Bitcoin Forum

Lots of people are posting to never leave their bitcoins on an exchange, like: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=799399.0

Do fiat money also count, I mean they theoretically have control over your account...

in a bankrupty type senario all the bank accounts of the company and associated parties will be frozen

so yes,

The whole point of bitcoin is that it allows you have total control over your funds with no need for third party custodians (after the exchange from cash to bitcoin has taken place).  The history of bitcoin is riddled with very sad stories of losses that have significantly impacted many individuals.

When you have a minute give this a read.

List of Major Bitcoin Heists, Thefts, Hacks, Scams, and Losses
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337.msg6289796#msg6289796

Yes this was early day when there were a lot of inexperienced, sketchy and outright criminal operators, but it will continue to occur.   

It's always a risk, but to be honest, you never own your fiat unless you have the cash literally under your mattress. Every fiat money on a bank (including your personal bank account) is a bunch of 0's and 1's outside your control that will get used at will by banks to gamble with. The only thing that is truly yours is Bitcoin in your personal wallet.

the worst thing is the way some countries also prey on companies and individuals when they see weakness or possible financial

and accounting infringements, the exchange/company may not even be at fault yet in an industry wide liquidity crisis it could find itself  a target

in a rapidly changing legal and political environment than what it was used to,

Those of us who lost money when the Bitfloor and MtGox exchanges failed tend to be cynical of exchanges. It's best to keep Bitcoin in a cold storage wallet and dollars in a FDIC insured bank (or the equivalent where you live). Established and insured U.S. exchanges like Coinbase are probably pretty safe though. I'm just sick of losing money so I don't risk it.

yes. but it is less risky than in 2012/2013. today we have Coinbase, Xapo and some other regulated and well funded exchanges.

but again: i would not recommend to leave money/coins there  ;)

It depends what exchange you are using.  I feel confident using coinbase for example, and holding some coins there, and now they have a wallet option for $ as well.

A place like btc-e however, well I never was sucessful transferring fiat in the first place, only used btc/ltc there.  And I would NOT feel safe leaving anything there for any period of time...

tax payer bailout comes to mind

yes of course i used to use the poloniex and now i got a multibitHD wallet for it fiat i leave into bank

usually there should be insurance for fiat at least because they are covered by your bank

i feel more safe to leave fiat in an exchange than bitcoin

They both (bitcoin and fiat) a value in real life and can be used to buy/sell things , a user of an exchange should be logically a bitcoiner ... so  he shouldn't keep his funds as he should always control his funds (that's the rule) so he withdraw .

Except for the US exchanges Coinbase, Gemini, and I think Circle, this insurance doesn't exist anywhere else. So it's pretty much the same are your funds going to be in bitcoins or in Fiat money.

Yes, this would count because you are not i ncontrol of the money which makes this happen.

Yeah, my goal is to clear out my exchange BTC (or fiat) back to accounts I control as often as possible. 

This will what the problem will be. However I have heard that during a recent exchange crash, they were able to give back all the altcoins, so I am not sure, if fiat would also be refundable. But the company could easily claim bankcrupt and not give back a penny.

True. Getting your Bitcoins converted to $$$ and storing it in a safe place is probably the safest way to know you have the money in reality. There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding Bitcoin properties and their transactions till now.

This is why gbianchi (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=140582 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=140582)) wrote this article about
BTC Exchanges: their functioning and their way of using a fractional-reserve

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=945881.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=945881.0)

It's really worth a read and I do think this should be a sticky post somewhere.
I want to stress again what you said: the whole point is to be on top of our own money.

I think it's not wise to store large amounts of cash on exchanges. Only keep amounts that you are trading with.

for me personally, i don't leave fiat nor bitcoins in my exchange account. especially after all the drama we have seen with exchanges. that's why bitonic for me works perfectly fine. that's why i don't need exchanges anymore.

I would advise you to not store it in a online exchange. Because if the website goes down/ scams u are screwed. If u keep the btc in your wallet than u always can download the btc client and import your wallet with the private key.

Well, if you are not trading then leaving btc at any exchange is foolish. Fiat might be slightly less risky but we know how they love to steal btc.

Traders have no choice. You either have fiat or btc ready if you want to make a trade or lose out. It takes way too long to send fiat or btc. Many trades need to happen fast.

it is risky to leave any kind of currency (not only fiat) on an exchange. only leave your money there when you're going to trade.

I actually forgot that I had my fiat on a local exchange. thanks for reminding me.  ;D

YOU SHOULD NEVER LEAVE FUNDS ON AN EXCHANGE! NOOB MISTAKE 101 RIGHT HERE!

Yes. If the exchange closes, all will be gone. Fiat, coins and altcoins. So better not to keep much there.

Yes it is, make sure to store your btc in your local wallet.

The money you use for trading should be limited ( i keep a max of 5 btc online on bittrex) to minimize risk.

Any coin where i hold over 1btc of  worth i trransfer to my local wallet.

You have never to leave your coins/cash anywhere online whether in online wallets like xapo, blockchain or exchange websites like xmlgold and localbitcoins as well. It is possible that these websites can either get hacked or closed like what happened with Liberty Reserve and hence these online wallets are risky and less reliable. Banks too are not completely trusted but they have a Government recognition and hence when they close down, customers get a percent of their money back unlike online wallets than vanish like dust.

If you want to leave your money in an exchange, Gemini is a good choice. It is regulated exchange based in New York. All the fiat is deposited in a local bank. You are protected. That is the theory. There is no chance to test the robustness of the exchange yet as it is just a few weeks old and has not been hacked.

AFAIK, none of the exchanges have anything that comes remotely close to FDIC insurance, and as a result it is nowhere near as safe to leave anything of value at an exchange as it is to leave it at an FDIC insured bank. This is why you can presently receive roughly 16.18% APY by leaving your fiat at bitfinex for a year (if you assume you would receive the current flash return rate for a year), verses getting roughly 0.51% APY (according to bankrate.com) at a FDIC insured bank in a Money Market account.

As a general rule, no you should not leave neither BTC nor fiat at an exchange for any period of time, however there may be exceptions to this rule. For example, if you think your computer is infected with malware, but such malware has not yet stolen your BTC, then moving your BTC to an exchange account that has 2fa enabled will probably result in a lower chance of you getting your BTC stolen.

You also need to factor in the opportunity cost of the time it takes to transfer BTC from your bank to your exchange account if you like to frequently trade speculative trades, as this delay may result in you loosing out in being able to buy low, and sell high

after mtgox, ive just dropped using exchanges at all, leaving fiat or even btc in exchanges is risky no matter how safe they claim to be.

Gemini is FDIC insured on USD, so if any are safe it is them.

From the looks of it, their trading fee is somewhat high (0.25%), but the safety of FDIC insurance is significant, so I will want to look at them more closely to see if I am interested in dealing with them.

Yeah thats good advice unless you want to trade, how are you supposed to trade if you cant have your bitcoins or fiat stored in an exchange, its impossible, you have to. The risk is there but you cant trade otherwise.