idea

[puffpuffpass]

what if you could lock your bitcoins from being withdrawn. say for example on mtgox, you know you will not be withdrawing your bitcoins for a period of time, say 10 days as an example. you then lock the account (cannot be reversed) from being able to withdraw, just so you can have that piece of mind. and other sites having this feature would be nice too, not just mtgox

[bitpop]

No. Most thefts are by hacking the server, not your account .

[ralree]

Also, a LOT of sites already do that - you have to enter a PIN to change the withdraw address on most of the litecoin pools I use.

Instead of that, just avoid keeping any coins inside an exchange.

[bitpop]

Use otp

[Lethn]

An exchange is used for exchanging different currencies, why people here keep trying to treat them as bank accounts is beyond me, sell your stuff and move it right away, either to Bitcoins or an account designed to have money stored in it, I personally think Bitcoins are the best option for storage because you can keep them offline.

[bitpop]

Yes don't be an idiot, use blockchain not an exchange

[bg002h]

what if you could lock your bitcoins from being withdrawn. say for example on mtgox, you know you will not be withdrawing your bitcoins for a period of time, say 10 days as an example. you then lock the account (cannot be reversed) from being able to withdraw, just so you can have that piece of mind. and other sites having this feature would be nice too, not just mtgox

If you could do this with your coins at the blockchain level, yes, you could have piece of mind...but, telling your exchange you don't intend to withdraw and hoping a malicious hacker also obeys your wishes doesn't seem likely to help

[the founder]

I don't know,  maybe i'm old school.     But I don't have a client installed anywhere..   I just have a few backups of the wallet.dat in a secure physical location

[jaychristopher spendbitcoins.com]

As interesting as this concept is, I agree with the above posts that state not to store your bitcoins on the exchange. In this turbulent young stage of bitcoin, i'd advise that anything you want to hold on to for the long term be Cold stored: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage.

For a short term 10 day lock, just send bitcoins to a client on your own computer and back up the file.

There's not a ton of benefit for the exchange to do this since you have these other options at your disposal, but they would in turn take on a lot of customer support tickets for people who want to unlock wallets in panic days, etc.

[puffpuffpass]

As interesting as this concept is, I agree with the above posts that state not to store your bitcoins on the exchange. In this turbulent young stage of bitcoin, i'd advise that anything you want to hold on to for the long term be Cold stored: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage.

For a short term 10 day lock, just send bitcoins to a client on your own computer and back up the file.

There's not a ton of benefit for the exchange to do this since you have these other options at your disposal, but they would in turn take on a lot of customer support tickets for people who want to unlock wallets in panic days, etc.

that's true, but in a way it would also prevent those panic days from even existing. and i agree with the majority of the posts in this thread, except, it's not always practical to hold your bitcoins offline if they are invested on say, HavelockInvestments. yes, it could very well be hacked however that is beyond anyone's control at that point. unfortunately these hackers who probably work for the United States and Chinese government, are making Bitcoin's ventures extremely risky.