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Coinbase is the only answer here, and it makes me frustrated to still see the "buy a hardware wallet" recommendations. I recently had my hardware wallet (a tre

by blhack 9y ago

Coinbase is the only answer here, and it makes me frustrated to still see the "buy a hardware wallet" recommendations. I recently had my hardware wallet (a trezor, which is the nicest one) fail during a firmware update. Now, obviously I have a backup of my seed, but for those few minutes that backup became a VERY expensive little widget. When I travel, I have to worry about where my backups are stored. Storing them in a bank vault means I have to worry about the bank vault. If I have a hardware wallet, I'm essentially betting that I am better at opsec than coinbase, a >$1billion company who devotes a non-trivial amount of resources to opsec. Keeping my own wallet means I am arrogant enough to believe that I can out-opsec the team of security people they have there. That's absurd. There ARE reasons for a hardware wallet (which is why I have one). The bCash split recently is why I have mine. Keeping your own wallet and "being your own bank" is a really fun cyberpunk fantasy, but there are plenty of practical reasons to use banks. If you are asking the question about how to buy bitcoins in 2017, then the answer is unquestionably that you should both buy and store you coins on coinbase.

Talyen42 9y ago
Yeah, it's ridiculous how many people push the "you don't own your coins unless..." philosophy. Do we really want users to have to understand DevOps six-nines infrastructure reliability, disaster recovery, and stay ahead of the infosec curve in order to hold cash? Not only is the unacceptable for mainstream consumers, i'd argue it's unacceptable for all but the 1% most savvy enthusiast power-users.
gozur88 9y ago
>If I have a hardware wallet, I'm essentially betting that I am better at opsec than coinbase, a >$1billion company who devotes a non-trivial amount of resources to opsec. I'm sure people who were using Mt Gox felt the same way. Part of the equation is you're betting you place your own interests at a higher priority than the people who run Coinbase. Which is almost certainly true.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  Coinbase is U.S. based, insured and licensed. Very different from Mt. Gox, which started as a trading depot for Magic: The Gathering cards. https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/topics/794360-security/articles https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/topics/79436...
- Nition 9y ago
  That and a hacker is much more likely to target a major coin exchange worth millions of dollars than you, random person with 0.5 bitcoin.
relyio 9y ago
> then the answer is unquestionably that you should both buy and store you coins on coinbase. That is such terribly bad advice that I cannot ignore your post. Storing any amount of coins on an exchange is a liability that is far more considerable than keeping your funds on an encrypted USB-key sized device that you can keep at your home, or at the bank, or anywhere you think it will be reasonably safe. It has fail-recovery procedures built-in so that even in the event of a hypothetical hardware failure, you can recover your funds. If you're even a tiny bit technical it won't be a problem at all. Your argument boils down to your one single bad experience with a hardware wallet that you dub the "nicest one" despite popular knowledge and maybe because of its price alone. And that's despite being able to recover your funds safely as advertised. And the rest of your post is split between audacious comparisons between banks and exchanges that I won't bother to address; and appeals to authority ("exchanges know better!") that has been debunked over and over again in very recent history. I don't ask you to believe me, for every high-profile case you hear of MtGox, Bitfinex, BTC-e etc. there are many more smaller exchanges that (just like the big ones) sink with their customers' funds.

by blhack 9y ago

Talyen42 9y ago

Yeah, it's ridiculous how many people push the "you don't own your coins unless..." philosophy. Do we really want users to have to understand DevOps six-nines infrastructure reliability, disaster recovery, and stay ahead of the infosec curve in order to hold cash? Not only is the unacceptable for mainstream consumers, i'd argue it's unacceptable for all but the 1% most savvy enthusiast power-users.

gozur88 9y ago

>If I have a hardware wallet, I'm essentially betting that I am better at opsec than coinbase, a >$1billion company who devotes a non-trivial amount of resources to opsec. I'm sure people who were using Mt Gox felt the same way. Part of the equation is you're betting you place your own interests at a higher priority than the people who run Coinbase. Which is almost certainly true.

chrisco255 9y ago
Coinbase is U.S. based, insured and licensed. Very different from Mt. Gox, which started as a trading depot for Magic: The Gathering cards. https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/topics/794360-security/articles https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/topics/79436...
Nition 9y ago
That and a hacker is much more likely to target a major coin exchange worth millions of dollars than you, random person with 0.5 bitcoin.

relyio 9y ago

> then the answer is unquestionably that you should both buy and store you coins on coinbase. That is such terribly bad advice that I cannot ignore your post. Storing any amount of coins on an exchange is a liability that is far more considerable than keeping your funds on an encrypted USB-key sized device that you can keep at your home, or at the bank, or anywhere you think it will be reasonably safe. It has fail-recovery procedures built-in so that even in the event of a hypothetical hardware failure, you can recover your funds. If you're even a tiny bit technical it won't be a problem at all. Your argument boils down to your one single bad experience with a hardware wallet that you dub the "nicest one" despite popular knowledge and maybe because of its price alone. And that's despite being able to recover your funds safely as advertised. And the rest of your post is split between audacious comparisons between banks and exchanges that I won't bother to address; and appeals to authority ("exchanges know better!") that has been debunked over and over again in very recent history. I don't ask you to believe me, for every high-profile case you hear of MtGox, Bitfinex, BTC-e etc. there are many more smaller exchanges that (just like the big ones) sink with their customers' funds.