Coinbase Custody Coinbase may soon be storing 5% of all the Bitcoin in circulation—worth over $7 billion—thanks to its $55 million purchase of Xapo's under-a-Swiss-mountain custody business. Xapo retains its exchange business and Wences Casares is still its CEO. Casares: "It’s hard to do a consumer business well at the same time as an institutional business. Earlier this year, we looked for a home for it." Fortune
If the world is in a situation where an "under the mountain" custody business becomes useful, then htf does crypto continue to function!? Do you print the bits?
Can someone please explain what these guys did that was so inventive that they have pretty much exclusive rights to handle all crypto transactions in the US? Why isn't there more competitors? Are they in bed with the regulators?
It's for cold storage, you put the access keys for the coins on USB drives then store those in a safe deposit box... or, since their value has shot up so much, under a mountain. The idea is to not have the keys accessible from any computer connected to the internet so they can't be stolen by hackers. It's not protection against a Doomsday scenario. They still regularly have to add and remove drives as people deposit and withdrawal.