| Brian, could you respond why Coinbase has shifted from a clusterfuck pay-a-withdrawal-with-the-global-pool-of-coins to pay-a-withdrawal-with-the-user's-coins? I noticed Coinbase credits users even without transaction confirmations. Then I noticed withdrawals used the same inputs from the deposits the user receives. This could be bad and good: 1) (good) User is immediately notified when Coinbase is breached. It's the moment when they notice their deposit address is sending coins to a address that is not their's. 2) (bad) There is one chance to protect the coins. If you even think the private keys are compromised, you would have to be safe and broadcast the move of coins to new addresses. This will be really messy. 3) (bad) Anonymity reduction. The user can't launder coins in the network. Withdrawing deposited coins will appear to be a direct transaction from: A -> B (deposit) then B -> C (withdrawal) instead of: A -> B (deposit) then Z (other user's coins) -> C Also, is Coinbase moving to a client-sided wallet approach? |
It's definitely not perfect yet, but the security benefits are important. We posted an update on the payouts via unconfirmed transactions as well: http://blog.coinbase.com/post/43285532179/unconfirmed-transa...
Just generally, we are going through hyper growth right now, so this tends to magnify small problems. Thank you for bearing with us!