Bitcoin Forum

how you guys keep your crypto when do trading?

leave it in exchange wallet? Isn't it too risky?
Store in a hot or cold personal wallet? isn't it too annoying to transmit every time?

"When doing trading" you mentioned right? Then it was on a exchanger/trading platform itself because obviously you will miss an action once there is a trend if you don't have any funds there. You can also consider to withdraw some as part of precaution.

If you always trades, using exchanges service is not totally wrong. You just have to understand the risks. Like you said, it's annoying to transferred funds anytime. Risky as it is but you have no other choice. So to minimize the risks, use the service of a reputables ones.

If your purpose is to hold it for quiet some time, then's it's more wiser if you considered to stored your coins on a wallet that you control your private key.

So you recommend storing funds in a wallet that I control my private key while I go sleep and don't watch the chart. right?
Do you do like that?
I usually just leave my investments in exchange wallet 2-3days while I pause buying or selling. I think it is risky but it's really annoying. so I just want to know what others do.

Please refer to my reply. I will repeat:

"If you always trades, using exchanges service is not totally wrong. You just have to understand the risks. Like you said, it's annoying to transferred funds anytime. Risky as it is but you have no other choice. So to minimize the risks, use the service of a reputables ones.

If your purpose is to hold it for quiet some time, then's it's more wiser if you considered to stored your coins on a wallet that you control your private key."

Yea this situation is very boring. I do not trust too much to the exchanges even the bigger ones. I am keeping my coins/tokens in a wallet. But I only keep the amount which I daily trade at the exchanges. But the problem if you want to sell your coins immediate (like a sudden big drop or broke an important resistance) you always too late to transfer from your wallet to exchange.

Yes it is risky. And yes it is annoying to transfer funds everytime you trade because you are an active trader. Solution?
On my own opinion, when trading actively, just follow and get the most security out of the exchange you are trading. More probably they have 2FA, email verification and stuff so you just maximize that. Also ask their live support so they could help you to add security for your account if you are trading huge volume.

If you're leaving offers before going to bed, then of course you have no choice but to leave the funds. But if you have significant amounts of money on exchanges, I really suggest withdrawing your funds if you're not planning on using it for hours. Yes, it's definitely tedious, but better safe than sorry.

But yeah, if you leave out offers even if you're gonna go idle, then the best way for you to do is to try your best to secure your exchange accounts.

7 Ways To Secure Your Crypto Exchange Accounts: https://cryptosec.info/guides/secure-your-exchange-accounts/

Remember, the safety of your account on the exchange platform always depends on you. The exchange platforms provide you with safety from their side but most of the account hacks come from the side of platform Users. Always use hard passwords and change them from time to time if you keep money on the exchange. In addition, most of the hacks come from your e-mailbox, so keep it safe as well. Use 2fa such as Google Authenticator or so to be even more safe.

Holding a altcoin is a very simple thing and you should buy yourself a hard purse. Hard wallet will help you protect your account as secure as possible and will never be hacked by hackers. Ledger Nano S was the most successful wallet for me.

Of course I will keep placing my coins in exchange because I don't want to lose an important moment, if I keep it in a personal wallet, of course it will take a lot of time to make token transactions.

I do leave it in an exchange and never mind what will happen to it. But I only leave a small amount there. You shouldn't mind those things if you are truly sure about the exchange you are in.

Definitely don't store your crypto in an online exchange that doesn't use multi-signature hot wallets, the number of exchange hacks in recent times is staggering.

Odds are you'll eventually get hit by one if you play the game for long enough.

Personally I only move a small amount of my funds to exchanges for trading, typically less than 10% of my portfolio, and any long-term hodl's I'll move to my ledger wallet or desktop wallet.

Risking your funds on exchanges just so you wouldn't miss a rise or drop in price is not worth it. That's simply just an extremely bad risk:reward ratio. Why not leave your funds on your own wallet(with your private keys) and simply just use a bigger transaction fee($2-$3) when you immediately need your funds on an exchange just to make the transaction almost instant?

I still don't get the point but I'm sure the answer is keep the asset ( coins ) in your wallet, never in exchange. After do some trade take the profit and exchange it into currency, this step is for back up fund and asset safety. We all know every action have risk, can't handle it never take the challenge. Simple like that but make sure you already prepare for the worst.

Depends on what kind of trading you are doing,if you are an active trader then you should keep it in the exchange to make money or it will be extra expensive and time waste while transacting the coins.Leaving in our wallet in exchange is too riky but if you want money you have to or better hold or move to long term trading.

As long as you are trading, you obviously will not just want to be moving your trading funds around, and rather just classify it as a trading fund, which means you obviously have to accept the fact that this amount would always be in your trading account unless you want to remove some profits you have made, but as long as it is a fund you are using to trade, there is no point moving it all around.

What is important is to just make sure you are not putting what you cannot afford to lose on an exchange and even though you can still trust the exchange, that does not mean you should discard the fact that there is risk involved.

As much as possible, you should avoid storing coins in the exchange wallet. Because the fifty percent of the money is in your judgment, so they never give you private key to handle the problems. I'm saying this because I've had this problem. Besides, the problem of hacking is one of the biggest problem.

I'm not a trader, I'm a Bitcoin user.
But if I had to buy a lot of fiat I would certainly not send more BTC to an exchange than I could withdraw. So If I could only withdraw $50k due to limits, I would sell maybe $45k at a time. Having money sitting at an exchange is a bad idea. As soon as I have sold I would transfer the entire balance to a bank.  

never leave all your assets on the exchanger especially for a long time. in my opinion, if you have finished trading, the profits from your trade are stored in your personal wallet, for example nano ledger.
It's better to be a little annoying than everything you can lose

Yeah, and it is either you are trading or you are not. For anyone who is not trading, I do not expect having to take such a risk of leaving their funds in an exchange because they can lose it all. However, for someone who is trading, and they do that consistently, they apparently should not be trading with all the funds they have on an exchange. There should always be an amount in percentage allocated for trading purposes only so you would not end putting too much risk on yourself as a trader, just in case something goes wrong with the exchange.

Well, you would not have any other means of not having to leave your funds on an exchange, which is one of the reason we always say as well that people should only trade what they can at least afford to lose not just because of their idea or knowledge about trading, but most definitely for the fact that anything can go wrong with an exchange.

For this reason, I have always traded on 3 different exchanges while making use of all the available securities at my disposal with most of it being 2FA. As long as you are trading, there is no sense having to withdraw every single time to a cold wallet unless you have to.

leave it in exchange wallet?

-  Some of the traders doing this things if the exchange has a good reputation or belongs into top 20 exchangers.

 Isn't it too risky?

-  Its risky almost all exchange platform actually. But you can google authenticator/2fa to prevent hackers.

Store in a hot or cold personal wallet?

- it is much better to store in cold wallet like Electrum

isn't it too annoying to transmit every time?

- Yes it is!

I personally convert my crypto into my local fiat using www.luno.com,unless my crypto that is already in orders (market) which i will leave for the orders to execute or I will cancel them if the market is not responding and convert them back to fiat. If i have an entering point that is good to me i will still use Luno.com to convert part of my fiat to cryptocurrency and place the trade. I do this so that my money will not be at risk of being hacked and that will be the end of my suffering.

It seems to me that storing this way is the safest way. And the rest does not matter

Its your choice yet you can do both things depending on your risk management.If you are willing to pay up fees everytime to make transfer of your funds from exchange to your own wallet then so be it. Coins more secure but it would pay up for the fees actively but If you don't like to pay up or would like to save up for fees and hassle then its your opt to let those funds stay on exchange but you are already aware on the possible risk on exchange storage.Its your choice.

Again, if you don't have the keys then its not your coins. So leaving funds in a exchange specially huge amount has big risk associated with it. Better just put some decent amount for trading activity only.


If I'm going to store coins in a hot wallet, then Its a big amount that I'm willing to hold for a long time. As you have said its annoying to transmit every time so its better not to used them for your "daily" trading activities and just look for wallet that suits your need.

Usually when the market is at dump stage, I convert my coins into usdt until the market is stable and recovered. But I still have some to transfer it into my wallet for safety purposes. Some part of my balance were still on an exchange where I am capable of doing a margin and day trading as well.

I think they do not feel panic every time markets going down instead the helps to increase the demand of every coin they have like what i am doing, keep holding a coin that you know have possibility to increase its value make the coin more positive and will have stronger value.

I live in Indonesia and I choose to keep crypto in the exchange wallet, because I trade on Indodax.com and have an office, so if there is a problem you can go directly to the Indodax office, please read the Indodax office address here https://blog.indodax.com/office-bitcoin-co-id-in-jakarta-barat/

I think it's best you leave you coins on exchange when trading, should in case there's an impromptu sale you wouldn't have to worry

If you have trust to your exchange where did you trade you can leave your coins there, but if think the exchange do you use isn't a truted beacuse lack of security feature and prone from the hackers don't leave your coin stored it in the safest storage.

I do not keep my coins in one exchange to begin with. I dilute them into multiple exchanges and if possible download the wallet for that coin as well. If there is someone out there who trade daily than they can answer this much better because daily traders are buying and selling everyday and they need to have funds on the exchange constantly however if they are keeping their coins there all the time that means they should be really trusting the exchange really a lot.

I do long term investment and when I buy a coin I usually hold it for a long period of time and if you are holding a coin for a long period of time than you can download the wallet of that coin and keep it on your computer which would create a great security for your coins. It doesn't mean nothing will happen to them but it certainly is better than keeping it on a third party website than your own computer.

Of course it must be in accordance with our goals. When we aim to hold for a long time then choosing an offline wallet is the right choice. But if we are an active trader and try to trade in small volumes, saving funds in an exchange that has a good reputation becomes an option. It all depends on what we do. Things like this must be understandable and for a trader, making decisions is something they must understand very well.

It depends what on the kind of trader. As for day traders, they store most of their funds in an exchange to make daily trades and take advantage of any pump and arbitrage trade. But for long term traders, funds are mostly stored out of exchange. But storing funds on an exchange is very risky. We have seen an upsurge of hacks on crypto exchange, about 800million lost. So have haven said all these, the best way to store your funds is in your wallet preferably wallets that you are in control of your private keys

Even though it always advisable not to put your funds to an exchange, I actually just leave it to my exchange account specially when I am holding it in times of covering some losses or waiting for a break out for my altcoin to take a profit. I only maintain specific amount to my account then when the profit comes (which also has a set amount), I immediately transferring it to my hard wallet to hold it for long term. Transferring back and forth everyday or every trades will be a hassle for me and I am very comfortable and feel secured when leaving my funds to my exchange account actually.

Just because an exchange moves a large volume or is reputable, doesn't make it safe. Mt Gox was very reputable and was dealing with about 70% of the entire market before it was hacked. I would definitely be avoiding smaller exchanges, but just because an exchange is large or well known doesn't necessarily mean it is safe.

Using 2FA is a good idea all round, and will help to prevent people from hacking your individual account, but it does nothing to prevent against exchange hacks.



Electrum isn't necessarily a cold wallet. Downloading and using Electrum on your internet connected computer is a hot wallet, and whilst better than an exchange, is still not that great for security. Electrum would only be a cold wallet if used on an airgapped computer or as an interface for a hardware wallet such as a Ledger Nano.

right, personal wallet is certainly safer than we put in exchange. if we don't do it off course. but to hold for a long time, I prefer to hold in btc or eth. of course it will feel calm when holding it

Traders trade very quickly and they have a commission fee so they never face losses in the normal routine because if they change 3% then the price movement in that time may be 1 or 2 % so still they can find a good profit and they know that at which price they will sell their coins, Traders are the expert of the market and they keep those coins which they want to rise for demand and still they have a good volume of that coins for trade so they hold some portion of every coins with them.

Well if I knew that I want to trade often then surely I will leave it on exchange to avoid transfer fee if the exchange is good. But if I knew that I don't want to trade soon then I will transfer it to any supported cold/hot wallet, leaving your crypto on exchange for a long time can be quite risky as exchanges are always prone to security issues. If you are doing day trade then it is better to leave on exchange to avoid transfer charges & it will save your time for transferring your crypto from wallet to exchanges vice versa.

Never leave your coins in an exchange overnight,everytime that you are done in your trading sessions,make sure tht you will return the funds in wallets,because exchangers are very vulnerable from hackers.this is their target as lots of funds they might take from them

I would suggest storing coins on a hardware wallet. It's safer though might be quite expensive. In case of keeping cryptos on exchanges, make sure it is secure enough and offers different safety means like 2FA, cold storage, etc. CEX is known for its high level of security. After buying on the exchange (https://cex.io/btc-usd) you can keep some coins there for trading or other purposes.

I use only one exchange for tradinga and it's Bitfinix. There are all sets for trading and i think it's most safe exchange. I use other exchanges, such fork delta, IDEX for converting some unknown coins into etehrium.

Bitfinex is definitely not the safest exchange right now. You need to pay more attention and read up regarding what's happening with Tether.

Tether and Bitfinex are the same company. Tether's marketcap has continued to fall as people sell en masse. Bitfinex are having to cash out huge amounts from their cold wallet to cover these funds. There is $2 billion of outstanding Tether, and only $800 million left in their cold wallet. They are essentially insolvent right now.

Keeping your funds on Bitfinex is risky right now.

I always use exchange wallet for doing trading in many exchanges. for that security reason I have passed all exchanges verification process along with two step verification system by google authentication app.

I agree with you, if we are active traders or just do short-term trading, it will be easier to keep our funds in the exchange wallet, with that we can make buying and selling transactions quickly. But if we are long-term traders or only trade occasionally it will be safer to save funds in a personal wallet with a private key.

Traders are kept their cryptocurrencies in according to the market situation and get benefits according to the market positions where you can get good profit also this strategy is totally varied to the market situations

Just putting a date into when you will trade might help.
Like just staying in a trading website for a month and then taking it back to your safe wallet.

It is not easy going back and forth day by day and you will be spending too much transaction fees instead of making it as a profit.
You really have not much of a choice but just staying with them or else you wont feel the profit and it will be difficult to calculate everything.

I've experience it before doing back and forth transaction but I realize lately that I'm losing a lot rather than of gaining that's why I stop such doing and keep my money in a certain exchange for a months and then I withdraw by then.
But the market before is good unlike today, it is not a good option for these, it is better to keep our token safe and wait for the right time before doing trades again.

I think the solution is to allocate the right funds in the exchange, not allocate all your money in the exchange because it will be very risky, allocate the right funds and keep them in the exchange for the trading function, so you don't transfer at any time

As trader we make transaction for different coin in many times so will be more easy just keep the fund on the exchanges,  but use more than 1 different exchange with different email and password and turn on all security feature.

If you are an active day-trader then you have no choice but to leave it on an exchange.

There are certain coins, especially the most popular ones like BTC,ETH,LTC where you can use a hardware wallet to store your coins in and you can just send them back and forth, however for many of the smaller coins there are no cold storage solutions.

If you are just day trading ETH or BTC on an exchange like Bitmex, then they offer 100x leverage so you can just keep a fraction of your coins on there and just 5x or 10x your leverage and it will decrease your risk incase something happens and they get hacked.

Being trader I personally keep my tokes in a hardware wallet such as trezor or ledger which is very secure wallet. Once I do trading or done in transaction I always withdraw it instantly and I will put it in my hardware wallet.

I wonder how if you stuck in a market so there is no choice to keep your money in market, in case trezor not support coins that you bought, i think it is better to keep half of money in exchanger, money that we used to trade Only personal opinion.

Just divide your coins between actively traded and holdings. For storing your altcoins look for hardware wallets like trezor, nano ledger. If you are trader who trades daily on exchanges you can spread your balances between big exchanges and lock them with additional passwords.  It is not rocket science :)

But the big question here must be, how often you will be withdrawing from your exchange ?
Because exchange hacking are happening most commonly these days and I am also curious about how traders are managing with their funds in exchanges.

It is always suggested not to keep big funds in the exchanges but practically we are unable to move funds back and forth on daily basis. I'm seeing this is also another kind of risk we must need to undergo for the reason of having quick trading. But, maintaining minimum funds as much is possible is one simple way to secure ourselves.