On Wednesday, Philip Martin, vice president of security of the largest Bitcoin whale Coinbase Exchange, made a statement about how the stock market took place almost the largest cryptocurrency migration in the world, which has upset the market recently.. Philip Martin highlights that among many other assets, the amount of cryptocurrencies carried by the Coinbase Exchange accounts for 5 percent of all Bitcoins, 8 percent of all Ethereums and 25 percent of all Litecoins.
Coinbase Exchange completes world’s largest cryptocurrency migration
The on-chain cryptocurrency migration by Coinbase Exchange completed last week. Coinbase Exchange official made the following statement:. As far as we know, this is the largest cryptocurrency move ever (definitely in US dollars, potentially in absolute terms). or more with cold storage, that is, offline,. Also, according to Philip Martin, Coinbase Exchange’s cold storage system has undergone a number of evolutions as the cryptocurrency industry has changed and matured over the years.
Coinbase official explains the exchange’s cold storage method
The Coinbase Exchange official then explains what he means by cold storage:
Cold storage could encompass a range of storage techniques, from HSMs to bunkers in the Swiss Alps.. Assets placed in cold storage are completely offline and disconnected from any automated system. As in a rapidly developing industry such as cryptocurrency, there is no clear standard for cold storage.
Philip Martin continues:
Coinbase In ‘s cold storage standard, real-world multi-geographic people must perform physical actions to activate a transaction after reviewing the transaction details.. If that’s not true, we don’t think it’s actually cold storage.
The biggest Bitcoin whale has changed its cold storage solution four times
Coinbase’s cold storage solution four times in the past six years changed. The first generation, Generation One, consisted only of some USB drives and paper backups stored in a vault at a local bank.. Launched at the same time as Coinbase Custody, the latest generation Generation Four begins with “a highly controlled, vetted key generation process and a security foundation.”. It also continues with a globally distributed key storage and transaction confirmation system.. Philip Martin describes the two main benefits of this system in these words:
First, protection against loss, including threat of abuse and application-level attacks. Second, support for key management and auditing worldwide.
Why did the cryptocurrency migration process take months to plan?
Then Coinbase Exchange official , explained why it took months to plan the cryptocurrency migration process:
We started planning months before the actual move date and involved nearly every team on the Coinbase Exchange.. We conducted risk assessments, conducted monitoring plans, and performed test passes until we were confident that the cryptocurrency migration would be completed without any disruption. He said it is possible to be confused with a large investor preparing to sell a significant amount of cryptocurrencies.. In addition, Philip Martin claims that another of his concerns is to mobilize potential attackers who may plan and do attacks during immigration.
Statements made by Coinbase Exchange before the transfer of cryptocurrencies
Coinbase Exchange official said that states that due to recent concerns, they made the announcement on November 29, 2018, four days before the start of the transfer.. Coinbase Exchange made the following statement on the matter at the time:
For the next seven days, Coinbase Exchange will be performing a scheduled maintenance on our platform that could cause action on all Coinbase supported apps.. These are controlled, closely watched actions taken to provide greater security and protection for our customers.. Updates will be sent to status.coinbase.com, status.pro.coinbase.com, and status.prime.coinbase.com.
The idea here is to “put off fears without revealing too much information,” said the Coinbase Exchange official. It emphasizes that. Finally, Philip Martin explains what happened after the above blog post was published:
We kept restoring our current cold storage addresses one by one and waited for the previous address to be pulled to the new cold storage before the next address was moved.