for potential hacking attempts?
I don't think binance will ever publicize how many bitcoins they hold in the company's cold wallet. This is sort of their customers information.
This is just asking for trouble when it comes to finances.

Forgot how much BitGo has, but I recall it's a lot more than Coinbase. And in that instance, they like sort of advertising it (since they're a custodial service). Literal mountain vaults storing private keys, apparently, though I'm baffled as to why anyone would pay someone to guard something digital like that.

Well, okay, not exactly baffled. The way the minds of the super wealthy work don't really change when it comes to Bitcoin. It's like, the richer you get the more you want to trust your money to other people.

Usually, the more money you have in your wallet the more it will become a burden to keep up with the security as well as always being paranoid and I can see that those wealthy people resort to a service like BitGo to let go their worries and that's why their services is selling like a hot cake although it's basically just letting someone else managing our money and the feeling of our money being safely guarded is just sort of placebo effect. But, to see a company holding that whooping amount of money is simply unbelievable considering that crypto supposed to be decentralized.

There can be a lot of scenarios. Some of them can be positive as well. Imagine a scenario in which 25% of all the circulating supply getting accumulated in a single wallet (very unlikely scenario in reality). And imagine the private keys getting lost. Now all the coins that are contained in the wallet becomes unusable. Now this is good news for the remaining users, because as per rational logic, the price of the remaining coins should rise by 25%. So not everything is bad news in my opinion.

Always have scenario with exchange market by giving fake news to public and try to make many people panic for selling and buying bitcoin, many time exchange market make scenario with their exchange hacked and lost their assets, exactly they try ta make coin price dump and get benefit with investor panic and selling coin with lower price.

I don't really see anything wrong with them showing how much they hold in their cold wallets, that's what you call transparency. Saying that they are advertising their stash is just like saying that Bill Gates shouldn't be showing off his net worth lol.

So, I don't see anything wrong with it. And I'm not surprised that Coinbase owns that much of coins stored in their cold wallet, they are like (one of) the biggest crypto exchanges there is. And apart from being on the list of top exchanges they are the most secure exchange (that I know for sure), and recently they introduced a new feature of covering customer's funds by insurance, and I don't think any exchange have ever done that yet.

It is anything but transparency. It's showing off;) They're a business and they want to show people that a lot of rich boys trust their bitcoin with them. BitGo does it too, and regularly runs PR to remind people they're the biggest in the business and guard a huge portion of the world's available bitcoin.

Corporate types don't like transparency. Don't be fooled;)

I agree with the description of it being called bank-like - there are probably national banks in some countries that hold less than BTC7.

As for why they are releasing this I'd say it's to show that they are definitely big and that all those people entrusted their money with them and so should you.

If they hold that much amount in the cold wallet, then my opinion is that they should get some sort of an insurance, or get additional security measures. They should have hidden their holdings, as this news is definitely going to attract hordes of hacker groups. The amount stolen from Mt Gox was BTC650,000. And what Coinbase have in their cold wallets is even higher.

Why do you think that the number of the bitcoins that they are holding makes an exchange more trustworthy? That only means that there is a lot of people that are holding their coins there nothing more, and if anything that should be consider to be a risk because you can be sure that if we know that hackers know that information as well and they are going to try to get to those coins by all means possible.

And that is a huge issue for this market because if at some point they do steal that huge amount of coins that could immediately crash the market and it will be difficult for it to recover.

Was suppose to say the same thing where this one doesnt shows off about transparency but rather a literal show off on what they are holding.
This is indeed part of their marketing that telling the world that they are trustable enough for bitcoin users to use up their site or service.
I cant deny though that Coinbase does really have that strong security yet we havent seen this exchange have issues about breaches or security matters.

It's a shame really.  Coinbase nor any other 3rd party should not be used by people as cold storage.  We've seen it time and time again that these places get "hacked".  Crypto allows people to be their own but but many refuse to do so.  One day personal cold storage without the use of 3rd parties will get so easy to use that those 3rd parties wont be needed for wallet services.  Until that time comes more and more people will lose their bits due to "hacks".  :-[

They are not really showing off, they are basically telling people that the money they claim to have on their storage is actually there, think about it this way, if you had coins in coinbase and didn't know how much money they have, wouldn't you be a bit worried? I mean if they claim to hold 1 million coins on their storage on behalf of their customers but they just had 100k, wouldn't that be scamming? A ponzi scheme?

It would be, so this is basically a way of them saying "we do actually hold the coins we claim to hold for you, and plus some more" so that people would trust them to be their wallets. Coinbase isn't showing off here, they are building a reputation and trust that they otherwise couldn't get in any other way then showing how much coins they have.

Is it really the only way for them to gain the trust of their users? I don't think so. Neither is it the only way to build their reputation. In the first place, Coinbase doesn't have to build a reputation because they already have it. They don't have to earn the trust of people because they already have it. When they were still growing, did they publish or release the figures of the amount of coins that they have? They didn't. Furthermore, does Binance, Huobi, KuCoin, etc. let the people take a peek at their holdings to build reputation and trust? I don't think so.

There are many ways in which you can build and maintain a reputation but when it comes to the number of coins that you are holding there is only one way and we all know it, you need to sign a message from an address that contains the number of coins that you claim to have otherwise people do not really have to believe you, remember this market aims for transparency otherwise Coinbase could be accused of holding less coins than what they claim.

Or they could be accused as well of practicing fractional reserve banking in a market in which most of its participants are against it.

I don't think they are advertising about that but such data is quite easily available in any block explorer. Moreover there obviously is a risk associated with such cold wallets but I am pretty sure that they must be holding it in some sort of paper wallet or some trezor. I think there can be one security feature which these sites might use or might even be using which is splitting their private key in 4 parts and giving it to 4 separate persons. This way even if one person is extorted by anyone he cannot obviously get the private key to the wallet. But yes the private key as a whole must obviously be stored somewhere else too because otherwise it would make it very dangerous if the person knowing it dies in any unexpected incident. We already have seen such things happening.

Staggering numbers and it is impossible to imagine how much money is stored by Coinbase.