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I find it absolutely incredible that they are asking for online banking username, password and PIN number to "instantly verify" an account.

I'm not saying this company is a scam, but if I wanted to create an elaborate phishing scam, this is exactly the type of setup I would create.

Hopefully no one is stupid enough to give this key online banking information to this company or anyone else that asks for it.

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Mint asked for bank passwords, and had 5m registered users as of 2011. They sold for $170 million. I believe Coinbase is copying common UX patterns which have been proven to be palatable with users.

Coinbase is neither Mint nor Paypal. We have no idea if they will survive 6 months, and we can't trust they don't store credentials on their servers, even though they say they do. Have they been security audited? Or do we just take a one-line comment on Hacker News as the truth?

If they reach a level of legitimacy, then maybe it might fly with some users. But I personally think it's way too premature to ask for usernames and passwords for banks, especially given how much fraud, hacking, security problems, and monetary loss associated with Bitcoin companies.

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