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by negidius 1190 days ago
That would still be subject to risk. It's impossible to completely eliminate risk.

The FDIC is not an absolute guarantee. The government could decide that it doesn't want to honour it, or could itself collapse. Both scenarios are very unlikely to happen in the near term, but the same is true for the largest and most stable banks.
1 comments
runnerup 1190 days ago
Yeah I mean a dinosaur extinction meteor could hit the planet but for most people the determination of risk ends around “Complete collapse of USA/EU governments and their currency”.

It’s probably the most fundamental axiomatic assumption underlying any normal discussion of financial risk.

In other countries, it isn’t. “How can we manage a complete collapse of the Filipino government?” Is a reasonable question.

If the US government collapses, Coinbase won’t have a market to operate in so further discussion doesn’t matter.

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negidius 1190 days ago
It seems a bit facetious to compare the collapse of the US government with an extinction event. There will almost certainly be a world after the US government, and that world will probably still include ancient banks like Lloyds and Barclays, and large gold vaults under the Swiss Alps.

If you round the risk of the US government collapsing (or refusing to honour its obligations) down to zero, you should probably do the same for many private banks.

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