Please don't use coinbase.

First off, you don't actually own the BTC since you don't know the private key. You just have coinbase's promise to send you BTC which as we saw with gox can easily be broken. Moreover they're not paying you any interest so there's no real reason to choose this over just securely holding your coins.

Also I've had bad experiences with coinbase in the past and I can surely say that they're not the straightest shooter in an industry filled with shady characters.

If you want to hold Btc, here's what I recommend, especially for larger sums.


Take any computer you own that you can afford to wipe. Can be very old.
Download electrum.
take the computer that you can afford to wipe offline.
Generate a new wallet on that computer.
Write down the seed of that wallet.

Now

Download electrum on your primary computer.
Import the master public key into your primary computer.

Then

Wipe the disk of the computer you used to generate the wallet.

Congrats you now have an arbitrary number of very secure cold storage addresses all of which can be accessed through the paper you used to write down the electrum seed. Even if both of your computers are filled to the brim with trojans your wallet is safe.

Enjoy.