Interesting. If accepted, I am tempted to buy a few shares and see what falls out over time.
I get gold trusts, like GLD -- transporting and storing and selling gold is a pain. But it's easy to buy and store Bitcoin using a service like CoinBase. Not to mention the fact that you'll be paying management fees.
I suppose if you wanted to put bitcoin in your IRA this would be helpful.
One of the aspects of Bitcoin that gives it value is cutting out third parties for storage.
I honestly don't understand using a bank to store dollars when using a wallet is so readily available.
Do you not see the flaw in your thinking? People with large amounts of money don't want the responsibility of securing their own money themselves. Storing Bitcoin's despite what people may say, is not trivial for the average person.
Perhaps people should get up to speed before using Bitcoin unless they want to lose their money. Storing btc with a third party is a great way to lose them.
"Use Linux! Windoze is insecure!" they said.
Right.
Bitcoin isn't ready for prime time, agreed. But it's still here.
How much did you lose (if you don't mind saying)?
How long was it before you noticed?
Do you think you were (a) individually targeted as a BTC holder, or (b) do you think someone was port scanning the Internet and stumbled onto you?
If (a), how did they know you might have BTC? If (b), is it actually commonplace for automated attacks to seek BTC wallets these days?
Most of the publicity centered around trojan miner applications, but the same issue also exposed the entire file system. So, searching the exposed file systems for wallet.dat files was a trivial and obvious free lunch for the crackers, much more so than mining.
In retrospect, I think the biggest mistake was using the same port for things like the security camera server that is used for remote administration. Taking the time to learn how to use a nonstandard port would probably have kept this particular system safe. I can't blame Synology, really... just a bad threat assessment on my part. My thinking was that keeping the wallet.dat file off of any Internet-accessible Windows boxes would provide enough "security by obscurity," but we all know how that story usually ends.
MtGox is the chief example of a litany of skeezy & sketchy schemes associated with that could be, charitably, called badly done. Less charitable intepretations might be, "cons", or "fraud". Lots of that has shaken out, but the BTC community is rife with bad thinking.
I feel far more comfortable throwing a $100 payment at my stockbroker account for an ETF, knowing that several layers of reliable cutouts stand between my bank account and some seriously dodgy businesses.
And, frankly, I don't particularly feel like going through the dedicated work to secure & backup a bitcoin wallet, and I really don't feel like outsourcing that to a company which isn't already reputable and respected for being secure.
The actual value of the underlying assets may, of course, turn into dust and dreams like so many other assets - that's as risky as all get out, and COIN has a lot of direct risks - it's a VERY speculative ETF. That's just the nature of things. And, too, I'm not going all in on COIN, I diversify my assets as a risk hedge. COIN would strictly be a sideline for amusements & maybe some profit.
So the summation of this is, my fine trading account has a variety of services which serve to mitigate fraudulent behavior, and I will mitigate my risk vs. fraud by paying the trading fees & ETF fees, rather than assuming that risk directly on my systems.
In other words: do you trust the Winklevosses?
> Bitcoins held by the Trust are not subject to FDIC or SIPC protections.
> The Trust is not a banking institution or otherwise a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) or Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”) and, therefore, deposits held with or assets held by the Trust are not subject to the protections enjoyed by depositors with FDIC or SIPC member institutions. The undivided interests in the Trust’s bitcoins represented by Shares in the Trust are not insured.
Also see "Risk Factors Related to the Regulation of the Trust and the Shares." The protections you apparently think you have don't exist.
I realize the underlying assets are subject to some of the same risks as owning BitCoins themselves. The person who said do you trust the Winklevoss's more than the wallet service is on the money.
(Though if you buy through CoinBase and then store the coins in your own wallet, that's different)