Coinbase accounts hacked as Bitcoin hovers near $50K – Yahoo Finance

Decrypt Editor-in-Chief Dan Roberts joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss the latest crypto moves.

- So, the other day we saw Bitcoin cross over $50,000. Right now, it's trading around $48,000. Not far off of where it had been. Let's bring back in Dan Roberts. He's the Editor in Chief at Decrypt, and he's going to help us understand what's driving all of this action when it comes to at least Bitcoin. And then we got to hit NFTs, but what's up with Bitcoin?

DAN ROBERTS: Well, hi, guys. Good to be back on with you. You know, first of all, that little rally we saw that brought it back to $50,000, I would give the caveat that, in the media, we always want to tie Bitcoin price action directly to news. And there's kind of a tendency to think, well, what's the one event that happened that pushed Bitcoin higher?

Usually that's not the case. It's a little bit of a fallacy. And in fact, there's been some recent troubling news in the Bitcoin space. You know, people in crypto didn't like what happened with that Senate infrastructure bill, not changing the language it applies to crypto brokers. All that said, there have been a few positive metrics I would point to.

The number of active Bitcoin wallets has really grown, which shows more buying and people actively trading. And then, of course, excitement over Gary Gensler's recent comments about being open to a Bitcoin futures ETF. That is distinct from a Bitcoin ETF. That has caused a spike in the number of bets you're seeing on Bitcoin futures.

And finally, we talked recently about the crackdown on Bitcoin mining that we saw in China. Now we're seeing data that suggests there was a positive from that, which is that mining has become more profitable because it's less competitive. So Bitcoin miners, of course, outside of China, are seeing Bitcoin mining revenue go up.

So $50,000 was a big price milestone to hit, first time in more than three months. That was Sunday. And now we see it incline back down a little bit. It always goes that way. $50,000 is kind of now the new price milestone, resistance level.

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- Dan, you know what's also interesting, because we got that CNBC report out about Coinbase. The fact that some people are having trouble accessing their money, even there was one family, I believe, that lost almost $170,000. They can't seem to find it.

When we get news like this, just in terms of people having problems accessing their cryptocurrency, I guess how big of a challenge, or how big of-- how significant of a roadblock could this potentially be for the Main Street adoption on this?

DAN ROBERTS: Well, there's two questions there, right? I mean, when it comes to Coinbase, customer service issues there are nothing new. It is not hard to find sources to comment for a story on having bad customer experiences with Coinbase. And believe it or not, the company kind of knows that, and has for now made a decision to really not prioritize it. I mean, it says that it's fixing that.

But look, it has high cost. And I think for the most part, they think that their customer service shortcomings haven't really cost them customers. And then, of course, when it comes to hacks, a lot of these people that you read about who got hacked, it's because of their own either clicking a phishing link, or someone got a hold of their SIM card by calling their phone company, and Coinbase gets to say, well, that's not our issue. We didn't cause that security breach.

So there's all that. But in a more broad sense, you're right. And I talk about this a lot. I still think there's a lot of friction in the crypto space. You know, for the average person, trusting Coinbase or trusting a centralized exchange is good enough. I'll buy some crypto, and I'll let the website hold it for me.

But crypto purists would tell you do the right thing to do is buy crypto and move it off the exchange into a hardware wallet that you hold the keys to. Of course, the risk there is, you better not lose your private keys, your passcode to access your crypto, because that's it.

- We know the story about that one individual who would be worth millions, but can't find his key. Real quick, Dan. With blockchain, though. You can trace what happened-- that CNBC report zeros in on one family. The hackers may have sold it, and they took the money. But can't you trace what happened to the actual coins or derivatives of coin that they owned, and then somehow at least have a way to possibly get it back?

DAN ROBERTS: What you can see on the public Bitcoin blockchain, Adam, is wallet to wallet. So you can see that funds were sent from this wallet to that wallet. And people always think that Bitcoin is shadowy and anonymous, it's really not correct. It's semi anonymous.

Now the wallet doesn't say, Adam Shapiro's wallet sent $200 in Bitcoin to Dan Roberts. It says, A24X322%_ sent Bitcoin to this other wallet. So it's a little bit traceable. And in fact, there have been examples where the authorities were able to trace Bitcoin using the blockchain.

But not always, it and usually it's not so easy. You can't exactly see a name and physical mailing address associated with the wallet addresses on blockchain.

- Dan, let's talk about the NFT craze. This is something that's really taking over, I guess, for some time now. But news over the weekend, VISA getting into the NFT space. Also Justin Sun buying an NFT rock for more than half a million dollars. What do you make of this, and I guess what does this signal about the growth potential in this space?

DAN ROBERTS: Well, it's also fascinating, isn't it? Because we were talking about NFTs way back in March and April, when there is a frenzy. And then by June, sales volume dropped precipitously, and everyone declared NFTs dead. A lot of media outlets ran stories that said NFTs are dead now. Well, they're back. They're back from the dead. Maybe they weren't dead.

And they're almost hotter than they were before. I mean, yesterday was the biggest sales volume day ever for a couple of the hottest NFT collections like Crypto Punks and Bored Apes. And these things are everywhere, right? I mean, you mentioned Ether rocks. We have literally taken the concept of pet rocks, and put it digital on blockchain.

Now to all the people who think this whole thing is stupid, I understand that. I think there's some people who just kind of can't get their mind around it, around digital ownership of a digital art file then everyone else can also see without owning it.

But the retort is that, you know, with any other art, even if you weren't the owner, you could see and view and share a photo of it. And the people who own these NFTs, in many cases now, they're really pumping the community. It's not just about buying and owning something and flipping it, it's all about the community.

So a good example is Bored Apes. They're these unique collection of pretty cool looking cartoon apes. Each one is unique. But once you own one, you also get a number of other benefits and privileges associated. And I think that's really the element to focus on to understand this next boom, is that it's all about kind of belonging to a club.

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Coinbase accounts hacked as Bitcoin hovers near $50K - Yahoo Finance

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