If an exchange get hacked and I lose coins/funds, is it the exchange fault? Yes. But 100% their fault? No, as I choose to deposit on that exchange.
I would say it's a gamble; to put money or coins on the exchange until we withdraw it. Yes, the most secure is to keep ours on cold storage, off the grid, and then sometimes we have to trade on exchanges, right? But everyone should aware if they deal with exchanges there is a chance to lose it all, it's part of the risk.
I wish more people were accepting the risks they expose themselves like you do.
The easiest solution to satisfy both kinds of customers would be to run two subdomains. E.g hot.Bitfinex.com and cold.bitfinex.com where on "hot" You could withdraw instantly but would know the risk that is involved. As for users who want to play safe, They could use "cold" which would process the withdrawals manually.
Not sure if that's actually a solution. In case an exchange gets hacked, they tend to 'socialize' the losses, which means that even the traders using the 'cold' side of the platform will be affected.
If you ask me these exchanges should partner up and build a bunker of sorts. Where they would store/create their cold wallets. I am sure these exchanges are making millions they surely can spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars on a bunker. This would ensure almost 0% risk for the high rollers/whales. I am surprised why no one has thought of something like this before. I guess scamming people is more profitable than running a sustainble business.
Xapo is storing around $8 billion worth of Bitcoin in bunkers, so it's definitely possible.
Coinbase for example generates its private keys in tents (
read) that it pops up in different locations, all to avoid situations where ill minded entities will set up hardware in an attempt to compromise the data signals. I'm certain that their main cold wallets are distributed amongst the top employees, and they all have it stored either at home, or in a bank vault or something.
