<p>If the company follows good security practices no single person would have access to the cold wallet where 90+% of the funds would be stored.</p>
<p>There might be single employees with access to the hot wallets which are the ones that are doing the day to day transactions and when the hot wallets run low transfers from the cold to hot wallets would require multiple participants (for example 6 out of 11 multisig or similar)</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-08T19:41:03.757Z
2021-06-08T19:41:03.757Z
Mike D
<p>There are a lot of institutional investors in BTC now, some even having 9 digit figures or higher. How many employees have access to the private key in such institutions and can do a trade?<br />
If I understand Bitcoin correctly, a transaction cannot be traced (at least not to a real person - only to an anonymous wallet) neither can it be undone. So what stops an employee having access to transactions from stealing millions of dollars? Given the amounts at stake it cannot be simply trust. Also if you have a sort of 4-eyes approval for transactions two employees could team up and commit the theft. If every transaction needs the approval of some high management or CEO it would be very unpractical. It would be also very risky to only have very few people in the company have access to the key since it increases the risk of it getting lost, basically also losing all the investment.<br />
Obviously the employee could be identified, but maybe they could fake a robbery and argue their life was at risk. Or even if they go to jail for a couple of years they would still be very well of once they get out. Other options are getting out of the country or event committing the theft while abroad.<br />
Since I haven't heard of any of these cases I guess, there is some mechanism that prevents this scenario. But how?</p>

<fraud><investing><theft>
How do institutional investors prevent theft by employees
Paul
# How do institutional investors prevent theft by employees

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-06-08)

There are a lot of institutional investors in BTC now, some even having 9 digit figures or higher. How many employees have access to the private key in such institutions and can do a trade?  
If I understand Bitcoin correctly, a transaction cannot be traced (at least not to a real person - only to an anonymous wallet) neither can it be undone. So what stops an employee having access to transactions from stealing millions of dollars? Given the amounts at stake it cannot be simply trust. Also if you have a sort of 4-eyes approval for transactions two employees could team up and commit the theft. If every transaction needs the approval of some high management or CEO it would be very unpractical. It would be also very risky to only have very few people in the company have access to the key since it increases the risk of it getting lost, basically also losing all the investment.  
Obviously the employee could be identified, but maybe they could fake a robbery and argue their life was at risk. Or even if they go to jail for a couple of years they would still be very well of once they get out. Other options are getting out of the country or event committing the theft while abroad.  
Since I haven't heard of any of these cases I guess, there is some mechanism that prevents this scenario. But how?

**Tags:** fraud, investing, theft


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-06-08. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

If the company follows good security practices no single person would have access to the cold wallet where 90+% of the funds would be stored.

There might be single employees with access to the hot wallets which are the ones that are doing the day to day transactions and when the hot wallets run low transfers from the cold to hot wallets would require multiple participants (for example 6 out of 11 multisig or similar)


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