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Posted on June 21, 2017In Q3 we’re focusing on the fundamentals
Coinbase and GDAX have been going through some incredible growth.
Our original plan was to focus on adding new features in Q3 (new assets, trading features, etc). But the growth has brought it’s own set of challenges. So we regrouped last week and decided this quarter it would be best to focus on the fundamentals.
What does this mean? It means operational excellence, scaling, and providing a better customer experience, including…
- Rebuilding pieces of our backend
- Focusing on uptime and reliability
- Scaling customer support and providing faster response times
- Improving the customer experience
- Hiring and on-boarding a lot more people
- Training more managers
We’ll measure these with a handful of metrics (net promoter score, apdex, recruiting funnel etc), create a clear owner for each, and review progress at every all hands meeting.
This industry is moving fast, and it’s tempting to continue adding more and more features at a breakneck pace. But we’ve become a core piece of infrastructure in this industry, and we need to scale with it as it grows. This solid foundation will allow digital currency to keep growing and help create the next wave of adoption.
I’m incredibly proud of the team, who have been working overtime to rise to this challenge. We’re looking to fill dozens of new roles by the end of this year. After focusing on the fundamentals this quarter, we can resume a more balanced approach and continue adding new features in Q4.
In Q3 we’re focusing on the fundamentals was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on June 14, 2017Kathryn Haun Joins Coinbase Board of Directors
We are excited to announce former federal prosecutor Kathryn Haun has joined our parent company Board of Directors. Kathryn’s experience and diverse range of skills will be crucial to Coinbase as we continue to be seen as the safest, most trusted place to buy digital currencies through our commitment to government regulations and compliance.
Kathryn was most recently a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice and its first-ever Digital Currency coordinator. As a federal prosecutor, she has served as lead counsel in numerous jury trials, with a focus on financial fraud, cybercrime, digital currency, national security, gangs, and murders. She also held a significant role in the case of two federal agents’ role in the investigation into Silk Road.
As Coinbase has continued to grow from a wallet to a retail and institutional exchange, our focus has remained on our role as a regulated business and what that means for our customers. We have seen great value in proactively working with governments, banks, and regulators around the world to educate them about digital currency, and Kathryn brings strong expertise to help us drive these conversations forward.
Kathryn taught Stanford Law School’s first-ever course on Digital Currency and Cybercrime with cross-enrollment from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford’s Computer Science Department.
If you don’t have a Coinbase account, sign up here!
Kathryn Haun Joins Coinbase Board of Directors was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on June 6, 2017Improving Customer Support
Over the past few months, we’ve seen an unprecedented increase in the number of customers signing up to use Coinbase (4x since January 2017). As a result, our systems have been pushed to the limit. This has caused many customers to have a negative experience.
I’m writing today to apologize for the experience you’re having and tell you what we’re doing to improve the situation.
First, it’s worth acknowledging the gravity of the situation. Our goal with Coinbase is to build the product that is the most trusted and easiest to use in the space. It erodes trust when customers can’t get a timely response to customer support inquiries, or when there are delays in pay ins, pay outs, limit increase requests, or getting access to your account.
We’re storing customer funds, and I can understand how incredibly frustrating (and scary) it is when an issue arises and you can’t get a prompt response.
We haven’t done enough to keep up with the growth, and we’re taking steps now to correct it. I want to share with you specifically what we’re doing to improve the situation.
Near Term:
- We are doubling overall support capacity by spinning up an outsourced support facility by the end of June. This will allow us to rapidly add level 1 support agents during future surges.
- We’re hiring 10 new contractors for our in house team over the next 3 months.
- We’re adding new hires on the Trust team (part of the engineering org that helps deal with security questions).
- Hired a consultant (former VP Customer Success at larger company) to consult on scaling, and how to introduce phone support.
- Several account security improvements are rolling out, including improvements to our two factor authentication, and a new system to flag risky withdrawals.
Q3 Plan
- Goal will be < 6 hours first response time for everyone; < 2 hours in cases of large balances
- Goal of having first version of phone support introduced for high balance accounts, and/or security related questions by end of September
Q4 Plan
- Roll out phone support for a wider % of customer base (potentially a paid option, still TBD)
- Introduce additional account security options such as Yubikey support
We understand that trust has to be earned, not given, and that we haven’t done enough lately to earn that trust. Thank you for your support as we continue to scale.
Thank you!
Improving Customer Support was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on May 31, 2017Europe, the next chapter
We opened our doors to users in Europe back in 2014. Since then, we have steadily seen our user base grow and the last 6 months have been our strongest ever. The United Kingdom is our fastest growing market with Switzerland, Spain and France close behind.
So, we’re taking the next step in our transition to a truly global organisation. We have big plans for the year ahead. I’ll be providing regular updates here as we build out our European product. To kick things off, we are announcing the opening of a new office in London. This will serve as the hub for our European operations and help us better service our customers. The teams based here, will focus on delivering an experience that is native to countries we support.
Here is what you can expect in the next 12 months:
- Better localisation — We’ll be improving the UX, starting with the onboarding experience. Expect support for more fiat currencies and languages to follow.
- Local payment methods — We’ll be adding alternative payment methods, making it easier to add and withdraw funds from your Coinbase account.
- Customer support — We are making a significant investment in customer support. Expect quicker response times and support in local timezones.
This is only the start and we are all incredibly excited by the potential digital currencies have to grow in Europe. Watch this space!
Sign up for a Coinbase account here.
We also have some exciting updates for EU users of GDAX, find out more here.
Europe, the next chapter was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on May 22, 2017A beginner’s guide to Ethereum tokens
What is an Ethereum token?
Before learning about Ethereum tokens, it is important to first understand the basics of Ethereum. Please see my beginner’s guide to Ethereum for those new to this concept entirely. Ethereum tokens are simply digital assets that are being built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. They benefit from Ethereum’s existing infrastructure instead of developers having to build an entirely new blockchain. They also strengthen the Ethereum ecosystem by driving demand for ether, the native currency of Ethereum, needed to power the smart contracts. This beginner’s guide should help those who are new to digital assets to understand Ethereum tokens at a high level and how they are different than Ethereum.
Comparison
Ethereum is a platform that can be used to create any arbitrary smart contract including smart contracts that represent digital assets called Ethereum tokens. This is similar to the App Store providing a platform for iOS apps with some apps issuing their own digital currencies that are used within the game or system. However, with Ethereum there is no centralized entity like Apple that controls what gets added to the App Store. Anyone can create a token on top of Ethereum.
Ethereum tokens can represent anything from a physical object like gold (Digix) to a native currency used to pay transaction fees (Golem). In the future, tokens may even be used to represent financial instruments like stocks and bonds. The properties and functions of each token are entirely subject to its intended use. Tokens can have a fixed supply, constant inflation rate, or even a supply determined by a sophisticated monetary policy. Tokens can be used for a variety of purposes such as paying to access a network or for decentralized governance over an organization.
Tokens are often issued to the public through a crowd sale called an initial coin offering (ICO). The creators of the token will issue the token to others in exchange for ether and sometimes bitcoin and other digital currencies. There have been many ICOs recently and in a short time they have completely changed the way projects are funded. There is no requirement that tokens must be well distributed, although if you are building a decentralized application ideally you want the tokens to be owned by as many people as possible.
Chart from thecontrol.co There are multiple resources that can walk you through the process of creating a token and that explain how tokens work on a technical level. For example, Token Factory provides a simple user interface that allows you to create your own Ethereum token with custom parameters.
Similar to bitcoin and ether, Ethereum tokens are also tracked on the blockchain which is the public ledger of all transactions that have occurred. This is because Ethereum tokens are just a specific type of smart contract that live on the Ethereum blockchain.
Aragon’s token tracked on Etherscan.io Among the largest Ethereum tokens by market cap are Augur’s REP and Golem’s GNT. Both projects are in development and have a combined market cap of about $450 million. I’ll briefly go over how each of them work to provide a better understanding of the vastly different functions an Ethereum token can have.
Augur
Augur is a decentralized prediction market co-founded by Joey Krug and Jack Peterson. Prediction markets allow users to bet on the outcome of different events and can also be used for hedging purposes. For example, if you own 1 bitcoin that is worth $2,000 and want to hedge that holding, you can bet that the price of bitcoin will be below $2,000 by a certain date. That way if the price of bitcoin goes up your holdings will be more valuable but if it goes down you will offset your losses through the prediction market. There is no centralized source that reports on the outcome of events. This mitigates the risk of a corrupt reporter but also creates a need for a decentralized reporting source.
Augur issued an Ethereum token called Reputation (REP). There is a fixed supply of 11 million REP tokens in existence, 80% of which were sold through a crowd sale raising $5.3 million. These tokens are used for reporting on the outcome of prediction market events. All active REP holders are required to report on the outcome of randomly selected events. This maintains the decentralized reporting pool needed to settle the outcome of Augur’s prediction markets. As a reward for providing this critical reporting function, REP holders receive half of all transaction fees generated by prediction markets on the platform. If someone tries to lie and report on the outcome incorrectly then they will get penalized by having to give up some of their REP. In addition if the majority of REP holders are dishonest then people would not want to use Augur and the value of REP goes down. This incentivizes people to act honestly in the Augur system.
Golem
Golem is a project headed by Julian Zawistowski that allows people to rent out their spare computing power to others. The idea is that by creating a worldwide supercomputer, computing power will become less costly and more accessible to everyone.
Golem issued an Ethereum token called Golem Network Token (GNT). There is a fixed supply of 1 billion GNT in existence, 82% of which were sold through a crowd sale raising $8.6 million. These tokens are required for interacting with the Golem network and is the currency used as payment when renting computing power. Since there is a limited supply of tokens for accessing this network if more people want to use Golem then the value of GNT increases. This theoretically aligns the incentives of people holding GNT with those using it.
ERC20 token
You may hear the Ethereum community refer to ERC20 tokens. The initial ERC20 page “describes standard functions a token contract can implement.” ERC20 is a standard interface for tokens. ERC20 tokens are simply a subset of Ethereum tokens. In order to be fully ERC20 compliant the developer needs to incorporate a specific set of functions into their smart contract that at a high level will allow it to perform the following actions:
- get the total token supply
- get the account balance
- transfer the token
- approve spending the token
ERC20 allows for seamless interaction with other smart contracts and decentralized applications on the Ethereum blockchain. Tokens that have some but not all of the standard functions are considered to be partially ERC20 compliant and can still be easy for external parties to interact with depending upon which functions are missing.
Resources
There are many existing and upcoming Ethereum tokens. Below are some links that may help you understand Ethereum tokens further and keep up with the exciting news.
Understanding Ethereum tokens
- The difference between App Coins and Protocol Tokens
- How to Raise Money on a Blockchain with a Token
- Introducing the Blockchain Token Securities Law Framework
- Tokens, Tokens and More Tokens
- The Token Economy
- The perfect token sale structure
Keeping up with Ethereum tokens
Thank you to Will Warren and many Coinbase employees especially Jordan Clifford, Reuben Bramanathan, David Farmer, and Dan Romero.
Disclosure: The author owns various ethereum-based assets, including augur rep and golem gnt. All opinions in this post are the author’s alone. This post is not an endorsement by Coinbase of any asset and you should be aware of the risk of loss before trading or holding any digital asset.
A beginner’s guide to Ethereum tokens was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on May 4, 2017When is the right time to invest in digital currency?
This week has seen all-time price highs for both Bitcoin & Ethereum. There are often drastic, sudden price changes in digital currency, and whenever the price starts to move there’s never any shortage of “FOMO” around whether it’s the right time to buy or not. As with any kind of investment, this can cause a lot of anxiety, uncertainty, or fear to participate at all.
One of the best strategies I think people can employ is dollar cost averaging, effectively lessening your exposure to price shifts by investing over a longer period of time. It’s pretty simple: think of a dollar amount you’re willing to spend on a regular cadence ($100 a week, for example). On Coinbase we try to make this as simple as possible.
Here’s what setting up a recurring buy looks like…
Buy & Sell interface on Coinbase Past performance
Obviously mileage varies depending on the asset, and past returns are not indicative of future ones—but let’s take a look back at how this strategy would have performed for the assets we currently support on Coinbase:
What if, 1 year ago, I invested $100 a week in…
Bitcoin
@ $1,582.67 per BTC (chart data here) Ethereum
@ $86.60 per ETH (chart data here) Litecoin
@ $23.12 per LTC (chart data here) Historically, digital currencies have been quite volatile — and will likely remain this way as the ecosystem matures. This strategy is a great way for new participants to get involved without the anxiety of committing a significant amount of capital at a fixed price. Not to mention you also get the added benefit of adjusting this amount up or down as you go.
Over the coming months we’re planning new features that will continue to make it simpler for our users to grow, manage and track their digital currency portfolios. Want to work with us? Join our team.
Note: Coinbase does not recommend any specific investments or investment strategies.
When is the right time to invest in digital currency? was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on May 3, 2017Coinbase adds support for Litecoin
We are pleased to announce that Coinbase is adding support for Litecoin. Customers can now easily buy, sell, send, and store Litecoin via the Coinbase website or mobile apps. This is part of our shift to supporting more types of digital assets over the coming year.
To get started, visit the “Buy/Sell” page on Coinbase.com or tap on “Buy” or “Sell” options in our iOS or Android apps.
At Coinbase, our mission is to create an open financial system for the world. We’re paving our path to that goal by creating the most trusted and easiest way to buy/sell digital currency. With the addition of Litecoin, one of the most trusted and popular digital currencies, we are moving one step closer to our goal.
For more information on Litecoin, please check out this beginner’s guide to Litecoin by Coinbase product manager, Linda Xie.
Your feedback is important to us. Feel free to reach out to us at our Community Forum. If you don’t have a Coinbase account, sign up here!
Coinbase adds support for Litecoin was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on April 22, 2017How to increase your Coinbase account security
We advise our users to install Authenticator apps (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator) as their primary 2FA method to secure their Coinbase accounts from phone porting attacks. You can follow the steps outlined in our support article to use Authenticator.
The instant and irreversible nature of digital currency enables fascinating use cases and drives our mission to create an open financial system for the world. This includes helping merchants accept bitcoin with no chargeback risk and helping users do global remittances instantly at low fees. But that very nature of bitcoin also attracts sophisticated attackers that challenge this mission.
Security of any system is as strong as its weakest link. Recent attempts to break into Coinbase user accounts point back to that weakest link being telecom companies (telcos). I’ll explain that after a brief overview of two factor authentication.
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA):
When you log in to any service in the cloud that’s storing anything of value (money, data, assets) it is crucial to have two factors. The first is something you know (a strong password) and the second is something you always have (like your mobile phone). Sending a 6 digit pin code via SMS to your mobile phone, allowed online services to verify during the login process that it was indeed you who requested access to the service.
It was intended for the second factor to be the physical device that you always have in your control. But, sending SMS to your phone actually verifies you have access to your phone number, not really your phone device. This distinction is really important as it turns out phone numbers can be stolen far more easily than physical phone devices.
Telcos as weakest link in SMS based 2FA
Telcos break the assumption that SMS based 2FA is reliable for two reasons. First, some telcos allow SMS to be readable online thereby making SMS based second factor only as strong as user’s telco billing password. Secondly, poor security processes at telcos around phone portability enable attackers to takeover accounts more easily. In the past several months, we’ve been working behind the scenes to stay ahead of these attacks. We wrote about this recently and would like to share things we have since built to keep our users safe despite these vulnerabilities. In a second blog post, I will provide more details of the vulnerabilities exposed by poor security practices at telcos.
Authenticator as your primary second factor authentication:
We recommend all users, especially those with high balances or those more security conscious to install device-only 2FA apps which are also commonly referred to as Authenticator apps, examples being: Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, etc.
You have to first download the Authenticator app on your mobile device and then you would scan a QR code on Coinbase’s security settings page. This QR code is essentially a secret key that is shared securely once between your mobile device and Coinbase. The Time-based One Time Password (TOTP) protocol is then used to authenticate you every time you try to log in to Coinbase. Next time you log in to Coinbase and use your Authenticator app, the app will use the current time of day and the secret key to generate a 6 digit code. When you enter that 6 digit code on Coinbase, we’ll check if it is valid by using the same parameters (current time of day and the secret key). You will notice that with this 2FA method, no data is ever shared over the air unlike SMS. Hence, it is much more secure to man-in-the-middle attacks.
How to enable Google Authenticator as primary 2FA on your Coinbase account For making future account recovery easy, we recommend users should note down the secret key that is generated after linking Coinbase with their Authenticator app on a piece of paper or a USB key that should be kept offline. In a forthcoming release, we will have backup recovery codes and then we’d recommend you to write those down instead. Note that you are trading-off usability for security with this choice. So if you lose the device where you’ve installed the Authenticator app and do not have access to your secret key, then you’ll have to contact Coinbase support. This is why it is important to write down the secret key and store it securely at the time of setting up Authenticator to avoid delays in account recovery later on.
We also support the use of Authy app, which instead of using the traditional QR code method to send you your secret key, uses an API to deliver the secret key securely to your device. Once you’ve installed Authy, we recommend disabling the Multi-device option. This means nobody can add a new Authy app to your account. Also pay attention to any emails or SMS messages you may get from Authy as they may communicate with you if they see someone trying to change your 2FA data.
Auto Lock your account on seeing suspicious activity:
Please pay special attention to SMS or emails from Coinbase that inform you that your 2FA settings or password have been changed or a new device has been added, or a withdrawal has been made from your account.
You can also auto lock your account by following a special one-time use link that we recently added at the bottom of our emails. That link leads you to a Disable Signin page. When in doubt, always hover over any URL link to first confirm it leads you to Coinbase.com before clicking it.
Our security sensitive emails have a special link you can click on to lock your account You can lock your account when you suspect unauthorized access Balancing security with usability:
Balancing security with usability is always a hard product trade-off. We balance this trade-off by making our second-factor authentication an opt-in. So users who want to continue using SMS based second-factor authentication, can still do so. We can’t move them over to Authenticator overnight without a significant amount of hand-holding. In light of this and despite vulnerabilities in SMS-2FA, we still need to protect those users’ funds from account takeovers. We are actively working on an account takeover detection system that uses behavioral anomaly detection and will delay withdrawals of digital currency from suspicious sessions. We expect to launch this feature within the next few months. Stay tuned.
In a lot of respects, Coinbase is building one of the most sophisticated security companies in the world. We use advanced cryptography, state-of-art 2FA, data science and machine learning to stay one step ahead of the attackers. If you’d like to join us in our mission to help make finance 2.0 user friendly as well as secure, please look at https://www.coinbase.com/careers.
I’ll also be presenting on this topic and risk engineering in general at the following venues. Come check them out:
- Data Eng Conf, SF, Apr 28
- Risk Salon’s Deflect Conference, SF, May 18
- QCon, New York, June 26–28
Thanks to my colleagues: Tom Boice, Linda Xie, Dave Farmer, Rob Witoff and Jeremy Henrickson for reading multiple drafts of this article and risk- and security-engineering teams at Coinbase for pushing the bar on security at Coinbase.
Updated: on Apr 25 with minor edits to clarify that Coinbase supports all Authenticator apps (Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, etc)
How to increase your Coinbase account security was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on April 11, 2017A beginner’s guide to Litecoin
What is Litecoin?
According to the Litecoin website, “Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world.” If you’re familiar with the digital currency Bitcoin, the above definition might sound similar. That’s because Litecoin is based on Bitcoin’s open source codebase, but with a few technological differences. Litecoin was never intended to replace Bitcoin but to complement it like the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. This beginner’s guide should help those who are new to Litecoin to understand the high level differences between these two digital currencies.
Comparison
The great thing about open source software projects such as Bitcoin is that anyone in the world can fork the original codebase to include new features they want. The value assigned to each digital currency is determined by the community of adopters that decide to hold and use it. While Bitcoin is currently the largest digital currency by market capitalization, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for other digital currencies to coexist or to serve a specific use case or community.
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee wanted to modify Bitcoin’s rules in ways he considered beneficial. Specifically Charlie wanted to reduce the amount of time required to confirm a new transaction as well as change the Bitcoin mining algorithm (the way new coins are generated) to ensure anyone could participate in the network. Bitcoin’s transaction confirmation time is 10 minutes while Litecoin’s is only 2.5 minutes. Litecoin is able to process a higher volume of transactions due to the faster transaction confirmation time.
Bitcoin mining uses the algorithm SHA-256 which is processor intensive while Litecoin mining uses scrypt which is more memory intensive. Early on Bitcoin was able to be mined using regular computers (CPUs) and later on more powerful gaming computers (GPUs). Now due to the increase in mining difficulty created by competition within the network the only way mining is profitable after accounting for electricity and mining equipment costs is through the use of Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners. These are expensive machines built specifically for mining and won’t be able to be used for anything else. Since only some people have the resources to buy and operate ASICs, Charlie did not want Litecoin mining to be dominated by ASICs. Therefore he created Litecoin with a more memory intensive mining algorithm to make mining Litecoin less efficient for ASICs and was more accessible to everyone.
Future
One important aspect of Litecoin is that its creator, Charlie Lee, is publicly known and actively participates in the cryptocurrency community. The anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, who has since disappeared, isn’t available to provide guidance and leadership over the technical direction of Bitcoin. Having the founder available is important when it comes to helping others understand and rally behind Litecoin’s vision.
Currently, Charlie is pushing the community to support adding an upgrade to Litecoin called Segregated Witness (SegWit) that he and others believe will set the foundation for implementing future innovations. SegWit is essentially a change to the transaction data format that requires less storage space. This upgrade would allow for adding additional scaling innovations like Lightning Networks (LN) where transactions can quickly settle off blockchain meaning not all transactions will have to go through the public ledger. This upgrade is applicable to both Bitcoin and Litecoin. However Bitcoin requires 95% of miners to signal they are ready to support SegWit for activation to occur while Litecoin only requires 75%. This lower consensus threshold in addition to an active founder means that it will be easier for Litecoin to push forward this change.
Charlie wrote a letter to the Litecoin mining community to convince them to support SegWit. The benefits of having decentralized currencies is the creator can’t just implement things on their own. However, there are benefits to having a vocal leader to guide technological progress within a community, especially during a time when it is clear there needs to be a change or there is a major disagreement. The exciting part is that Litecoin can serve as a way for Bitcoin to see how these changes go.
Resources
Litecoin has existed for almost as long as Bitcoin. There is already established infrastructure for Litecoin and exciting news that there might be major new developments on it soon. Below are some links that may help you understand Litecoin further and keep up with the development.
Understanding Litecoin
- What is Litecoin?
- Litecoin Website
- Litecoin Development Website
- Litecoin Wiki
- Charlie Lee’s talk at Coinbase
Keeping up with Litecoin
Thank you to Will Warren and many Coinbase employees especially Charlie Lee and Jordan Clifford.
A beginner’s guide to Litecoin was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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Posted on March 19, 2017Update for Customers With Bitcoin Stored on Coinbase
We wanted to provide customers notice of how a possible hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol into Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Unlimited will affect Coinbase accounts.
The only version of Bitcoin supported on the Coinbase platform today is Bitcoin Core, currently represented by the symbol BTC.
We may provide support for Bitcoin Unlimited in the future depending on market conditions and stability of the protocol, but we cannot guarantee whether or when such support may be available. Customers who wish to access both blockchains at the time of the hard fork should withdraw their BTC from Coinbase since we cannot guarantee what will happen during the hard fork or when this access may be available.
If one chain receives an overwhelming majority of support from miners, users, and exchanges, we reserve the right to alter the names of chains or discontinue support for certain chains in the future.
Ensuring the safety of customer funds is our top priority. In the event of a hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol, it is likely that Coinbase will temporarily suspend the deposit and withdrawal of bitcoin from the platform pending our assessment of the technical risks posed by any fork, such as the possibility of replay attacks, network instability, or other factors. Customers should take note that they will not be able to withdraw bitcoin from or deposit bitcoin to Coinbase for a period of up to 24 hours or more following the fork. In the event of a hard fork of the Bitcoin protocol, Coinbase may suspend the ability to buy or sell on our platform during this time.
Coinbase looks forward to working with other exchanges and development teams to ensure the smooth execution of future hard forks with as little disruption as possible. Customers should continue to monitor our support pages and Twitter account for updates regarding our support for digital currencies on the platform.
Update for Customers With Bitcoin Stored on Coinbase was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
