Coinbase Insured | Bitcointalksearch.org

Nagle

legendary

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Quote from: MightyStorm on September 14, 2014, 09:13:23 AM

Google "Meridian Global Insurance Limited" Xapo's insurance company, see what turns up... http://help.xapo.com/questions/89743-Is-Xapo-insured-by-a-third-party-insurance-company

Right. They own their own insurance company, which insures them. It's based in Bermuda. Not good.

Some very big companies like AT&T and Boeing have their own captive insurers, but that's usually for tax reasons. They handle things like auto insurance for company cars, and maybe fire insurance. Captive insurers usually re-insure; they have a policy with another insurer with some multi-million dollar deductible in case something really bad happens. The little stuff they handle in-house.

Xapo, not so much.

Bizzaran

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What happens if the value of the Bitcoin you hold increases 10x in value over a short time? Does your insurance scale up as Bitcoin increases in value?

AllYouCanDo

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What happens when the price becomes $10,000 per btc does the insurance cover then?

MightyStorm

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God is with us

Google "Meridian Global Insurance Limited" Xapo's insurance company, see what turns up... http://help.xapo.com/questions/89743-Is-Xapo-insured-by-a-third-party-insurance-company

knifeedge

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This is good to hear but still doesn't mean keep your Bitcoin savings in Coinbase.

Nagle

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Quote from: GTA on September 05, 2014, 09:43:07 AM

Coinbase, what is the claim procedure and where is the fineprint pease?

Right. Is Coinbase, the company, insured, or are Coinbase's customers insured?

This is a huge difference. If Coinbase goes broke, like Mt. Gox, and only the company is insured, you lose. If the customer's balances are insured for the benefit of the customer (as is the case with US banks (FDIC, up to $250K) and brokers (SIPC, up to $500K), you get paid back.

If the customers were actually insured, they'd have the insurance terms and carrier publicly posted. They don't.

QuestionAuthority

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Quote from: 12inchdick on September 05, 2014, 08:34:12 AM

It specifically does not insure against individual users' bitcoins being stolen

That depends on what you mean by "stolen".

In reference to your forum name: Do you want one, do you have one or do you like to play with them? It's not really clear.

bambino

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Quote from: polunna on September 06, 2014, 06:43:57 AM

Quote from: illymoka on August 28, 2014, 03:59:17 AM

"Coinbase is insured against theft and hacking in an amount that exceeds the average value of bitcoin we hold in online storage at any given time."

Yet elsewhere you claim that only 3% of deposits are online, so 97% of deposited bitcoin are uninsured.
Are we supposed to pretend that the 97% offline have zero risk of theft? If that was true why aren't those 97% insured also?
Wow. Sneaky.

I think the idea is that the hot wallets are the ones that are most at risk. By insuring them, you decrease the risk of a financial loss if something happened to them.
Of course, there's always a risk that the insurer will be insolvent when it comes time to pay the claim. You can attempt to re-insure your way out of that, but at the end of the day, there will always be some risk.

Great, so insuring the offline wallets should be inexpensive and easy to do, right?

polunna

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Quote from: illymoka on August 28, 2014, 03:59:17 AM

"Coinbase is insured against theft and hacking in an amount that exceeds the average value of bitcoin we hold in online storage at any given time."

Yet elsewhere you claim that only 3% of deposits are online, so 97% of deposited bitcoin are uninsured.
Are we supposed to pretend that the 97% offline have zero risk of theft? If that was true why aren't those 97% insured also?
Wow. Sneaky.

I think the idea is that the hot wallets are the ones that are most at risk. By insuring them, you decrease the risk of a financial loss if something happened to them.
Of course, there's always a risk that the insurer will be insolvent when it comes time to pay the claim. You can attempt to re-insure your way out of that, but at the end of the day, there will always be some risk.

Summer,69

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So... what about insurance on your cold storage? Are you keeping that a secret from everyone for another year, as well?
Oh, wait, I'm guessing you don't have any, and that 97% of your (our) bitcoin are completely uninsured.
Fail.

GTA

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Coinbase, what is the claim procedure and where is the fineprint pease?

CokeCoin

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This is awesome, but I'm still going to store my btc offline.

12inchdick

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It specifically does not insure against individual users' bitcoins being stolen

keithers

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This is the land of wolves now & you're not a wolf

Quote from: yitingyou on September 01, 2014, 11:16:55 PM

I want to know insured by which insurance company

Coinbase is insured by Aon (who Coinbase states that they are the world's largest insurance broker). I am not sure if they are the largest or not.

Here is a link to their website: http://www.aon.com/default.jsp

Again, let me reiterate, that Coinbase has stated that THEY are insured for holding your coins. YOU are NOT insured against your log-ins being compromised and losing coins as a result...

yitingyou

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I want to know insured by which insurance company

keithers

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This is the land of wolves now & you're not a wolf

I have little by little started moving the holdings that i had over at coinbase over to different clients (in which I control the private keys). When I first started in BTC, Coinbase was the most natural fit because it was the easiest and fastest way for me to buy and store BTC.

Don't get me wrong, I still use Coinbase whenever I need to buy small amounts of BTC, but as they have grown and grown, I don't want to get into a position where for some reason accounts get frozen and then I lose access to that part of my holdings.

I just leave a small amount now over at Coinbase for when I need to sell a little (which is rare). I keep my savings elswhere.

It is cool that they have have made the fact that they are insured public. The problem is that they are insured...not necessarily the users..

Gogo ppp

legendary

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Quote from: PalmerLaura on August 29, 2014, 01:16:00 AM

Quote from: unexecuted on August 28, 2014, 03:14:11 AM

Interesting. It's good to see Coinbase setting the standard here. Of course, employee infidelity and hacking are just two ways that bitcoins could disappear.

What about physical theft? Summary says that the insurance covers losses due to physical security breach, so presumably physical theft is covered. Missed that in the summary.
What about natural disasters, fire, flood, etc.?
What about kidnap/ransom/extortion of employees?
What about lawful confiscation (usually not covered by policies)?
What are the actual limits of the policy?
Are the limits on a per-account basis (like the FDIC), per occurrence basis, or per policy period?
Was the policy designed to cover the type of hacking that allegedly occurred with Mt. Gox?

Setting the standard for what, deception? 97% of deposits are offline and therefore uninsured.

Things like this are very disturbing, and contribute to the overall feeling for myself and others that this is a sketchy company.

The more open and transparent they can be, the more trust can be gained.
Making deceptive statements causes a lack of trust that can take a long time to be regained.

WineAndWhiskey

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Quote from: StatusSeeking on August 28, 2014, 04:35:10 AM

wonder if by "online storage" they mean the percentage they keep available to trade (didn't they say this is like 3% or something?), or their cold storage wallets.

Good catch! According to their security page https://coinbase.com/security:
Up to 97% of customer funds are stored offline
AND
Funds not stored offline are covered by insurance
So yeah, only hot (online) storage is insured.

Jeramom

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Quote from: superbd on August 30, 2014, 04:06:16 PM

Quote from: unexecuted on August 28, 2014, 03:14:11 AM

Interesting. It's good to see Coinbase setting the standard here. Of course, employee infidelity and hacking are just two ways that bitcoins could disappear.

What about physical theft? Summary says that the insurance covers losses due to physical security breach, so presumably physical theft is covered. Missed that in the summary.
What about natural disasters, fire, flood, etc.?
What about kidnap/ransom/extortion of employees?
What about lawful confiscation (usually not covered by policies)?
What are the actual limits of the policy?
Are the limits on a per-account basis (like the FDIC), per occurrence basis, or per policy period?
Was the policy designed to cover the type of hacking that allegedly occurred with Mt. Gox?

Actually, Circle is setting the standard. They've already been insured by marsh - coinbase is catching up. circle is getting ready to haul past coinbase

Marsh is a broker, not an insurer.

NikkieBeraj

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Quote from: AaronCraig on August 30, 2014, 04:24:21 PM

Quote from: unexecuted on August 28, 2014, 03:14:11 AM

What about natural disasters, fire, flood, etc.?
What about kidnap/ransom/extortion of employees?

Exclusions include force majeure
https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1662379-how-is-coinbase-insured-

After thinking about your question more, I'm still unsure, since Kerpupples allegedly said it was due to Bitcoin's tx-malleability issue, and not MtGox itself. Not sure about this one, good question.

Might want to check, but several months ago a story circulated with proof that fewer than ~200 BTC were ever stolen due to tx malleability. If this specifically was the claim Mark made, then it's a lie.

Topic: Coinbase Insured (Read 5738 times)