[dogma1138]

You don't have bitcoin on Coinbase you have an entry in a database that says Coinbase owes you X amount of bitcoins.

Yes it's a little more complicated than that but the analogy still stands.

Coinbase is a hosted wallet with no key control meaning that you do not have any control over the transactions of that wallet.

The other aspect of Coinbase is a nice interface for the GDAX exchange with about double the fees.

In either case if you care about the security of your investment create an wallet transfer the bitcoin into it and keep it offline.

For the fork you would like to use a node that is compatible with the proposal you support, if you have no opinions I suggest just accept the current leading consensus and be done with it.

[briantmaurer]

What is a good way to create a personal bitcoin wallet?

p.s. I studied computer science, am reasonably fluent in computer security, but not a crypto or bitcoin expert.

[narak]

https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

Some self-education links at the bottom as well.

[quickthrower]

Depends on your level of paranoia. I use an encrypted file on disk to store a client and keys. I back this up offsite incase I get ransomwared. That's good enough for me.

The super paranoid roll dice to generate the private key, use a totally offline computer to convert those dice rolls into an address.

[Keeeeeeeks]

Blockchain.info, but not sure how they intend to handle the fork. May be best to set up a personal wallet using the mentioned link

[Grangar]

Blockchain.info doesn't give you control over your own keys IIRC. Use an actual client, not a website.