Any money/btc you have in coinbase should be money you are happy to lose. It is an IOU note from coinbase to you, but without the strong guarantees you'd get wi

Any money/btc you have in coinbase should be money you are happy to lose. It is an IOU note from coinbase to you, but without the strong guarantees you'd get with a bank. With bitcoin especially it is possiblef or someone (State, Criminal, Software Bug) to run off with all their money and leave them bankrupt in a matter of seconds. It could happen in the next 10 seconds. This is unlike conventional business! So I'd think of it like this. Say you want to buy $10000 of BTC. You are only 'happy' to lose $1000. Transfer $1000 in to Coinbase. Get BTC. Transfer that to your own offline wallet. Once confirmed, transfer the next $1000 in to Coinbase. I say this as someone who has lost some Etherium in BTC-e, which I transferred 6 hours before they were seized. Luckily I got the lions share of it back (about 80%) from Wex but that was just lucky. If it is in an exchange it can be lost. Finally only keep in Bitcoin money you are happy to lose. I won't go into why but it should be obvious you cannot guarantee 100% you will remain in "control" of your address (due to hackers, amnesia, tech failure and untrustworthy friends/family), although you could get to 99.999% by taking precautions.