Bitcoin Forum

Where do most people  (other than institutional investors) store their crypto?
I am so curious and I can bet it's on exchanges as most institutional
investors keep funds there as well ( https://cointelegraph.com/news/not-your-keys-92-of-institutional-investors-keep-crypto-on-exchanges )

Follow up poll:  "Will you install this application to make free coin?"

 :)

You forgot the will you turn off your antivirus first to install this application to make free coin?

I have a lot of places to not put all eggs in one basket
I have in my computer, in an old computer totally offline, in my smartphone, some small amount in exchange do to some trades and in a flash drive  ;D

For me the best way to protect is to divide in a lot of places, this way is safer

I also had 9.1 Ethereum in multiple places including: computer myetherwallet, metamask, trezor and exchange. Sold everything on 4/20/2020 and waiting
to see if Ethereum falls back a little bit.

Haha well this would certainly be the place to post that information.
Also, do you store your seed phrases and private keys in a text document on your desktop?

Some of my coins are stored in my wallet which is installed on my laptop (Electrum Wallet). Few of my coins are stored in different exchanges.
Although its not safe to keep your funds in exchanges or even in computer which often connects the internet, but still I am keep them there with a hope that no mishaps happens.

I actually asked some people why they store funds on exchanges and these are the reasons:

• Multi factor authentication is a bonus most wallets don't offer
• Some exchanges with a long term vision, if they happen to be hacked they will restore users funds out of their pockets (example: https://asiatimes.com/2019/05/binance-offers-full-refund-after-40m-hack/ )

This is not actually a problem if you are smart enough. Just use a random image (e.g family picture)
and apply stenography or other encryption techniques to store that in the image. Nobody would ever suspect and this
is actually safe as long as you keep your whole family history photos. No hacker is going to analyze your 10,000 pictures.

Tips: use a photo where small children appear. There was a research where it was shown that lost wallets with a picture
of a small child inside have 80% higher return rates.

I have desktop wallets installed on my computer but I am equally stored funds on other devices as well especially the mobile phones so I can reduce the chance of losing everything at a time if I am in such situation. And also to be honest I have $1000 worth of cryptos on exchange for emergency purpose so I can liquidate if I need it but for security of the funds having 2FA.

Your thread topic question is already a question yet you poll a lot more that contradicts it LOL.

Yet most would really say that they store their coins in numerous ways and often all of what you mentioned. No one trusts a computer alone as a single accident on your system such as being hacked or motherboard problems would make you lose your wealth instantly.

No one knows the safety of their fund. You can store on bank, share market and finally on Blockchain exchange. Now time has changed. There are lots of ways to store digital funds on online or offline. I mostly store digital assets on my computer. I have back up plan on hard disk, pan drive and mobile. On online you can store on google drive, social media messages or archives, emails and many more.

These are the types of crypto people.

A newbie that doesn't know the importance of hardware wallets and private keys, so they store in exchanges and not aware of the risk that it brings.

A middle-experienced type of crypto with a good experience and aware of importance of having the private keys, he knows that if he doesn't hold the private keys it's not his coin. They/we mostly store in hardware wallets and desktop wallets that provides the seeds or keys.

If you say computer, that's leading to the desktop wallets.

Since I travel most of the time, I mostly store my coins on my mobile phones. I am thinking of buying a hard wallet soon.

I also store my coins on mobile phone, because i dont have a personal computer. ;D
I don't store my crypto on exchange because there are possible that it may lose.
And i just save my private key on my social media accounts or in my google drive.

Yep. Mostly on my coins wallet which is directly installed on my phone. It is really convenient specially if I wanted to trade straight away with people via facebook since it's synced automatically.

You are right that the mobile phone is more convenient than a computer in saving funds. Computers cannot be carried everywhere. But we can transact very fast through mobile phones wherever we are there is a possibility of Facebook being hacked as a social medium but there is no fear of getting lost if you put it in Google Drive.

You don't. Keeping a wallet in your computer, does not mean the money is in your computer, it never is.

Wallets, despite their misleading name, don't hold the coins. They hold KEYS to the coins. The coins are always "in the cloud", also known as the blockchain. You can only move them around if you own the keys to them.

They would be more appropriately called key holders, but its too hard a concept to explain common folk, so its easier to just keep calling the thing a wallet.

But its important you know the difference, because that is why, you can create a wallet, delete it, and still have access to it later as long as you kept the seed words which the wallet software uses to restore the private key.

And, it also means, those words are the most important. Backup? No. Password? no. The words, those seed words, that's all that matters. Understand this, so you can act properly later.

And, create and use cold wallets, which is a wallet created in this fashion, and immediately deleted (not before having a bunch of addresses copied so you can keep sending funds to it).

The funds are in the blockchain, not in your computer.

If anything is to be taken from this thread, it should be this.

I store my privatekey on notepad and save it on my computer and flashdrive for backup also in my social media accounts. I don't want to store my crypto on exchange because im not confident on it.

Yes, I save my funds on my computer Everything I do is safe on the computer However in order to save money I keep the password or key safe in Notepad or Google Drive so that it can be easily recovered if it is lost or stolen later But I use 2fa code to protect the wallets.

I store my coins exclusively in a hardware wallet. There were too many stories about how coins were stolen from exchanges.

I personally spreads my cryptos in many places,Multiple wallets (With Nano ledger) and also small amount are in exchange so i am ready anytime there is a bullrun i can buy easily .
It is ok to store in exchange but only small amount mate,though yeah it is safer in hardware wallet of course.

I save my crypto at a very trusted local exchange...
from the beginning I worked in the crypto world until now, I have no problems storing assets, I'm sure my local exchange that I use is safe from thieves.  ⚈ ̫ ⚈

You can't be 100% sure about this, did you noticed most influencing person's twitter accounts got hacked recently so it is possible to hack anything at any time because hackers are getting evolving so don't trust your exchanges for storing your assets.Just prefer your own wallets where hackers attack may not occur if you are not having in billions.

well yes a part of my funds I keep it on my pc where I downloaded various applications such as coinomi, exodus, eidoo another part I keep them on my cell phone where I downloaded the same applications

Its not advisable regardless how reputable the exchange is.

In my case im storing my coins in electrum using my mobile phone.

For me, I never use a computer to store my currencies, but I rely on storing my currencies in different places where I store some inside the wallets. Connected to the internet and inside cold wallets that are not connected to the Internet like paper wallets.

You mean the online wallets? It is not possible to store cryptos online without having a device which should be a computer or a smartphone and other way is paper wallet but to create a paper wallet you need to be connected with a device as well.

storing all crypto funds in your computer is the most stupidest thing what they make
it is always better to use multiple wallets and different sources to store 

A big question is, do you have a backup?     8)

I have them on my flash drive.