You will never need to keep the pin in digital form . You would need to do that with bitcoin . That ' s not correct . Only , to access your funds you do need to sign a transaction electronically . But that ' s no different than what happens in the chip of a bank card , where the PIN is combined with a secret number that unlocks your funds in your bank account . The public blockchain trail is just a ledger . It cannot be tied to an IP , it cannot be tied to a person . A ledger is not a trail . It is a record of all the blocks and that ' s it . No , the ledger is a trail of all transactions that are done . The only difference with the private ledger of a bank is that no identities are stored . You can only see that money goes from account A to account B . However , if you can link a person or company to account A , you can follow the trail of transactions . It ' s not so strange that such a link can be made . If a criminal uses a bitcoin wallet app on his mobile phone to transact , and the police finds the phone , they can link all the criminal transactions to him , and follow the money . Coinbase is not an official bank , but if it holds your funds in custody and insures them , then it acts like a bank except that it doesn ' t lend out your funds . What ' s the difference ? How more secure would you want it ?