Coinbase Holds a Whopping 966,230 Bitcoin ($7B) in Cold Wallet

[exstasie]

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?

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.

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[ntsdm1]

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?

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.

[X-ray]

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?

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.

[gentlemand]

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.

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.

[smartbitcoininvestor]

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.

[ashmodeus]

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.

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.

[Hallmader]

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

According to recent reports, Coinbase has a whopping 966,230 Bitcoin in its cold wallet. The exchange is increasingly becoming like a ‘bank’ which stores a growing number of deposited cryptocurrency assets.

Other exchanges lag behind Coinbase, but still have sizeable cold wallets from its depositors and own funds. BitMEX has around 265,140 BTC ($1.94B) while Bitstamp comes in third with 229,490 BTC ($1.67B). Other top exchanges by assets under its custody are Bitfinex (146,120 BTC), Kraken (136,780 BTC), Bittrex (131,340 BTC), and Coincheck (35,090 BTC)

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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.

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.

[Karmakid]

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.

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.

[fiulpro]

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 ...

[Desscount]

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?

[Mahanton]

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.

[gentlemand]

Do you guys read up on whats being discussed here or just simply talking about that almost 1M amount of bitcoin?

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.

[boltz]

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.

[Webetcoins]

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 ...

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.

[GideonGono]

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

According to recent reports, Coinbase has a whopping 966,230 Bitcoin in its cold wallet. The exchange is increasingly becoming like a ‘bank’ which stores a growing number of deposited cryptocurrency assets.

Other exchanges lag behind Coinbase, but still have sizeable cold wallets from its depositors and own funds. BitMEX has around 265,140 BTC ($1.94B) while Bitstamp comes in third with 229,490 BTC ($1.67B). Other top exchanges by assets under its custody are Bitfinex (146,120 BTC), Kraken (136,780 BTC), Bittrex (131,340 BTC), and Coincheck (35,090 BTC)

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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.

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.

[UNOE]

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.

[buwaytress]

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.

[TastyChillySauce00]

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.

[Sithara007]

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.

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.

[cutesgirl]

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.

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.