Are my bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies safe at bitcoin.de?
Our servers are located exclusively in secure data centers in Germany. The IT systems and processes of our company are regularly checked by an external service provider, which also counts banks, financial service providers and large corporations among its customers.
Similar to how banks only keep small amounts of cash in stock, we also regularly keep only small amounts of cryptocurrencies on our servers for payment requests from customers in so-called hot wallets. This equates to approximately 2% of the total cryptocurrency stock held by us for our clients. futurum bank AG's own euro and cryptocurrency assets exceed the stock of cryptocurrencies in the hot wallets many times over and can therefore be fully compensated in the event of a possible loss.
The remaining 98% of the cryptocurrency customer stocks at bitcoin.de are stored offline in so-called cold wallets. Securing is done through a complex process across multiple locations and in such a way that different systems and people must work independently to gain access to these assets. A loss of these holdings can be ruled out with a probability bordering on certainty.
Nevertheless, we do not want to conceal and make it clear that a loss of cryptocurrency holdings from the cold wallets - albeit very unlikely - could, in the worst case, exceed futurum bank AG's own assets. There is currently no type of deposit protection, as with bank deposits or other protection systems, which would be responsible for a loss that exceeds our company assets. Also, there are currently no insurance companies offering products to protect against the loss of cryptocurrencies. However, we expect that there will soon be corresponding offers and will then inform our customers about such offers.
Once a year, the complete stocks of own bitcoins and bitcoins stored for customers are checked by an independent and publicly appointed German IT auditing company for the existence and correct administration. As far as we know, such a test is unique in the world and is not carried out by any other bitcoin trading platform. You can see the result of the annual audit, which has been carried out since 2015, in your account under ‘my Bitcoin.de / Attestation from an auditor’. Here, our company is certified that all bitcoins entrusted to us by customers were available and could have been paid out on the effective date of the audit.
Please note that currently not a single trading place for cryptocurrencies or providers of wallets worldwide can guarantee you 100% compensation for possible losses. In the end, it is your decision who you trust more: a service provider who ideally invests a lot of time, knowledge and money in the security of their systems every day or themselves. Basically, the decentralized bitcoin system is designed in such a way that you do not have to trust anyone but yourself and your own competence. So if you trust a service provider, you should always find out to what extent your coins are secured. The basic rule is probably: the less information is given, the less security there is likely to be. Please consider this when deciding who to entrust your coins to.
Please understand that we cannot publish any further information on our security measures to protect our company and our customers.
Einen Moment bitte.