Ask HN: How can Coinbase make good on deposits/withdrawals?

Re:Ask HN: How can Coinbase make good on deposits/withdrawals? by bdamm on Thursday December 07, 2017 @01:32PM (#15872657)

What's the question? I assume you're asking if Coinbase actually buys BTC when you ask them to? Coinbase isn't publicly audited as far as I know so we don't really know. A related question would be... what fraction of Coinbase customers actually send or receive bitcoin, and what fraction of Coinbase customers simply buy and hold bitcoin that never goes anywhere. With this question answered, we would know how much Coinbase needs to actually execute on trades, and how much Coinbase could simply take the customers money, claim BTC ownership, and then not actually transact BTC.

I assume exchanges have some way of signalling options to each other but I don't know what that is.

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Re:Ask HN: How can Coinbase make good on deposits/withdrawals? by aaavl2821 on Thursday December 07, 2017 @02:59PM (#15873501)

i was wondering whether coinbase itself actually buys or sells bitcoin, or if they just pass along orders to exchanges or market makers that execute the trade, and then keep a record of the transactions that are executed.

if coinbase fills orders by buying and selling bitcoin on its own account, then that is a very different business model from what i assumed they did

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