In a recent announcement, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase revealed that it is conducting a scheduled migration of significant amounts of digital assets to new internal wallets.
Why Move Funds To New Wallets?
On Saturday, November 22, Coinbase executed the migration of large crypto funds (specifically Bitcoin and Ether tokens) from internal legacy wallets to fresh wallets. According to the exchange’s announcement, this significant asset movement is a standard security practice to avoid keeping funds in the same publicly known wallet addresses for long periods.
The crypto exchange noted that this wallet migration has been “planned well in advance” and is not related to industry landscape shifts or the current price structure. Additionally, the exchange said that any large-volume on-chain movement is not associated with any cybersecurity threats or data breach incidents.
Coinbase wrote to users in the announcement:
As part of our efforts to maintain our industry-leading security standards, Coinbase will undergo internal wallet migrations for BTC and ETH. This is a standard practice that reflects our commitment to keeping assets safe. During this time, Coinbase will migrate funds on-chain from legacy internal wallets to new internal wallets.
The US-based exchange warned users to be vigilant during and after the migration, as scammers and bad actors may try to take advantage of the situation. Coinbase reminded users that no representatives will reach out to customers requesting their login information or ask them to move their funds.
As seen with significant security breach incidents in recent years, hackers tend to target cryptocurrency exchanges due to their centralized nature. Moreover, the (often necessary) use of hot wallets, which are always connected to the internet, adds an extra layer of security risk to crypto exchange operations.
Hence, Coinbase’s initiative to not keep user funds in a single reserve or publicly known internal wallets minimizes the risk of long-term exposure.
How Much BTC Did Coinbase Move?
The Bitcoin Exchange Reserve metric fell significantly on Saturday, with over 200,000 BTC withdrawn from exchanges in the past day. Given Coinbase’s earlier announcement, it should be little surprise that there was a substantial impact on this on-chain metric on the day.
According to Darkfost, a pseudonymous on-chain analyst on the X platform, this wallet migration saw the exchange move around about 300,000 BTC (equivalent to over $25 billion). The analyst noted that the Bitcoin Exchange Reserve metric will eventually correct and update with the new Coinbase-controlled addresses.
