Coinbase’s Bitcoin holdings were more than 3 times customer holdings, filing reveals

Coinbase on Monday announced that it had exceeded its pre-COVID-19 headcount of 1,136, surpassing 3,500 employees.<br><br><br><br>The company also filed paperwork to become a publicly traded company, and one of the key documents, its prospectus, offers some insight into the company’s business.<br><br>One of the more interesting items in the filing relates to the company’s Bitcoin holdings. Coinbase says that the company held more than 4 million BTC and ether as of the end of 2020. Of the coins, only 55,859 Bitcoin and 29,324 ether were the company’s own, and the remainder was Bitcoin owned by customers of the Coinbase custodial service.<br><br>The 51% Bitcoin holdings belonging to the company compared to customer holdings has raised concerns among would-be investors in the platform, as the only thing backing the customer coins is the company’s future revenue streams.<br><br>One of the key advantages of Bitcoin and the decentralized finance ecosystem are of course that there is no need to trust a third party and that there is no counterparty risk.<br><br>The revelation could undermine trust in the platform in the same way as the high-profile collapse of Mt Gox in 2014, where investor funds were laundered away by management prior to the collapse.<br><br>Source: coindesk<br><br>Edit: I'm using this as a temporary account as I'm hiding behind an IP address that already has an account attached to it. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you want.<br><br><br><br>PS: I'm still ranked as a new user.I'm sorry if I didn't follow the proper chambers format.