1NzVTQ3NAWbZjw5ZeiYtzaxx4viKUqoLzr

Awesome, Cheers.

LOL just as expected Charlie Lee removed his comment, to further hide the lie.

Good thing the screenshot was taken

Screenshot: http://imgur.com/wCu58Qz

Originial comment, he now removed: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4md665/coinbase_may_have_lied_about_the_number_of/d3uyda7



Ok it is safe to say that something is definitely not right here.
They have obviously been caught lying and are now performing a very miserable attempt of covering up their tracks.

They do infact claim to store (or at that time have stored) 10% of all mined bitcoins... What an utter lie.

Charlie Lee just confirmed it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4md665/coinbase_may_have_lied_about_the_number_of/d3uyda7


Here is a screenshot in case they change the comment again.
http://imgur.com/wCu58Qz

They just silently changed the rep post where it was claimed that 97% of user funds are in multisig

Luckily their deception was anticipated, here is a screenshot of the original, unchanged version: http://imgur.com/2fCMoPP

They claim 97% of user funds. So that doesn't leave much. Is it likely that Coinbase's own funds constitute multiple % of all bitcoins... No.



Yes that's their best bet now. Unfortunately in the same breath they'll have to reveal that Coinbase's holdings are not exactly substantial.

Wrong: Kraken uses Multisig. Xapo uses Multisig. Bitgo uses multisig. Bitfinex uses multisig. OKCoin uses multisig. Huobi uses multisig...

Do you want to guess again?


It does look like Coinbase has in fact been lying to users and investors.

This post is from Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4md665/coinbase_may_have_lied_about_the_number_of):


It looks like Coinbase may have openly lied about the number bitcoins they store to their users and perhaps even to their investors.

They claim that 97% of user funds are stored in multisig addresses. For instance here (https://community.coinbase.com/t/multisig-vault-what-if-coinbase-goes-out-of-business/3282)

The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong published this blog post (https://medium.com/the-coinbase-blog/coinbase-is-not-a-wallet-b5b9293ca0e7) in which he shamelessly claims that Coinbase is now storing 'about 10% of all bitcoin in circulation'.

The issue now is that, as we can see on p2sh.info (http://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/p2sh-statistics) at the time of this post only around 10% of all Bitcoins were held in p2sh addresses.

To explain the issue further: Multisig is just one usage of p2sh and many many Bitcoin companies, exchanges and private people are using multisig addresses.
So when we take all the other services and private users into account that use multisig addresses the 97% of user funds Coinbase holds in multisig are likely far lower than 5% of all bitcoins, we can only guess. I'd be surprised if they even constituted 1% of all bitcoins, to be quite honest.

Coinbase additionally has their 'cold storage' which seems to use some version of key splitting (shamir's secret) which would contain funds owned by Coinbase as well as the remaining user funds that are not in the hot wallet. Is it likely that Coinbase's own Bitcoin funds constitute multiple % of all bitcoins in existence? I don't think so.

If their 'cold storage' does in fact also use multisig, then their lie would be even greater.

So has Brian Armstrong lied to his investors and users? Has he exploited their lack of understanding of Bitcoin to make highly inflated claims?

If I were an investor I would demand Brian Armstrong to move all bitcoins under control of Coinbase as a proof of reserves right now.

It looks like Coinbase is not even close to as big as they make it seem. If all this venture capital has been raised by claiming false holdings, then things could get nasty.

Yes I do, but I also spend them on domain names and hosting

http://www.bitcoinrichlist.com/address/1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF?charttype=balance

This one has to belong to one of the most richest Bitcoin very early adopters, maybe even Satoshi. Rank 3 on the rich list and has never sent a bitcoin since 2011.
If you track it down, the sum in this address is derived directly from very early mining rewards that have never moved since they all got sent to this address in 2011.

https://blockchain.info/tx/e67a0550848b7932d7796aeea16ab0e48a5cfe81c4e8cca2c5b03e0416850114

This is the transaction that seeded the address

Why the hell would somebody consolidate 80,000 BTC of mining rewards in one address and then never move them? Has there ever been any information regarding this address?
80,000 BTC was already a lot in 2011


Edit: After looking more at the seed transactions, it seems this was most likely the cold wallet address of a service, an exchange perhapse. So there has to be some information regarding this address out there

Please let everybody decide for themselves what their business is and what not.
As I said before, knowledge about large holders is vital information in any market. I am very interested in who the largest Bitcoin holders are, how much they have and what their intentions are.

Yes it is 'my business' because I own bitcoins and I care about their value. The actions of large owners can have direct effects on the price my Bitcoins and it is thus of high importance to me to know as much as I can.




It shows us the minimum amount that one entity controls in a single address. So obviously the richest Bitcoiners own much more than that, which I find kind of frightening.
I think the largest addresses (those p2SH ones) are cold wallets of exchanges.

Have you guys heard of user 'knightmb'? He owned 371,000 BTC at one point and maybe he still does.
If I remember correctly he was hired by people in Bitcoin's early stage to built a Bitcoin prepaid card or something like this for them. Then the project was abandoned and the people who hired him never bothered to check how much bitcoins were actually worth and knightmb convinced them to sell the 371,000BTC to him for $ 5,000.

Cheeky guy

He later claimed to have 'donated' them, but other users were able to disprove this claim.

My best would be that it's one of the big exchanges' cold wallet.
You could make accounts at and send different amounts to all major exchanges and see which one ends up in this address  

I never quite understood the fetish people have with activity statuses on this forum.
A 'hero' member who posts nonsense in the altcoin section all day, is by no means more trustworthy or interesting than a 0 activity newbie who actually possesses technical knowledge about Bitcoin.

I have read about the guy. He seems rather eccentric but has been/ is involved in a couple of interesting ventures.
I doubt he is a 'billionaire' though 

I respectuflly disagree.

As an owner of Bitcoins it is of interest to me who the other participants in this market are and what they do. If for instance (a very drastic scenario to illustrate my point) Roger Ver posts that he intends to sell all of his Bitcoins, then the value of my Bitcoins will certainly decline.
As you can see there is a direct causality relationship between all participants in the Bitcoin market.
Therefore knowledge about large owners, the sizes of their holdings as well as their intentions are in fact crucial information for everybody who owns Bitcoins.

Hm that's interesting. There are probably quite a few interesting bits of information in the forums early history. Presumably some of the deleted accounts were linked to information, evaluated as too sensitive.

Well, Ver is known to be one of the richest Bitcoin users and he seems to be doing fine.

True, the Winklevii claimed a couple years back to have acquired 1% of all Bitcoins if I remember correctly.
Pretty awesome.

OP has a point but it is only about this product.

This actually has nothing to do with Bitcoin, but only with the companies who build their services around the blockchain.
Most are intended to increase convenience for the consumer, but many are practically parasitic middlemen that try to profit from Bitcoin usage.

What, never heard of 'the guy from anarkapulco' - I'll check it out.

What makes you think Szabo is a large holder? To me it seems he is more concerned with intellectual exercises than speculation, he probably invests as safe as possible.

A Million really is not all that much. It is probably best to continue your life as you did now, use the interest of the Million dollars to enhance your life here and there and the Million Dollars to feel secure knowing that you could meet any unexpected reasonable financial hurdle (medical treatment, loss of job, etc) with ease.

I would not buy more than maybe 50000 USD worth.