Coinbase is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and GDAX is the official digital asset exchange for professional traders. It is also one of the most popular exchanges in the world, with over $150 billion worth of trade volume in 2018 alone.
GDAX is a cryptocurrency exchange that offers trading in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. It has been around since 2013. Coinbase Pro is the newest addition to the Coinbase family of products. This article will analyze how safe GDAX is in 2023. Read more in detail here: upgrade to coinbase pro.
GDAX has long been a significant element of the crypto industry, and individuals often ask themselves, “Is GDAX safe?” We understand that given all of the problems that the cryptosphere has faced, many are hesitant to completely commit to anything.
That’s why, in this post, we’ll go over some of GDAX’s features and provide evidence that it’s really safe to use.
A cryptocurrency exchange, also known as a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a company that lets clients swap cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets like fiat money or other digital currencies.
A cryptocurrency exchange may either be a market maker that charges a transaction commission based on the bid-ask spreads or a matching platform that simply collects costs.
Coinbase, the world’s most reputable and popular cryptocurrency exchange, owns and operates the GDAX exchange. Customers’ bitcoin money are kept in safe offline cold storage for 98 percent of the time. The remaining crypto monies are completely insured on the internet.
What exactly is GDAX?
GDAX is a cryptocurrency exchange where users may buy, sell, and trade a variety of digital currencies. GDAX stands for Global Digital Asset Exchange, and it was founded in 2016.
GDAX was founded by the same firm that operates Coinbase, which has grown to become one of the world’s biggest exchange brokers!
In essence, the platform acts as a go-between for buyers and sellers, and GDAX earns money by collecting transaction fees. For example, if John wants to purchase Bitcoin and Jenny wants to sell, the GDAX exchange will match them both!
The creators intended to provide a more sophisticated trading platform to Coinbase’s 13 million customers. Because Coinbase only enables you to purchase and sell bitcoins, this is the case. GDAX, on the other hand, enables you to trade them in real time using a range of trading instruments.
Although GDAX is geared for the more experienced trader, real-world payment methods like as a bank account may still be used to deposit and withdraw money!
The best part is that if you have a Coinbase account, you’ll also have a GDAX account. All you have to do is log in with the same credentials you used at Coinbase!
GDAX, like Coinbase, currently boasts one of the most active trading volumes in the bitcoin market. The exchange averages approximately $100 million in daily transactions at the time of writing in July 2018.
The highest amount ever traded on GDAX in a single day was $650 million, which occurred in late 2017!
So now that you know what GDAX is and how it all began, the next section of my GDAX review will focus on their new rebranding to Coinbase Pro!
So, How Secure is GDAX?
This is contingent on your point of view and how you define a danger to your financial security.
Which individuals, hackers, businesses, and governments, do you consider to be threats? Which of these organizations do you want to have access to your information and funds? In “Is GDAX Safe?”, we go over all of this and more.
On the 29th of June 2018, GDAX was renamed Coinbase Pro. Because people keep searching GDAX, we’ll refer to Coinbase Pro as GDAX for the sake of this post. Coinbase has always owned GDAX, or the Global Digital Asset Exchange.
GDAX was formerly known as Coinbase Exchange, however it was renamed for the first time in 2016.
Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam established Coinbase in 2012, and by 2015, they had to expand their company to offer features for casual traders and investors, institutional traders, and more active traders and investors.
They established the GDAX exchange to enable high-volume traders to trade bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
GDAX, which is owned by Coinbase, has all of the bells and whistles of a bank and is based in San Francisco, California. FinCEN has Coinbase listed as a Money Services Business.
The Bank Secrecy Act, the USA Patriot Act, and other state money transfer rules and regulations are also followed by Coinbase. Coinbase has also cooperated with the IRS, providing all necessary tax data when requested.
Coinbase insures cryptocurrency assets held online through a Lloyd’s of London syndicate. Furthermore, since this is an FDIC-insured bank, all USD wallet holdings are guaranteed up to $250,000.
Fred Wilson, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures (USV), Ribbit Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), USAA, and a number of banks are among Coinbase’s investors.
While $250,000 used to be considered a fair benchmark, Civic crypto wallet now offers $1,000,000 in insurance when using their wallet. While the types of insurance are very diverse, they all serve distinct reasons and should be thoroughly investigated.
We’re concentrating on the 4x amount boost that may be obtained just by utilizing the wallet; there are no additional requirements. Coincover provides the wallet, which is also insured by Lloyd’s of London.
Security on GDAX / Coinbase Pro
All of Coinbase’s products include phone and email support. Right now, phone support is a dying customer, which hackers may easily exploit. This service makes it simple for both older and younger customers to feel safe and secure.
Interacting with a human person, even if they are impolite, is always preferable than speaking with a machine.
While this helps users relax, it also exposes their accounts to social engineering attacks by skilled hackers. If a user receives a call from another exchange, their defenses are also up, but if Coinbase calls, you are more likely to agree with specific demands.
If everything else is equal, Coinbase’s security is outstanding and it is safe and secure. They have a massive pool of their clients’ bitcoin, with 98 percent of it being stored offline in cold storage wallets.
Offline wallets are stored in secure vaults and safety deposit boxes across the globe, ensuring that there is no single point of failure.
While Coinbase uses SMS 2FA, both of these techniques have been shown to be unsafe, but it is the end-users, not the exchange, who are to fault.
The mechanisms in place are intended to provide the user a false feeling of security, requiring them to protect themselves against opportunistic assaults. Rather than being protected against skilled hackers who know how to get into systems.
To keep customers’ accounts safe, Coinbase employs a variety of two-factor authentication techniques. The most basic method is to get SMS to your mobile phone; these SMSs include a number that must be entered after your login information. This has always been a risky technique.
Another option is to add an extra layer of protection to your phone by using Google 2FA or Authy. These applications create a new code that must be entered at the time of login. Professional hackers have little trouble obtaining this data, despite the fact that it seems to be safe.
Security 2.0 for GDAX and Coinbase
The next step is to examine what Coinbase Pro is doing correctly in terms of on-chain analytics. From a commercial standpoint, partnering with Neutrino was a great decision for Coinbase.
They have a long history of utilizing data analytics to report on huge groups of users’ habits and activities.
Coinbase is leaps and miles ahead of the competition by having this technology in-house, thanks to the technology purchased from Neutrino. As a cryptocurrency business attempting to become a bank that is too large to fail, safety precautions must be taken.
While international banking is set up for fraud, tax evasion, and outright corruption, catching anybody is almost difficult.
Where did the Panama Papers go? A better question is: where is the alleged torrent that the journalist used? Shouldn’t those papers have gone viral?
On the other hand, blockchain is trackable, traceable, and recognizable. Although advanced techniques like coin join and Ricochet may rapidly wash your Bitcoin BTC and other currencies, this may be prohibited in your jurisdiction.
Neutrino’s extensive experience of dealing with data analytics makes them ideal for Coinbase. Despite the fact that this comes from dealing with regimes that have a penchant for violating human rights.
Every transaction that enters or leaves their wallets will be examined and submitted to law enforcement, which is why chain analysis is essentially intended to violate privacy rights.
It who better to employ than the Hacking Team, who aren’t afraid to violate human rights and will write the code that does so.
The good news is that there was some reaction, and the members of the Hacking Team were fired. Coinbase, on the other hand, still owns Neutrino and will continue to scan every transaction, infringing on digital rights.
The ultimate aim of these breaches is to attract institutional investment and demonstrate that cryptocurrencies are deserving of regulation as a more secure and auditable method of transaction.
The usage of Clearview’s face recognition software, which will allow for quick authentication, may be the next great feature.
This is undoubtedly a marketing strategy designed to instill trust in the Coinbase brand while also collecting a large amount of data on its customers that might be sold or accessed with a court order. In any scenario, the bitcoin price is expected to rise.
Computers are very stupid and just do what they’re taught, so we’re excited to see how this is hacked. Something around these lines “A hacker uses pictures of a German minister’s hands to imitate her fingerprints.”
Hacks for GDAX and Coinbase Pro
While Coinbase is a secure exchange with a minimal probability of the whole exchange being hacked, it is not impossible. Individual end-users have a far greater chance of being hacked.
End-users’ chances of getting hacked are determined by how they engage with society about cryptocurrencies, as well as the coins they possess. Currently, mobile phone companies are not assisting in the solution of the issue, preferring instead to blame the user.
In the past 40 years, nothing has changed in the way telecommunications companies operate. Although technology has improved, they still utilize the same identification paper, and most businesses employ the same or comparable authentication methods to access their networks. On the backend, their infrastructure has not improved.
This is the ideal environment for social engineers to hack individuals, as well as the security measures in place to protect communications networks.
Kevin Mitnick’s Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker is a good book to read if you want to learn more about how telecommunication networks are set up and what makes them susceptible.
If you want to learn more about social engineering, listen to social-engineer podcasts or read Christopher Hadnagy’s books. The Art of Intrusion and The Art of Deception, by Mitnick, are better but drier readings.
If you have business cards, you are likely giving away the majority of your contact information on a regular basis. Your accounts may be emptied simply by waiting outside your workplace and hijacking your mobile phone network. That is the abbreviated version.
Using a burner phone or a phone that isn’t registered to you is your best option. In certain countries, this is prohibited since the government has to monitor you for your protection in case you come into contact with known criminals, terrorists, or freedom fighters. The Art of Invisibility is an excellent book for cryptocurrency security.
Broken Crypto Markets on GDAX / Coinbase Pro
GDAX once broke the Etherium market, with the ETHUSD trading pair falling from $317 to $0.10. This has been an issue that has affected numerous currencies and exchanges, so Coinbase shouldn’t be too concerned.
Bitstamp ran into the similar issue in 2019: illiquid marketplaces and impatient sellers who didn’t care.
It’s hardly unexpected that these occurrences occurred given the amount of ICO money flying around from 2017 to 2019.
Looking forward to 2023, the current collapse in line with the S&P500 has us blaming BITMEX and praising their engineers for being inept, since else Bitcoin would have gone to $0 and the music would have stopped.
The Bitmex team has a legitimate reason for suspending trading: they were hit by two DDoS assaults on March 13 at 02:16 and 12:56 UTC. On the BitMEX order book, there were just approximately $20 million in bids available at one point. It’s a good thing Bitmex went down so the market could calm down.
At the same time, DeFi was failing miserably due to its excessive complexity. The lone intelligent person in the room was able to buy millions of dollars’ worth of Ethereum ETH for $0.00. Nothing is impossible with smart contracts, even if it sounds insane. Take a look at the previous hacks that were addressed by using insurance and creating money.
Conclusion
In response to the question, “Is GDAX safe?” GDAX, formerly known as Coinbase Pro, has long been seen as a centralized, wicked crony of the American government. There are no two ways about cypherpunk’s viewpoint. They are correct, but what does it matter? Will their views be enough to put an end to human greed? No.
While early adopter cypherpunks may play with the crypto market structure and pump and dump Bitcoin values, real money has invested in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency market infrastructure. Companies like Coinbase operate profitable companies that must remain in the black or go out of business.
To remain in the black, certain users’ rights will be infringed in order to ensure that conventional banking rules are fulfilled.
Because end users refuse to utilize hard wallets and instead risk all of their money trading or lending, rights will be violated as cryptocurrencies become more popular.
Furthermore, even if it is inconvenient and time consuming, end-users refuse to learn about wallet etiquette and real security and safety best practices. Finally, cryptocurrency buyers would prefer give up their KYC information than mine the digital money.
Fortunately, Coinbase will securely handle your funds, store your cryptocurrency, and keep you almost completely protected. To keep everyone secure, So Safe will give over your data to most governments who request it. Unless you’re hacked, you’re secure using Coinbase since the FDIC only insures the bank’s failure, not the end user’s carelessness.
In addition, if you are really hacked, you will be shut out of your digital life until the hackers have finished with you.
Digital networks are designed to assist you in changing your password, not reclaiming an account. It may take days for your issues to be addressed, by which time you will be broke and have uploaded all of your naked pictures on the internet.
Having a hardware wallet that isn’t connected to anything personally identifiable to you. Using prepaid credit cards, burner phones, or, our personal favorite, mining equipment set up under a shell business to burn cash into crypto in a secret and clandestine manner.
While Blockchain analytics can see everything, they don’t know who everyone is, thus anonymity is a decision. Unless you give them permission.
Using or not using Coinbase Pro is a personal decision that does not have to be made definitively. It’s possible that it’ll be on a case-by-case basis. The only way to ensure the future you want is to live the life you wish others to live and invite a few others to join you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Coinbase pro the same as GDAX?
Coinbase Pro is a cryptocurrency exchange that offers margin trading, futures and other derivatives. It is not the same as GDAX, which is a digital asset exchange for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Is GDAX now Coinbase pro?
GDAX is not Coinbase Pro.
Is my money safe on Coinbase pro?
Yes, Coinbase pro is a secure platform.
