Topic: Coinbase Insured - page 3. (Read 5738 times)

That is a very positive development and coinbase is definetely one of the best companies in bitcoin.
Still i wouldn't consider online wallets for long term storage of big amounts of bitcoins.

"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.

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?

This is great news! Especially considering all the small vendors that are starting to use bitcoin as payment and use coinbase as an exchange and wallet.

Getting insurance is good, getting paid out on it is another thing entirely.
Either way, good step!

It's also not clear what would happen if aliens from outer space land on the White House front lawn and use advanced mind reading technology to grab the userIDs and passwords of all Coinbase users and steal all of their bitcoins.

I would imagine that the insurance only covers their losses, not the losses of their customers. The insurance would likely only payout if they followed verifiable security policies that would prevent the vast majorities of possible thefts.

Any insurance company that would payout any kind of insurance claim solely because the insured claims to be a victim would be horrible at managing risk. 

When does ANY exchange insure lost bitcoins for an individual's own negligence? If they do insure these types of lost btc, then it's open for a lot of abuse. It's the equivalent of a chargeback.

You typed out his name and you have to ask? lol

Why is twobitidiot on Twitter claiming this only applies to hot wallet?

They are insured, NOT their customers. I have made the exit strategy bold. Moreover, what would happen for an address collision is not clear.

What this insurance covers is if any workers steal a private key it would be covered.

imagine how many people will claim they were hacked just to get free money..
chargeback scammers are ripe in the community and that is always their excuse

That is good to hear that they are insured, however the insurance that most people would be interested in is the one factor that looks like it isn't covered (if someone gets your log ins and is able to withdraw funds)...

I'm not a huge fan of Coinbase. Plenty of people have been having problems with it for me to take my business elsewhere. Coin.mx seems like a good alternative, though.

as long as it covers bankruptcy. so that customers dont have to wait 2 years to even find out if they are gonna get 1penny

So they're saying that they are immune against another mt.gox incident, as well as individual theft due to their part only. It's too bad you can't actually store your fiat on there as a reserve for day trading. All transactions are 4-day wait periods until your btc or USD clears.

Well, this is great news if you ask me. It's always nice to know that your coins are "secure" somewhere.

Coinbase has security steps in place to prevent this from happening to a user if they protect themselves. You can setup 2-Factor Authentication for Buys/logins/api key creations + Email notifications, I think I read in one blog post that you could even have your coinbase buys go directly to your multisig "coinbase vault" after the waiting period.

Any buys on coinbase over 1000USD are not instantaneous, a 10btc buy on coinbase most likely you can get them too cancel the pending order if you inform them you were hacked and provide details etc. The reason they can cancel it is because it takes multiple days to receive coin values in amounts greater than 1000, also I've heard from people that some banks won't debit coinbase right away with larger purchases so that can add yet another day or two before the funds leave your account. Since all of this waiting for the coins happens before your account ever gains control of the coins you should have enough time to contact coinbase and your bank and get it canceled.

tldr; Worse case scenario in my mind someone does manage to get into your coinbase, they would make a buy for ~999.99 dollars each week you don't notice because it would be instant and they could broadcast a transaction to a wallet they own within seconds.

Old news, coinbase has been insured for over a year...