Topic: Does anyone still stores their crypto in any exchange (Read 701 times)

I don't store for long term but I actively use exchanges. I have to trust those exchanges. If one day they run away with my funds I don't know what to do. I don't have much money as you do.

I don't think it is even good to leave a penny in an exchange because their is no need for it. I take exchange as where I can do quick buy and sell trade without keeping any money. A blind man or the deaf knows keeping money in exchange does not worth it, so no need for an exchange to be consider as a wallet to store Bitcoin. Their lots of exchanges that close down with people's money which is supposed to be a lesson for investors that exchanges is a very dangerous place for the storage of bitcoin.  All exchange can be easily hacked by hackers which means it is not safe for storage .

Yes, we can't just trust hardware wallets all the time because they can also be compromised like other hardware. The hardware wallets can also have vulnerabilities in their firmware which hackers can exploit to steal someone's Bitcoin.


Nothing is 100% secure and without proper awareness we can lose a lot of things in this technological world. The hardware wallets are considered as the safest option to store someone's Bitcoin but they aren't that much safe either. The hardware wallets are small in size and can be physically stolen by someone who knows everything about the owner and the stolen wallets can be easily hacked by the hackers who know about hardware and firmware hacking. The hardware wallets can also be compromised when they are connected into a system that's affected by malware.

The hardware wallets are mostly purchased from online vendors and sometimes they come with malware that could cause huge losses to the ones who store their Bitcoin in those hardware wallets. When someone unintentionally share their seed phrase with others that can also cause loss of funds from hardware wallets. And, there can be more problems with hardware wallets and that's why I said that hardware wallets aren't the safest option to store our Bitcoin.


That's the worst thing that someone could do with his/her Bitcoin because those local exchanges can run away with your Bitcoin anytime. That's why people say that "Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins," and if your coins aren't in your own custody then they are not your coins. I recommend you to install your own open-source software wallet and make an air-gapped system, and then withdraw your Bitcoin in that wallet. That's the safest option I guess, but you must format the hard-drive or SSD of that system and install an open-source Linux distribution into that one before following the other steps. Also make sure to save your private keys and seed-phrase on multiple secure storage options that only you can access.

This is interesting- so even hardware wallets are not reliable in terms of securing your cryptocurrencies?

When I first joined this forum, I believed that hardware wallets are the so-called "fool proof" type of wallets where no one, except yourself, can have access to it. Perhaps some have already discovered a method in order to gain unauthorized access to these hardware wallets?

For exchanges, I am guilty of this since I keep most of my BTCs inside our local exchange due to the convenience it provides. Though I hope that I can somehow transfer my BTCs soon for its security.

That's not a best choice because even leaving a $1 in a centralized or decentralized exchange is unsafe but people really don't care much about such things before getting ripped by those exchanges. Another important thing I must say is that relying on hardware wallets isn't safe either. The best way is to have an open-source wallet software like Electrum and move the funds into a wallet that's present on a air-gapped system with Linux installed on that system.

Anyone who puts their money into exchanges is somehow throwing that money into a water pond in hope that they could access that money whenever they want, but when they really want to have that money then they won't get anything. The centralized exchanges own their money and they can do whatever they want with the money of those users.

That's right, keeping funds on an account on an exchange (for which there are no private keys) is very unsafe. But recent events with the Atomic Wallet hack and the announcement of Ledger Recover say that it can be risky to store on a wallet for which you have a private key if this wallet is with a closed code. So it's best to choose an open-source wallet and, of course, one for which you have complete control over the keys.

The bad situation that has occurred in several exchanges lately should be of greater concern for traders or investors to trust exchange wallets as a place to store assets. The message from Theymos should be a lesson to all forum users not to trust Exchange wallets as a place to store assets.

Quote from: Theymos https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/reminder-do-not-keep-your-money-in-online-accounts-5421039

Exchanges are very vulnerable with the Risk of being hacked and scammed, guarding your assets carefully is the best way to keep them safe. You should always remember what seniors have said as a message to keep assets safe. Without the Private key, it's not your asset.

Electrum wallet or any other Bitcoin wallet do not have their own peculiar fee rate, the network was clogged by Ordinals inscriptions, thus Bitcoin fee rate and transaction fees shot up, if you used electrum or any other wallet for your transaction you'd still have to pay a high fee. Mind you that even some exchanges increased their withdrawal fees, or halted withdrawals in Bitcoin during that period, exchanges also make the most from people's withdrawal in Bitcoin, because they charge a high withdrawal fee and process many withdrawals in one transaction, thus when they pay the transaction fee to miners, they still have profit left from it.

Well, to be honest I have assets in other crypto exchanges, like Binance, and others. But the value of the assets I have on the platform is not a large amount, and if what I do leads to a large amount, I transfer it to the metamask wallet that is only reserved for my long-term holdings under Bsc, and Matic.

I understood what you wanted to point out and you are also right that in every exchange because it is centralized we do not really hold it, instead they have access to our wallets and that is the thing that is a risk that when there is a hacking issue there is a big chance that our assets will be frozen or will be closed suddenly without any opposition.

Bitcoin is still one of the most valuable coins in the market that is why we do see whales holding huge amount of Bitcoin in there portfolio. If every other cryptocurrency projects are going to fail, not even Bitcoin will join the number that is what Satoshi Nakamoto had done to make Bitcoin the only respected and valuable.

It will be very unwise for us to keep large sum of our holdings in an exchange no matter how good the reputation of the exchange could be. Some persons may want to stake there Bitcoin holdings and they may decided to send all there Bitcoin holdings to exchange but looking to at the be risk it could cost if our accounts got hacked or we finally get suspended for some certain reasons.

I'm sure yes, there are still, although certainly not all of them.
Due to several things:
- Using for trading or short term
- Do not have a hardware wallet
- Check portfolio more easily
and so forth.
However, it is undeniable that stocking cryptocurrency on exchanges is very risky. The risk is the possibility of being hacked, the account cannot be opened, the risk of exchanges collapsing, and so on. moreover, we do not have the private keys of the exchange account. So this is really risky.

Base on the last two months high prices of bitcoin transaction from the Electrum Wallet, I still keep small amount of unit of bitcoin in the exchange which I will transfer them to another wallet or sell it off from exchange. I only keep $10 worth of bitcoin in binance. The only thing I will not tell anyone to do is to keep bitcoin in an exchange for a very long time. You can send bitcoin to the exchange and sell it off at once. And that is what I normally do.

Whilst electrum is endorsed by most of the Bitcoin community because it is open source, trust wallet is not, because it is closed source, so therefore don't advise people to use trust wallet. It isn't only about securing your seed phrase, Atomic wallet users also secured their seed phrases, but many of them lost their funds, and it could be because the wallet is closed source and prolly the seed phrase wasn't generated in a secure way, or it was pre-generated, thus the same thing can happen to trust wallet.

There are still, no matter how many times it's been said and suggested that it's risky to store funds in exchanges regardless of the amount there will still be people that will keep their funds there.

Below $5k is still huge.

But it all depends on the user as said, while we're telling of not keeping funds in there and if there are people that can't help themselves but to store their funds on exchanges. Much better to say that they should only keep amounts they're okay to lose.

Right from time we have been emphasising on that since that storing your coin in the exchange is not encouraging indecencies that it's easier to sell your to fiat currency when you stock your coins their, but the disadvantages is higher in which I believe that an exchange can be hacked and any coin saved in such will be misplaced by the exchange because the exchange has be attacked, I hope its has happened to binance before where hackers attack binance and many people misplaced their coins, so therefore it's encouraging to use Electrum and trust wallet that's an exchange to save or store your coin but remember to secure your seed phrase so that nobody can penetrate to the wallet

@CypherMonk, you need to know that users are obliged to provide advice to other users, especially about their current asset storage, Such alerts have been happening lately since several cases of exchanges having problems, whether it's bankrupt and so on like the case with FTX exchanges etc.

And you need to know again, crypto users are all over the world, thoughts vary, especially regarding the storage of their crypto assets, if you ask like the title of your topic, for me the answer is yes, Of course there are also those who don't save on exchanges, it all comes back to our respective beliefs, other users cannot be forced, they are the ones who have to think wisely and what is best for their own assets, that's the point.

However, for me personally, of course I recommend storing your crypto assets here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61293646, safe or not I can't answer that, because it relates to the internet too, as I said above, to be sure, but the storage in the link thread that I mentioned, is probably better than the exchange. if you look at the current exchange situation.

You are absolutely right that in the past we considered our capital very safe in the exchanges, but now times have changed and various events have helped us all to know that now we should keep our assets in our personal wallet. Exchanges only give you access to your assets through a password, while they are actually under the control of the exchanges.

Therefore, you should keep only the amount you use for trading in the exchange. Rather, you should try to keep your money spread across different exchanges. This way you can also minimize the risk to your fund. In personal wallet if one has a hard wallet then this is the best option.

Exchanges should only be used for buying and selling. Long term coins should always be kept in your personal wallet.

Yes, there are people here who doesn't know about other wallets apart from centealized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. 
Some will have to spend more than 50% of the coins to want to save in order to afford hardware wallet.
As 5k less is small amount to you, some will consider anything higher than $100 as big amount.


The more exchanges fail,  the more people use them because a new exchange would be launched today and use almost a million dollar for promotion and everyone especially newcomers will troop in.

Some day traders have no choice than to leave their coins on the exchange as they can not be sending funds in and out on daily bases. Choose a reputable exchange and conduct your trading and stop stressing yourself.

We have gone past times when we use to have confident about our coins sbeen safe in exchange as recent occurrence has taught so many of us a lesson that it's a big risk leaving your coins in any exchange. You risk losing it all as the keys doesn't belong to only you being in charge and also the risk of the exchange getting hacked. Having a secure wallet of yours where you keep your coin's only to have it in exchange when you wants to trade is just the smart move to always take after which you return it back to your wallet.

You have a point about some CEX being more secure than some people having their cryptocurrency in the self-custodial wallet but everything depends on personal understanding about how to securely hold crypto for a long term in a self-custodial wallet.
Despite the possible danger and responsibility of using a self-custodial wallet as storage it is not advisable to use CEX as storage.

How can we be sure about it? Just by the public announcement? Do you know how many wallets and exchange development teams lied about their service security?

Buddy, MtGox victims are yet to receive their crypto and the same thing goes for FTX.