Coinbase holds 5% of all Bitcoins and 25% of all Litecoin

A few weeks ago, "Whale Watcher" noted transactions of unusually high amounts of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC). Some have speculated that these transactions were carried out by Coinbase regarding its secret operating security practices. As confirmed by Coinbase, the hypotheses were correct.

In a recent blog post, Coinbase confirmed that many of these "whale" transactions were in fact due to internal security measures. The company has revealed that it has recently moved 5% of all Bitcoins, 8% of all Ether and 25% of all Litecoin in circulation through a series of transactions.

This is believed to be the "largest crypt migration from the study's existence". And it seems that the dollar value of the company's holdings is worth a staggering $ 5 billion. The transaction series is the largest transaction sequence ever performed by a single entity. This includes all exchanges, whales, investment groups or Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

According to the blog post, one of the main reasons for the transactions was a pre-programmed security update. The cryptographic exchange was preparing for the expansion of the token in progress, which introduced a series of new cryptocurrencies to Coinbase in recent months.

Coinbase's business model initially focused only on some cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. A few months ago, the exchange added Ethereum Classic (ETC), Basic Attention Token (BAT) and Zcash (ZEC). Just yesterday, the Coinbase added four other tokens: Golem, DAI, Maker is Zilliqa.

New Coinbase storage facility

Regarding the underlying fundamentals, the new Coinbase storage system was originally launched in October, when the technical team conducted a key generation process. In short, the process was to create a set of keys and, by supporting the scan-compatible QR codes, these keys were then divided.

The cryptographic process, also known as Shamir's Secret Sharing, is a mechanism designed to protect private information. After dividing the keys, they are distributed between different positions. Several Coinbase employees must unlock them together. Although this process seems very similar to a Multisig portfolio, the main difference is that it is compatible with cryptocurrencies that would otherwise not be appropriate.

According to Coinbase, this system reduces the risk of loss and key abuse by supporting "first quality governance and key audit while being independent of the currency. "Given the desire of the exchange to establish a good relationship with US regulators and attract institutional investments, Coinbase hopes its new storage system will convince users that it will become the platform of choice for large investors.