A Rare Look Inside Coinbase, One of Bitcoin's Fastest Growing Companies
medium.com
medium.com
Of course, I probably shouldn't be surprised. ZapChain is, themselves, a company delivering services for the bitcoin community, so they are incentivized to put a positive spin on any major players in the space (since any good bitcoin press is good for them) in order to make the whole market look more mature and vibrant.
Gotta shake off the Mt. Gox stink somehow... :)
The article would be a lot better if they'd been to Coinbase's HQ. If they can find it. The Market St. address in San Francisco is a mail drop for a service that opens paper mail, scans it, and emails it. The Bluxome St. address is someone's condo.
Its physical security requirements would be orders of magnitude beyond any other SV startups, even greater than the largest banks (because banks can retroactively reverse transfers and call the police when you try to deposit suitcases of stolen cash). We're talking Federal Government-level security or better, because even US military facilities in the U.S. assume their threats are enemy states, which would have to get through the Navy and Air Force first. We're talking something much closer to an onsite, 24x7 paramilitary force than a guy at a desk in the lobby.
Keeping a low profile would be a good place to start.
Hopefully there are other controls - cold storage can only be accessed by a quorum of people which never under any circumstances exists in one location, etc.
Expecting to ever see inside of Coinbase's HQ is entirely unreasonable, IMO.
It is that hard to design internal controls that prevent a theft when 100% of the staff are in the same room with their computers and guns to all of their heads.
There's a reason why the United States Bullion Depository is on an Army base. (James Bond plots not withstanding)
I'm not sure the thieves would be able to significantly profit off of their heist if they took everything at once.
So drop out of Yale to do business development at Coinbase? Miss the chance to forge strong personal relationships which could last for decades? Relinquish the opportunity to learn and research for 3-4 years and instead "hustle" with the risk of being pink-slipped every Monday morning? Perhaps the right decision for Nick but I would personally have stayed at Yale.