Popular bitcoin buying/selling powerhouse Coinbase announced on Tuesday the addition of some new features when it comes to user security on the site.
The California-based company notes that they’ve made some improvements on the front of cold storage of user funds. Coinbase has implemented a “secret sharing” scheme to split the private keys to these offline funds and having them stored in geographically different places in vaults and security deposit boxes — preventing access to offline bitcoin storage from just one place. Think about it as if it were a missile. Not one, but two keys would need to be turned to launch the weapon.
And why we’re on the topic of offline funds, Coinbase says they’re increasing the amount of funds stored offline from 90 percent to up to 97 percent, which will vary depending on supply and demand. The remainder is stored in a “hot wallet”, which allows Coinbase to facilitate the buying and selling done by their customers on-demand.
Coinbase is also fortifying some common actions on their site by forcing the use of two-factor authentication for the following actions: sending bitcoin (even recurring sends), the enabling/disabling of API access, password changes, phone changes, authenticator setting changes, and SMS pin number changing.
Finally, from the activities page, users can now keep track of session history, account activity (be it from web or API), and open sessions.
See Coinbase’s original post here.
