Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

Re:Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled ami... by Klathmon on Friday December 22, 2017 @12:34PM (#15989242)

I have heard that since coinbase keeps all but 2% of their crypto assets in "cold storage" (offline storage that requires a physical trip to somewhere to spend), there are semi-frequent times where their "hot wallet" runs out of money, and they need to go and retrieve it from cold storage in order to continue.

Naturally this would happen when there are large spikes in usage (which happen during swings in price) and people are trying to move cryptocurrencies out of coinbase.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled ami... by mancerayder on Friday December 22, 2017 @08:55PM (#15992462)

So the latency are people's feet rapidly shuffling to another physical location?

That doesn't make a good story for the convenience and transfer speeds of some of this technology.

It feels like they're protecting prices or their capital reserves?

[ Parent | on HN ]