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Since coinbase isn’t FDIC insured, it makes sense that if coinbase goes bankrupt, the customer currencies will go away as well.

No, it doesn't make sense at all. It is incredible to me that these are all solved problems in traditional finance.

Coinbase could utilize the services of a custodian to hold the crypto. In fact, that's what any responsible financial services company would do. It makes perfect sense because if there is a dislocation in crypto, it could bring Coinbase down but it won't bring Bank of New York down. So hold all the customer crypto at Bank of New York.

Or they could have individual wallets titled to customers. More difficult and doesn't allow them to do off-chain transfers but possible.

There are a million ways to do this, this is a solved problem in finance. Coinbase chose not to do it and now is paying for that by having to disclose the truth - retail customers are screwed if Coinbase declares bankruptcy. Whose fault is that? The CEO apologizes for it so that should tell you.

>For our retail customers, we’re taking further steps to update our user terms such that we offer the same protections to those customers in a black swan event. We should have had these in place previously, so let me apologize for that.

https://nitter.net/brian_armstrong/status/152423348004071014...



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