Will Bitcoin loss not be fully compensated? Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Interprets Controversial Terms of cbBTC

Recently, someone in the community pointed out a concerning clause in the user agreement of Coinbase's newly launched packaged Bitcoin product - cbBTC. This clause states that if the reserve base Bitcoin is lost due to malicious activity or unforeseeable events, Coinbase will not fully compensate customers, but will give customers a "proportionate share of the remaining Bitcoin".

Regarding this, Paul Grewal, the legal director of Coinbase, clarified that if Coinbase loses Bitcoin due to its own negligence or external malicious behavior, they will fully compensate customers for their losses, and even if these bitcoins are lost, Coinbase will ensure that customers will not bear these losses.

Paul Grewal further explained that Coinbase is only liable to a limited extent for the risks associated with some complex transactions or the use of leverage. For example, if a user uses cbBTC as collateral on a lending platform and the underlying Bitcoin is liquidated due to some malicious activity, Coinbase will only compensate them for the lost portion of Bitcoin and will not compensate for other financial losses caused by liquidation (such as liquidation fees or leverage losses).

In summary, Coinbase has clarified that they will fully compensate for Bitcoin losses caused by external malicious behavior, but if users participate in high-risk transactions, the potential losses caused by these transactions will not be within their compensation scope.

Due to the involvement of Sun Yuchen, the largest packaging Bitcoin in the Ethereum ecosystem, wBTC has raised doubts from various parties and provided development opportunities for packaging Bitcoin, including cbBTC.

According to previous reports from Zombie, the cbBTC issued by Coinbase accumulated nearly 2000 circulating tokens within just one week of its launch, becoming the third largest packaged Bitcoin token. Nevertheless, wBTC still dominates the market for packaging Bitcoin, with nearly 153000 tokens currently in circulation and a market value of approximately $9.6 billion, far surpassing its closest competitor tBTC, which has only about 3400 tokens.

On the other hand, the head of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Singapore also announced at the Solana Breakpoint 2024 event held in Singapore on Saturday that the company plans to introduce its cbBTC token into the Solana blockchain.