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I'm a fan of BTC and use coinbase as my central wallet of choice. Super excited about this news. I recently switched from regular banner advertisements on my s

I'm a fan of BTC and use coinbase as my central wallet of choice. Super excited about this news. I recently switched from regular banner advertisements on my site ( http://www.spaceindustrynews.com http://www.spaceindustrynews.com ) - cheap plug - to taking BTC donations. The BTC community has been amazingly supportive throughout the whole thing.

sillysaurus3 13y ago
I'm a fan of BTC and use coinbase as my central wallet of choice. Please transfer your BTC to a wallet under your control immediately. Run, don't walk. Take it from me: it's a terrible feeling to lose your money because someone else lost it on your behalf.
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  You mean a wallet on your own hardware, or your own wallet on someone else's hardware like Blockchain.info?
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    Under no circumstances should you trust anyone to have access to your bitcoin. Do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. Philosophically, that's one of the core reasons bitcoin is a big deal, because at no point in history has it been possible to do that until now. If I had followed the above advice, then I wouldn't have lost a lot of money. Given the nature of human greed, what do you think the chances are that someone who has access to >10% of a currency will simply let it sit there and do nothing with it? Given the nature of computer security, what do you think the chances are that Coinbase is impregnable under every imaginable circumstance? What about a rogue employee? What if the founder himself steals? Now, the question is, what's the best way to accomplish the goal of "Don't let anyone else have access to your bitcoin, ever"? There are solutions. Find one, use it. Please. Don't make my mistake.
    - hendzen 13y ago
      Look, if you use bitcoins on the internet you're basically giving them away. What you do is you keep them under your mattress and ever so often you lift up your mattress and look at them and sing a sweet little song to them. They're your friends. Your secret friends.
- blhack 13y ago
  This is such stupid advice. I don't run my own mail servers. Nor do I run my own DNS, generate my own power of, gasp, keep my money stashed in a jar in my back yard. And neither should you. Pay somebody else to do the awesome things that coinbase is doing to keep your coins safe. -- (This advice is void for people holding HUGE sums of coins. For people holding <10 coins or so, I don't see a problem using coinbase. At all.)
  - Jare 13y ago
    If my bank had the sort of insurances, regulations and oversight over its operations that Bitcoin companies have over theirs (i.e. barely any), I assure you I would only trust them with about as much money I trust to my own physical wallet (i.e. barely any).
  - gphilip 13y ago
    > This is such stupid advice. Is it, even after MtGox? As far as I know (IANAL) there is no law or precedent which takes the value of stolen bitcoins into consideration while sentencing. There is also no history (AFAIK) of prosecution, of serious prosecution which takes the effort to follow up on stolen coins may have been "mixed" etc., in cases of BTC theft. Given this, does not an online service (like Coinbase) which holds a large amount of bitcoin in "stealable" form present, to potential criminals, a lot of incentive to break in and take it all away? I, for one, wouldn't keep up to 5000 USD in such a place, at least till the time there has been some serious prosecution and proportionate sentencing of BTC thieves. But of course to each their own.
  - enscr 13y ago
    You do realize that losing a wallet is not the same as losing an email. A backup copy of the former is useless if it's stolen however that's not always the case with latter. Awesome things like what MtGox did?

sillysaurus3 13y ago

I'm a fan of BTC and use coinbase as my central wallet of choice. Please transfer your BTC to a wallet under your control immediately. Run, don't walk. Take it from me: it's a terrible feeling to lose your money because someone else lost it on your behalf.

SkyMarshal 13y ago
You mean a wallet on your own hardware, or your own wallet on someone else's hardware like Blockchain.info?
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  Under no circumstances should you trust anyone to have access to your bitcoin. Do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. Philosophically, that's one of the core reasons bitcoin is a big deal, because at no point in history has it been possible to do that until now. If I had followed the above advice, then I wouldn't have lost a lot of money. Given the nature of human greed, what do you think the chances are that someone who has access to >10% of a currency will simply let it sit there and do nothing with it? Given the nature of computer security, what do you think the chances are that Coinbase is impregnable under every imaginable circumstance? What about a rogue employee? What if the founder himself steals? Now, the question is, what's the best way to accomplish the goal of "Don't let anyone else have access to your bitcoin, ever"? There are solutions. Find one, use it. Please. Don't make my mistake.
  - hendzen 13y ago
    Look, if you use bitcoins on the internet you're basically giving them away. What you do is you keep them under your mattress and ever so often you lift up your mattress and look at them and sing a sweet little song to them. They're your friends. Your secret friends.
blhack 13y ago
This is such stupid advice. I don't run my own mail servers. Nor do I run my own DNS, generate my own power of, gasp, keep my money stashed in a jar in my back yard. And neither should you. Pay somebody else to do the awesome things that coinbase is doing to keep your coins safe. -- (This advice is void for people holding HUGE sums of coins. For people holding <10 coins or so, I don't see a problem using coinbase. At all.)
- Jare 13y ago
  If my bank had the sort of insurances, regulations and oversight over its operations that Bitcoin companies have over theirs (i.e. barely any), I assure you I would only trust them with about as much money I trust to my own physical wallet (i.e. barely any).
- gphilip 13y ago
  > This is such stupid advice. Is it, even after MtGox? As far as I know (IANAL) there is no law or precedent which takes the value of stolen bitcoins into consideration while sentencing. There is also no history (AFAIK) of prosecution, of serious prosecution which takes the effort to follow up on stolen coins may have been "mixed" etc., in cases of BTC theft. Given this, does not an online service (like Coinbase) which holds a large amount of bitcoin in "stealable" form present, to potential criminals, a lot of incentive to break in and take it all away? I, for one, wouldn't keep up to 5000 USD in such a place, at least till the time there has been some serious prosecution and proportionate sentencing of BTC thieves. But of course to each their own.
- enscr 13y ago
  You do realize that losing a wallet is not the same as losing an email. A backup copy of the former is useless if it's stolen however that's not always the case with latter. Awesome things like what MtGox did?