Despite Michael Saylor’s repeated refusals to put up a proof of reserves for the 597,325 bitcoin (BTC) at MicroStrategy (MSTR), Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong determined to publicly doxx their most probable spot.
Dismissing Saylor’s concerns that disclosing the positioning of the coins can also create the risk of social engineering and wrench attacks, Armstrong tweeted about their spot while bragging about Coinbase’s “institutional crew.”
One day of the thinly veiled disclosure, he admitted that eight of the head 10 publicly traded firms with BTC on their balance sheets use Coinbase Prime. That makes it highly seemingly that MicroStrategy holds BTC at Coinbase Prime.
5 comely reasons to suspect Michael Saylor uses Coinbase Prime
Initially, MicroStrategy holds the most BTC of any publicly traded firm. That already presents it an 80% likelihood of the utilization of Coinbase Prime for its BTC, in step with Armstrong’s tweet this week.
Second, MicroStrategy has been the main educator of Bitcoin for Companies, providing a series of academic supplies, practicing classes, and even net hosting an annual convention beneath the identical establish.
If Saylor has been consistently instructing executives how to soundly aquire BTC and eight of the ten biggest settle Coinbase Prime, it doesn’t take powerful creativeness to wager the build MicroStrategy has been shopping BTC.
Third, on-chain monitoring of MicroStrategy’s BTC signifies a excessive likelihood that it’s paying Coinbase Prime Custody charges.
Arkham claims to have traced $50 billion of MicroStrategy’s $65 billion BTC — and most of it is in Coinbase Prime Custody or has paid Coinbase Prime Custody charges in the midst of on-chain movements.
Fourth, MicroStrategy uses the BTC note on Coinbase — now no longer other exchanges — to search out out the price of its holdings for Securities and Commerce Commission (SEC) reporting gains.
Fifth, it furthermore calls Coinbase, in disagreement to other exchanges or custodians, “our fundamental market for bitcoin.”
Read more: MicroStrategy makes ‘extraordinary’ 7,382-BTC withdrawal hours sooner than new bitcoin aquire
In other words, Armstrong’s tweet this week most interesting solidifies an already compelling suite of knowledge that MicroStrategy uses Coinbase Prime to store a ample quantity of its BTC.
Socially engineering Armstrong’s or Saylor’s staff
Social engineering is no doubt one of the well-known well-known excessive cybersecurity dangers, though the trusty share of a success attacks that involve social engineering can differ looking on who you ask.
A Verizon survey tallied pure social engineering attacks at 17% of knowledge breaches from November 2023 to October 2024. That resolve rose as excessive as 68% after they added “human error”-vogue variables savor clicking on a malicious hyperlink.
Any other represent from IBM estimated that phishing attacks rose by 84% in its most most trendy year-over-year monitoring duration.
Coinbase itself has been the target of attacks all the map in which thru which its have staff were a attainable outdated point. In Would possibly perchance perchance well 2025, it admitted that cybercriminals bribed buyer carrier representatives to rob buyer knowledge and facilitate social engineering attacks in opposition to Coinbase’s customers.
In February 2023, as an instance, Armstrong’s crew printed a postmortem of an attack that focused unnamed staff with an SMS-essentially based fully mostly phishing attack. Any other a success multi-snarl authentication attack drained 6,000 Coinbase accounts of their digital sources.
Despite these previous attacks, Armstrong regarded because it more well-known to brag about Coinbase’s institutional products and companies savor Coinbase Prime.
