Bitcoin Forum

We have so many exchanges hacked in the past, it happens all years, this is just to notify people again that they should never leave their coins on exchanges. I do not know if this only applies to exchanges in United States, but exchange are not a place to leave your bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies that you have, better send them all to your noncustodial wallet that you have control over your coins.

Read this news:
Deposits at non-bank entities, including crypto firms, are not insured — FDIC (https://cointelegraph.com/news/deposits-at-non-bank-entities-including-crypto-firms-are-not-insured-fdic)

It is as simple as this quote which I quoted from the news:


Do not leave your coins on exchanges and always remember that if not your key, it is not your coin.

That also applies to most large investment banks and Financial services companies that hold funds for large investors... FDIC only insures individual accounts up to $250k. Consumer-oriented banks and Credit Unions are *not* required to be insured -- but of course for obvious reasons most do sign on to FDIC insurance. Even at current BTC value in USD it's not that hard to be HODLing coin worth more than that.

That said of course the Best Practice is to keep the majority of ones coins in a safe custodial cold wallet and only have 'playin' around money' on an non-custodial exchange.

Some people in crypto may make the mistake of thinking that an exchange is a safe place for keeping their cryptocurrencies because some offer wallet services and they have big names, so they write off the importance of non-custodial wallets. While some who may be new to crypto may not really know the difference between a wallet and an exchange, hence they neglect it. For the first set of persons, don't trust an exchange simply because they have a big fan base and you think nothing can happen to them...your assumptions may cost you your crypto. Always make use of non-custodial wallets!

Electrum Coldstorage would be the best option or any offline wallet that supports seed/private keys generation. Without these backups, you no longer own your Coins.  

Bitcoin non-custodial exchange is not widely used or does it seem they stop developing BTC DEX exchange?
I mostly see DEX exchanges in ERC20 and BSC networks but no one has yet developed an exchange where you can import a private key and start to exchange. There is Dex Binance before but it seems it's gone.



They do also afraid of a price drop which is why they want to stay holding coins in exchanges to make sure they won't lose so much if the price is dropping constantly.

I think this advice is a very good one. But the issues I have with decentralized wallet is that most of them are not flexible. You might not be able to exchange your Bitcoin to another coin that doesn't use the same blockchain with the wallet. But centralized wallets gives you to a large extent a larger options and flexibility to use your Bitcoin as you will.   

Before holding your funds in unknown exchange,it’s better to deep verification for the same.Because now huge scam and hacking on exchange was happened.So it’s nothing wrong to be aware before the loss take place.Once the loss take place by hacking,you may forced to loss the hard earned money.Money is not easy to earn and the investors should careful on the investing exchanges.

That's not really a serious problem. Since Bitcoin transaction fees are already manageable, you can send BTC to exchanges for trading at 1 sats per vbyte (less than $1). You can withdraw and store them on hardware wallets Trezor (https://trezor.io/coins/) and Ledger (https://www.ledger.com/supported-crypto-assets) because they support multiple blockchains. I've read that you can also connect these HW to some Dapps but I'm not familiar with that.

Non-custodial wallets with swap features are also available.

No matter how reputable and well-known an exchange is doesn't make it hack-proof. Even an exchange as big as Bitfinex has been hacked in the past. It's just up to you if you want to risk it, and potentially be a victim in the future. :P

https://cryptosec.info/exchange-hacks

People think it is fine and will be fine if they can deposit and withdraw affer making a withdrawal request, even they do not own keys of their coin.

They believe that they will be fine forever and no scam exit will happen. When they face with money loss with a scam exit, without key in hands, it is too late to save their money.

Non custodial wallet to store cryptocurrency.
Do not store your cryptocurrency on centralized exchanges longer than your need.

https://cryptosec.info/nyknyc/

If you don't have control over your keys and it has exchange features then it won't be a wallet anymore. A wallet is a software that creates and manages your keys, that's all. If you want to have the ability to exchange bitcoin to something else you have to use an exchange, it  could be CEX or DEX. Some DEX like Bisq also give you the ability to manage your keys in the same software.

Of course, I am supporting the call for everybody to keep their funds in non-custodial wallets. I am all out in supporting the call to withdraw funds from exchanges. Private keys are called private for a reason. It should only be known by who owns the funds.

However, just to react to FDIC's advise, this agency isn't part of the game. In a way, it is irrelevant in the space. Yes, crypto companies don't have FDIC's insurance, but does it matter? Of course, their assets aren't FDIC-insured because FDIC is a fiat agency and that it doesn't support non-bank entities. But it doesn't necessary follow that since a crypto-company isn't FDIC-supported it cannot create its own insurance system. The likes of Coinbase, FTX, Binance, and others are not FDIC-supported but they have their own insurance.

Even if the cryptocurrencies are covered by the insurance companies in the future it simply eliminate the actual creation of p2p and decentralization so use exchanges for trading not for storing. Most of the exchanges even the reputed ones like Binance got hacked so st anytime anything can happen so be cautious and keep your assets on your control that means store them in non custodial wallet and it should be open sourced but don't forget to keep the private keys safely.

We always remind everyone specially the newbies about not keeping their coins on exchanges. It's essential to use them basically as an exchange but if they're thinking about keeping their cryptos there as a vault, that's what makes it a wrong thinking.

They have trust on that exchange so they do trust them with their deposits and won't move any inch for their assets there. And the very reason is that "it is a trusted exchange".

The matter should be quite simple if the user of a centralized crypto exchange buys Bitcoin for fiat, and then sends it to his non-custodial crypto wallet, often paying a very expensive service fee. But people who trade on a daily basis cannot afford to withdraw every day precisely because of the service fee that demotivates them, so they have to live with the risk.

Some will say that CEX should start using LN, others that they should use alternative cryptocurrencies and tokens, but the average user is, after all, just a trader who believes that nothing bad will happen to him and, to be honest, does not want to take responsibility for be your own bank. If we look at history and the case of Mt.Gox and Bitfinex, and then later QuadrigaCX and many other smaller incidents, you would think that this would affect the general perception of every investor, but people have obviously brought short-term memory to perfection.

Those who do not learn from history risk having the same things happen to them, but this is obviously a risk they are willing to accept.

We have two prominent worlds that originate from Bitcointalk which are hodle and not your keys not your wallet in as much as most cryptocurrency users can not do without exchange the fact remains that it is not advisable to leave large funds on the exchange. But then one needs to leave with the task of trying to balance every equation with the mindset of risk management, for example, a passive trader can not do without exchange and even. Though the security commission does not license the operation of cryptocurrency exchange so there is no risk management and protection for cryptocurrency exchange users thereby making it easy for exchange users to get justice in case of a hack or stolen assets, this has been the major set back for exchanges so most cryptocurrency holders prefer to hold their Bitcoin and another asset in a cold wallet and having the private keys saved. In that way, there is no way possible for them to lose the coins unless they reveal the private keys to third parties. It

Saying not your keys, not your coins is someone everyone knows about it but due to many reasons people will finally keep their coins in exchanges even for a long time, some exchanges will offer loans by investing the coins and some others will offer some amount of interest over the money people invest on the exchanges, while even if we consider the exchange is well-known and they would not run away with our money there is still a possibility to lose the coins after hacking the exchanges and as the op mentioned this happened many times to many exchanges.

Since there are lot of new people joining the cryptocurrency space, as well as this forum everyday that breaks, this warning can never be too much, and it's forever fresh, maybe not to me, but it is to someone that is hearing or coming across it for the first time.

I personally have had my own slice of the bread with cryptopia, back then, I've always heard people say "not your keys, not your crypto", but I never took those words seriously until cryptopia got hacked, before the hacked, I used that exchange as both an exchange and a wallet where I store my investment, but in a twinkle of an eye, I lost everything, I hope newbies will adhere to this warning so as never to fall victim to such a mishap.

Exchange platforms do really make out those kind of things just to make people to be shackled? We can say that but we cant make out conclusions that they are doing it on purpose.
Even some people do hate up centralization but we cant really that able to avoid some services which would really be ending up for us to make use of it.When we do talk about
risk then we do know that not your keys then it wont be your assets but since we do need some conversion or simply buy and sell then we wont really be having
any choice but to deal with it.

Even if the exchange is not centralized it's still not safe from the hacker thus, it's easy to take your Bitcoin since you are not the one holding your keys. Everyone should know that having a control of your own keys means having a full control of your Bitcoin and wallet so one can take your Bitcoin no matter what happens as long as you never showed your keys someone. And I agree that putting/saving your keys online like emails and other platform where hackers can easily have access online is not safe, thus, never store them online.

I have several bitcoins I got from helping an early adopter friend of mine, can any one tell me how I can get them on to an exchange to sell?  Any exchange. All the exchanges that I have contacted and opened accounts, finally after opening the accounts, they only want to sell me their own coins.

You are right. I was also told by my friend not to keep my BTC savings or investments on the exchange. and it is better to store in a frozen wallet. because if the exchange is hacked or our account is hacked then our assets are more prone to being stolen. and I'm more calm if I store my BTC in a private wallet and I secure the privacy key.

I believe there is one that is insured, if not fully.  It appears NEXO may have >$700M in insurance:  https://nexo.io/blog/nexo-s-custody-and-insurance-in-depth-and-at-length.  Still not your keys but if you're going to play the game, try to minimize your risks as best as possible.

Not frozen wallet, but on noncustodial wallet. If the coin amount is high, an hardware wallet or other cold wallet would be better. Frozen wallet is something that should be used in connection with a custodial wallet just like frozen account is used with a custodial exchange.

That is true, but even if exchanges are not centralized, they should only be for exchanging, just like the principle decentralized exchanges are using. That way you exchange coin from your wallet though decentralized exchange back to your wallet, but in a way the coin will be exchanged from your wallet (the coin you want to exchange) back to your wallet (the coin you exchanged to)