
A Rare Look Inside Coinbase, One of Bitcoin's Fastest Growing Companies - aboutus
https://medium.com/zapchain-magazine/a-rare-look-inside-of-coinbase-one-of-the-fastest-growing-bitcoin-companies-in-the-world-bfb5219f1ed4
======
zzalpha
Shame, this could've been interesting, but instead reads like a marketing
pitch.

Of course, I probably shouldn't be surprised. ZapChain is, themselves, a
company delivering services for the bitcoin community, so they are
incentivized to put a positive spin on any major players in the space (since
any good bitcoin press is good for them) in order to make the whole market
look more mature and vibrant.

Gotta shake off the Mt. Gox stink somehow... :)

~~~
mhluongo
Eh, there are a ton of news organization in the space that _don 't_ put a
positive spin on bitcoin companies. Coinfire has been focused on the Garza
stuff, Two Bit Idiot broke the Gox story... not sure why you'd think ZapChain
is any different.

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Animats
From the article: _" The information in this post was collected exclusively
from the bitcoin community on ZapChain, and Nick Tomaino from Coinbase."_

The article would be a lot better if they'd been to Coinbase's HQ. If they can
find it. The Market St. address in San Francisco is a mail drop for a service
that opens paper mail, scans it, and emails it. The Bluxome St. address is
someone's condo.

~~~
superuser2
An armed assault on Coinbase HQ while staff are present would be a nearly
foolproof way to instantly, irreversibly, untraceably obtain a few hundred
million dollars of BTC.

Its physical security requirements would be orders of magnitude beyond any
other SV startups, even greater than the largest banks (because banks can
retroactively reverse transfers and call the police when you try to deposit
suitcases of stolen cash). We're talking Federal Government-level security or
better, because even US military facilities in the U.S. assume their threats
are enemy states, which would have to get through the Navy and Air Force
first. We're talking something much closer to an onsite, 24x7 paramilitary
force than a guy at a desk in the lobby.

Keeping a low profile would be a good place to start.

Hopefully there are other controls - cold storage can only be accessed by a
quorum of people which never under any circumstances exists in one location,
etc.

Expecting to ever see inside of Coinbase's HQ is entirely unreasonable, IMO.

~~~
MichaelGG
If you're thinking that way, then an attacker could also just kidnap/torture
relatives of key people. That's far lower key than an assault on an office
building with cameras, silent alarms, etc.

~~~
superuser2
It's not that hard to design internal controls that prevent a few compromised
individuals from stealing too much.

It _is_ that hard to design internal controls that prevent a theft when 100%
of the staff are in the same room with their computers and guns to all of
their heads.

------
serve_yay
Yeah, "one of".

~~~
aboutus
Others being BitPay: [http://bitpay.com](http://bitpay.com), Intuit (Quickbook
Bitcoin Payments):
[http://intuitlabs.com/bitcoin.html](http://intuitlabs.com/bitcoin.html),
Winklevoss twins (who reportedly own 1% of all bitcoins), Quadriga CX:
[http://quadrigacx.com](http://quadrigacx.com), and I'd keep an eye on
Coinkite: [http://coinkite.com](http://coinkite.com) in Canada.

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notsony
> Nick Tomaino, who dropped out of Yale to join Coinbase, was awesome enough
> to set aside an entire day to answer our questions.

So drop out of Yale to do business development at Coinbase? Miss the chance to
forge strong personal relationships which could last for decades? Relinquish
the opportunity to learn and research for 3-4 years and instead "hustle" with
the risk of being pink-slipped every Monday morning? Perhaps the right
decision for Nick but I would personally have stayed at Yale.

~~~
ntomaino
To each his own. In my mind, spending another 60K to "figure out what I want
to do" was the riskier decision than joining a company I believe in. IMO
"forging strong personal relationships that could last for decades" does not
require you to go to an Ivy League school. Really just requires an internet
conection these days.

