Although, centralized exchanges are privacy invaders, just want to know what experienced members will comment about this.
Centralized exchanges are not for holding Bitcoin.
Normally, the best to do is to buy Bitcoin on decentralized exchanges, or directly from someone on platforms like Bitcointalk while all means to protect oneself against scam is necessary for not to be scammed. I have seen this method as the most perfect way to buy Bitcoin. But, one thing comes to my mind which I do not totally know if privacy depriving or not.
Most people even the whales like to make use of centralized exchanges to buy and sell Bitcoin, I think it is as a result of centralized exchanges having high trading volume and liquidity if compared to decentralized exchanges that support buy and sell of Bitcoin. So, I will be making use of centralized exchanges and noncustododial wallet (Binance, Electrum and Trezor specifically) for this.
Even though you can you can from people in bitcointalk or some other p2p , I think it is safer for large values to buy directly from an exchange. It is also better for swing trading, and certainly the only way to day trade.
I know that anyone can safely send 200,000 usd to binance and buy many bitcoins there. But would you trust any forum member such a high amount? Many trusted members may just get Val and exit scam. Binance won't, because that isn't much for them.
I think there is space for both centralized and decentralized exchanges to exist.
Privacy is really the worse part when working in a centralized exchange. But at any time you can send your coins to a mixer and you can mitigate that problem.