Do you think Coinbase wallet is safe?

[fligen]

They are human.

NOT GODS.

Yup, but neither am I

Yeah, pulling the "people aren't perfect card" is fail. TBZ honestly sucks at debating.

[Stake]

Great.  Reread my post.  I quote "Not necessarily that Coinbase does do this, but that HTTP based wallets can do this."

This thread is about coinbase, and all of your initial posts have been about coinbase until you realized you can't win.

You are not allowed to change the subject in the interim. We are talking about coinbase. If you want to talk about online wallets in general, make a new thread.

So now you're saying we can't mention other wallets?

z3r0 brought up BlockChain and Electrum...

Anyway this is a great argument but it's 3:48 AM where I am and I am off to sleep.

Prior to and after this discussion I still believe that online wallets will never be as safe as desktop wallets.

With that said, they do have pros and cons.

Good night.

[z3r0]

I bought up blockchain and electrum in COMPARISON to coinbase.

Discussing online wallets in general and making the statement that online wallets COULD take as much security features as possible FOR an online wallet is completely meaningless, not a solid argument, and not even related to what the topic is about.

[TheButterZone]

They are human.

NOT GODS.

Yup, but neither am I

Yeah, pulling the "people aren't perfect card" is fail. TBZ honestly sucks at debating.

When the implication is that people are for all intents and purposes perfect, you're damn right I'm going to shitcan your argument and set it on fire.

[fligen]

Prior to and after this discussion I still believe that online wallets will never be as safe as desktop wallets.

With that said, they do have pros and cons.

Good night.

Yes, murdering has pro and cons. And I repeat, we are talking about coinbase specially, not online wallets.

[PenAndPaper]

It's good enough for hundreds of thousands of people (458,000 source).

That's not an argument whatsoever. Inputs.io and bips was good enough for thousands of people. Yet see how that turned out.
Coinbase is probably 100 times more professional but still...

[niothor]

Nothing which is run by a human is 100% safe.
And nothing made by a human is 100% safe.

Shit can happen with everything , all it matters is the amount of luck you have when choosing services

[deisik]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/19942994/australia-police-central-bank-websites-hacked/

http://slashdot.org/story/13/08/21/027243/three-banks-lose-millions-after-wire-transfer-switches-hacked

http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240208933/More-than-half-top-bank-websites-hacked-study-shows

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/13/business/la-fi-mo-banks-allegedly-hacked-in-cyberheist-20130613

Believe me, banks getting hacked are a weekly occurrence, and I know many incidents with detail.

Banks can recover from hacks as they have the government and FDIC to bail out from. Coinbase does not.

Satoshi designed bitcoin so YOU have control of your money, not a trusted financial provider. That is literally why he made bitcoin - read his whitepaper.

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Online wallets are never the solution. You either agree, or learn it the hard way.

You are right indeed and it would be unwise to argue head-on against what you say. But just as bank accounts are hacked, so are the personal computers in-house. And it still remains to be seen what makes an easier target. Thus it is a moot point actually...

Cold storage is not an option if you make transactions on a daily basis

[troy112]

It's good enough for hundreds of thousands of people (458,000 source).

That's not an argument whatsoever. Inputs.io and bips was good enough for thousands of people. Yet see how that turned out.
Coinbase is probably 100 times more professional but still...

You can only protect a thing to a certain level, after that it is not possible considering cost, time , reliability and assessability. Any hacker or attacker takes advantage of this part. Thus at the moment coin base seems to be best. But you can't say it will remain so.

[tvbcof]

Thanks for all the input guys. I know (we all know) nothing is 100% safe. I just wanted to get a sense of what everyone thought about Coinbase's wallet. I like the convenience of their service. I like that they keep 90% of their btc in cold storage.

In certain kinds of transactions it can be useful, and in some cases required, to have the ability to 'sign' arbitrary messages with a secret key associated with a paying address.  Coinbase seems thus-far to not implement this feature.  I don't consider it to be a competitive 'wallet service' until they do.

Actually, I don't consider any service which does not use 'user controlled encryption' (like blockchain.info) to be a very good service for general spending wallet work.  UCE, if reasonably implemented, shifts the risk to the customer's own platform, and in some ways that is even less safe.  But I personally would rather manage my own security.

I would feel even better if they guaranteed our btc. Say they got hacked, it would only be a fraction of their/our holdings and they could keep a reserve to refund any loss.

I am looking forward to the day when 'bonding' is in more wide-spread use.  Say, for instance, Coinbase posts a bond for the amount of funds which they hold in hot-storage.  Since the bonding agent has their own ass on the line, they will be likely to do high quality audits of the vendor with the appropriate non-disclosure agreements and such.

I've never felt any desire to 'put my BTC to work' and draw them out of cold storage.  If an opportunity to invest them in a well designed and verifiable bonding and/or insuring effort came about, I might change my tune.  In part because I believe that this is a market segment that the Bitcoin ecosystem badly needs in order to develop.  But mostly to make some money to be honest.

[TheButterZone]

I like that they keep 90% of their btc in cold storage.

That is an unproven allegation, nothing more, just like all the other services that have made similar claims and still been hacked with far more than their "hot wallet" worth of BTC getting stolen.

[tvbcof]

I like that they keep 90% of their btc in cold storage.

That is an unproven allegation, nothing more, just like all the other services that have made similar claims and still been hacked with far more than their "hot wallet" worth of BTC getting stolen.

'allegation' is not an appropriate term.  'claim' would be closer.  But yes, anyone can claim anything, and the countless scams over the years have claimed all kinds of crap about how secure they are so your point is quite valid.  As I mentioned above, the ecosystem badly needs a way to verify such things.

One of the things I do these days is to see if people running a venture try to keep their identities hidden.  This seems to be one of the most reliable markers of a scam.  In the case of Coinbase they seem to have produced a believable and open bunch of information about who they are on an 'about us' page.  So happens that it includes former co-workers of mine which also lends credibility in my mind.

[MPOE-PR]

Thanks for all the input guys. I know (we all know) nothing is 100% safe. I just wanted to get a sense of what everyone thought about Coinbase's wallet. I like the convenience of their service. I like that they keep 90% of their btc in cold storage. I would feel even better if they guaranteed our btc. Say they got hacked, it would only be a fraction of their/our holdings and they could keep a reserve to refund any loss.

If you're earnestly researching the viability of a given service, read up on the history of its reception by authoritative parties. Then read the body of material available on the service, on this forum and off of it. Following these steps would leave you without doubt. Listening to a few people hmm and haww over philosophical concepts approached for the first time may be fun but has little to do with your stated goal.

[btcton]

To break the quote chain...
It all really depends on the user. If the user has 6 viruses and 81 potential threats in their hard drive, Coinbase is probably going to be more secure.

LOL??? You think it is not trivial to steal funds from online wallets with malware? It's even easier.

If the user has 2FA disabled, then malware will pretty much affect both, whether the user is using an online wallet or a local one. If the user does have it enabled, then it becomes harder for the malware to hack into the user's account. I really don't see how it is easier, though. Care to explain/quote? Before you start attacking me like Stake, I'm not "debating" against you, I just want to know .

EDIT: Posting "LOL???" sounds immature and like a troll, might want to leave that out just for the sake of it.

[pbody]

They have highly-paid engineers with Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science & Economics from some of the most respected universities in the world.

They use cold storage.

They have $6M+ in investments.

I have met way too may individuals with Masters in computer science from respected universities who are bad at what they do...

[PenAndPaper]

It's good enough for hundreds of thousands of people (458,000 source).

That's not an argument whatsoever. Inputs.io and bips was good enough for thousands of people. Yet see how that turned out.
Coinbase is probably 100 times more professional but still...

You can only protect a thing to a certain level, after that it is not possible considering cost, time , reliability and assessability. Any hacker or attacker takes advantage of this part. Thus at the moment coin base seems to be best. But you can't say it will remain so.

What do you mean considering cost, time, reliability etc. If online security isn't the top priority for online wallets then what is? For all i know they can even try to buy some insurance from insurance companies.