Bitcoin Forum

Stop Saving Your Bitcoin (and other crypto) Addresses In Exchanges And Wallets
Period. Full Stop. End Of Line.

Wallets are lost.
Other exchanges you may have sent to in the past have closed or changed receiving addresses.
And again we see something like this happen.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476264

Not your keys not your coins. And not an address you have access to not your coins.

With more and more exchanges shutting down and the constant hacks against them using saved addresses is just going to cause loss of access to coins more and more.

And if you sent to your own wallet, don't save the address.
Address reuse is bad for privacy anyway but beyond that if you loose access to that wallet for whatever reason do you even want the possibility that you can sent to it by mistake at some later time?

The coins you save may be your own.

-Dave

Changed receiving address like this one from Binance months ago.
Existing Deposit Addresses to Be Retired (2023-04-18) (https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/existing-deposit-addresses-to-be-retired-2023-04-18-b5b3cff601af4ce88feaaf5ed1c0c7f8).

Other exchanges can do the same too.

I'm following this topic, sad for the op because i think they have lost their funds, except LocalBitcoins decide to give it back, but that is very unlikely. I think the op of that thread uses exchange wallets to store their funds, because he moved the funds from Bittrex which just recently shut down, into LocalBitcoins, which they didn't know already shut down months ago.

Do not store your funds in an exchange wallet, and also don't move a large sum of money into an exchange address at once, you can break it down into smaller chunks. Even if the exchange is still in operation and they haven't changed their deposit address, they could confiscate your funds for any other reason at all, so sending funds in smaller chunks might save you from losing everything.

The way you wrote it can be confusing. I later know after I read what you wrote that you are talking about not to save exchange or wallet address somewhere because the address can be changed by the exchange or wallet.

If it is custodial wallet, you are right. But if it is noncustodial wallet, it is your key and there use nothing that will change it. But not all wallets are noncustodial, some wallets are custodial.

But it is not good for anyone to use a custodial wallet, noncustodial wallet should be used.

and to all a trezor.io is cheap

put your coins in it

or any other good hard wallet.

I think this has been stressed enough for people to already know that storing btc in an exchange wallet is not just a bad idea, it is a terrible idea.
Even though some of the big exchanges may claim that customers' funds are safe, it is better to be safe than sorry. If any hack happens to an exchange, they won't compensate you quickly because of the various process that is involved, in the meantime, you are losing out on opportunities, and there is a possibility not the full amount will be compensated.
People should already learn and understand the huge risk involved in keeping their funds in any exchange regardless of how secure they claim to be. Not your key, not your funds PERIOD.

I think OP was actually addressing both custodial and non custodial wallets. Concerning the custodial wallet he describes the use risk of address reuse by which exchange can change the address anytime. But concerning the use of non custodial wallet OP’s warning is about saving addresses somewhere and later sending to an old address that you don’t currently have access to. This lack of access can be as a result of it already been comprised or you lost the keys.

I think that’s what this paragraph by OP meant

That is still and IF and only IF you know 100% that you will always be using that same device / recovery phrase.
You (not you you the generic you) decide for whatever reason to stop using the trezor and go to a different device and start fresh.

A couple of years later you do an exchange on some exchange you have been using for years. In -> exchange -> out quick and done.

But on the out you used an old saved address by mistake. It happens, we are human, we make mistakes. And instead of the new address from the new device you sent it to the old address from the old device.  Do you still have access to it? Does it still work? If not did you keep the seed? And so on. Or something like the issue that happened in to the user in the link in the OP and so on. It takes no time to enter a new address. And it's better for privacy. But, for some reason people keep saving old addresses places and then bad things happen.

-Dave

Again, those that may be relying on an exchange to keep your coins secure maybe they trust them more than they trust themselves or maybe they haven't gotten around to taking their keys or their coins off of the Exchange just yet should know that you don't want to store your coins on an exchange because exchanges even the big ones get hacked all the time. Exchanges and accounts on exchanges are hacked all the time, they make exit scams, they go bankrupt they disappear and sometimes they get in trouble with the law and sometimes governments seize funds.

There are lots of ways to lose coins. 🪙 Including bad exchanges or bad wallets.

yes lots of ways to lose coins.

Generally speaking humans are lazy, we see it all the time and have experienced it on
numerous occasions where people have lost access to their coins because they didnt
take full custody of them.

Its the same with addresses in the above scenario, and I think a lot of people dont realise
the possible consequences of trusting exchanges to always keep previously used addresses
accessible.

Using a wallet address should be a once off event.

Also we should be mindful of signature campaigns too where we are using the same
address potentially for over a year.

At the risk of creating more work for the campaign admins, we should update our
receiving address every so often...^{apologies for the slightly off topic sig. related post}

You might need to provide more clarity on this point. What exactly do you mean by saving old addresses? Do you mean keeping backups or having the address copied down somewhere?

The more ideal advice will be to never delete a wallet and ensure to always have the backups.

I think before someone should reused the address saved they should be able to go back the wallet to know if actually there is no update that comes across that wallet either lead to change of address just like Binance did, they do change all their 0x address and some others, and any one who had this addresses saved in their custody may likely loss funds because they don't get the information about the sudden changes. So it's applicable to wallet out there they might stop operation and close their wallet what happened when we send in our funds to that address we ends up losing our entire funds without knowing its our fault.

Shit and errors can happen, but you also have some responsibility to verify that your transfer destination address is valid and usable, especially when it is supposed to be one of your own wallets (if you have multiple ones).

Do not discard/destroy old wallet's files (wallet.dat), old wallet's mnemonic recovery words and whatever else you have from past wallets that's needed to recover them. Simply keep it, maybe with less storage safety compared to your current wallets that are in use. If you keep your old wallet's mandatory recovery data, you should be able to handle receipts to old addresses more gracefully. Good documentation helps, too.

And again, switch on your brain and check carefully the validity and usability of your transaction's outputs when you move coins to your own wallet(s)! The Localbitcoins example of the guy who sent coins from an exchange to his months long defunct Localbitcoins address is a stupid mistake and a reckless move without prior validation (the incident's thread is linked by OP of this thread). Sorry to be frank, but it's the other OP's fault. It has been long known that Localbitcoins will shut down the service. I'm surprised a user can still login to his account.

It's important advice that I repeatedly keep saying when someone needs advice about keeping their crypto coins.
Especially if someone relying on an exchange upon keeping their coins.

I tend to agree with your concern.
Any custodial exchanges or wallets shouldn't be trusted even if they have sweet promises that your fund is SAFU.
Have your wallet that has your backup instead of trusting exchange.

This is OP's fault because he was too subjective with his actions, if he had been more careful and always checked everything before making a transaction, nothing would have happened. So I would disagree with your idea of making multiple money orders instead of just one. With current transaction fees, do you think it is wise for us to do so many bitcoin transactions? While we just need to be careful and we can save money with just 1 transfer? This is the user's careless error, we do not need to blame the exchange.

try reading closer the op did not lose coins.

I know you may want to make a signature payment as you get paid but you are simply wrong as the op did not  lose coins.

Choose a good wallet to use is important, that is a first important step but it is not the only important step to avoid losing coins.

Some other practical steps like creating a wallet (offline), backing up a wallet, storing the wallet backups (safely or not), and having ability to use backups for wallet recovery, are all other important steps.

Bad exchanges.
Bad wallets.
Bad practices.

They are all bad contributors to lose coins.

Absolutely agree, Dave. Security first! Always store your crypto in wallets where you control the private keys. Exchanges and saved addresses are risky due to potential closures or changes. Protect your assets, folks. Not your keys, not your coins. Stay safe out there!

It's really greedy to save or choose an old address that you previously use, I always open my wallet to see the receiver address to make sure if I can access the wallet and I didn't mistakenly send my coins.

Of course this is a mistake, but more like a stupid fault by the user, with a common sense they won't do this.

Maybe this topic was more suitable for the B&H board if it already goes in the direction of warning beginners, because the others should already know such basic things. However, regardless of all the warnings, a large part of users still consider CEX as a kind of "crypto banks", and their owners encourage them to continue to think so, not only by providing them with expensive service fees, but also by directly calling them idiots who will otherwise lose everything. (https://decrypt.co/117214/99-people-will-lose-crypto-storing-self-custody-binance-ceo-changpeng-zhao)

For those who advise hardware wallets, this is good advice, but with a warning that buying such devices does not mean any absolute security, especially for those who want to share your backups with third parties, or have some other very questionable intentions. It's a step in the right direction, but only the first step - people are still the weakest link regardless of how they store their digital assets.

I have gotten alert from HTX and Binanace that they will change the address on their exchange soon, I have no problem with this and thanks for spreading this warning, I guess someone, somewhere is still doing this, which is a very stupid idea anyway, even a about to collapse exchange will still tell their customers that everything is fine when nothing is fine, to avoid panic and massive withdrawal off their platform, I remember FTX doing the same thing before the massive crash happened.

I am sure that many people still prefer to keep their coins on exchanges, a friend in the U.K still told me some months ago that he don't use crypto wallet because he prefers storing his coins on exchange, saying its way easier and less stressful, some people will never learn but that's should not stop us from still warning them though.

Exchanges are only for trading. If you are storing or holding your coins there, then you are the dumbest person in the world. Online wallets and exchanges don’t give you complete access to your funds. Hence they are not safe at all to store the coins. Use hardware or offline wallets to store the coins. Electrum is the best wallet currently to store and hold these precious Bitcoins. So if you care about your investments of crypto, then take necessary steps to hold them securely.

Right now, I don't save Bitcoin in the exchange, but I have other altcoins in other exchanges. Not that big, but at least I have a savings.

So it's right that instead of saving in the exchange, it's better to save or hide cryptocurrencies in an electronic or hardware wallet. And whatever the choice of others is, I hope they won't regret what they do in this matter. And besides this depend on the trust of the holders in the exchange.
So thanks for the reminders.

Alarm signals have been issued over centralized exchanges over the past few years. Binance exchange is being considered very seriously especially in recent times. Best Centralized Exchange of 2022 After the FTX scandal, people's trust in centralized exchanges has decreased. So in the second phase, people's confidence in Binance Exchange is now very low and people are moving their deposits from Binance Exchange to other cryptocurrencies. In fact, such precautionary measures are being taken mainly for the danger signal of Centralized Exchange.

It is worth mentioning that you should not have any kind of trust in a centralized exchange to store your funds for you, this is a trustless network and self custody is so important. The coins are yours only when they are in your custody, if they are in a wallet controlled by a third party, then maybe i should remind you that 'not your keys, not your coins'.

At first I thought this was another topic about keeping coins at the addresses of exchanges and why it is bad. It wasn't until I read more closely that I understood what the OP was talking about. Another way to say this: Never send funds to an address you already have saved, but instead always check the destination first and preferably request a new deposit address.

I believe people are accustomed to using SMS and email messages, where the recipient's address rarely changes. Crypto addresses, however, should be treated differently, and it should be assumed that the recipient's address can always be changed.

If I may get it correctly op is speaking of a general knowledge that relates to wallet security whereby you don't have to send funds to none custodial wallet or to the custodial, after which we should be mindful on how we have save our address maybe whenever the address are being stored before transaction taking place as user you need to verify address and confirm wallet before sending payment or storing a larger amount in the wallet.

Well, this can't be "Period or End of Line as you want it," at least for me. I know this advice very well, it's good but it might be overemphasized. Fine, if it's the person that would deposit into his wallet and HODL it, this is the best advice. But for those of us who have some part in self-custody wallets and are also trading regularly, it's certainly not the best advice. Of course, we need money regularly for our Bitcoin transactions, are we going to be moving it back and forth? You can't deny that exchanges make the best business around cryptocurrency and the two advice I have for those in my category are to:

1. Limit the amount you hold with exchanges and regularly transfer excess to your self-custody wallets
2. Use the best exchanges that you know it will be difficult to go insolvent.

And if you must know, future trading has earned me multiple of what HODLing can earn me in Bitcoin, so why deny myself of it? Exchange has it at best.

This is why you use the right exchanges. As for the change of wallet address, they notify people to the effect, we are not in a banana republic. They even make sure that people are being warned when they use their wallets of the impending danger to continue using the old wallet address.

Thanks for the advice OP.
But what I don't understand is that are you talking about Bitcoin/other crypto address or do you mean to say Bitcoin assets, cause it's kinda confusing.
If you mean assets, since we are not to save them on exchanges and wallet, where do you advice that we store them then?

I don't have a lot of bitcoins stored in exchanges so I don't mind that it's stored there and yes I do agree with what you're saying that it's a bad idea to put your coins in anything that you have no keys over but sometimes it's easier to store it there because I don't want the hassle of paying for transaction fees if I want to quickly convert to USD or PHP maybe I would probably learn my lesson the hard way someday but for now I'll just do it anyway.
It's a sad thing that exchanges are targeted by hackers but we can't blame people for still storing their bitcoins or crypto there, some people like me want the convenience I guess. I didn't know that if your coins are stored in a hacked exchange that they're going to compensate you, I thought that once you're funds are stolen from the exchange because they got hacked, that's it for you.

Lol, I also felt the same because I know that the exchange I use works fine and no it hasn't shut down but yes! Is best for one to change their address once in a while to avoid things like this

Good advice but many won't take this so serious, for their own foolish reasons, some people will still argue with you that because crypto exchanges have proof of reserves it makes them reliable, they will willingly give up their Bitcoin for them because of this reason.

For anyone that practice this, you simply don't own any Bitcoin, I know someone who lost 70+ BTC to voyager, although we aren't very close, not friends but till today he is finding it very hard to get his life together still, if he trusted his bitcoin wallet maybe things would have been different.

Some lost their Bitcoin to Celsius too, and then FTX came around, the latest one on the list, still some people believe that third parties have the best in mind for their assets? Your Bitcoin that you purchased with your hard earned money isn't yours if you left them on any crypto exchange, period.

Well, what I know is that, it's very bad to save wallet addresses belonging to cryptocurrency exchanges in our private wallets, and this is because, the centralized exchanges can reshuffle and change their crypto receiving wallet addresses at anytime and we may miss the announcement of such, or the exchange itself may be going through challenges which may lead them to closing down, and this time was a times such exchanges should be avoided, but some may make the mistake of sending coins to that exchange wallet without checking because they have the exchange wallet address stored in their private wallet.

But then on the other hand, I do not see any thing wrong in saving addresses to one's private wallet(non custodial wallet) on the centralized exchanges, as this is one's private wallet, and even if the company that manages that wallet interface stops operating, the user can restore the same wallet on from another interface using their private keys of seed phrase.

The only downside to this is, if the wallet is hacked and the scammers are in possession of the wallet private keys or seed phrase, and the user still by mistake(maybe) sent funds from their exchange account to it.

Not just that, when you download malware like a typical copypaste malware. It's going to change the saved address that you'll copy if ever you're going to send them some BTC. But with all the points, I agree with all that Dave said about it. Don't store them on exchanges and just use them for what they should be used and mean to. In online wallets, don't be too confident with them because if you don't hold the private keys and you're just using some sort of passwords, you're not safe.

You don't hold the keys, you don't own the Bitcoins there. No one needs to learn an expensive lesson because you're going to lose everything when you're not careful and with all of the days you stay on this great community, you can't blame no one when almost everybody is reminding each and everyone of us to be careful with out funds and how we're storing them.

This has been repeated for the longest time, though people doesn't seem to care. Not your keys = not your bitcoin, so you might as well consider them lost for the time being when someone else holds your money for you. It's best to just keep funds even on a mobile wallet if you don't have the pc or laptop to store it, as you have the keys to it and they're fairly secure if you're not doing a lot of questionable things to your devices such as clicking random links.

Typically whenever they change the deposit address they make some regular announcements on social media and even to the user's personal mail. To secure the funds and transfer we better follow every checking the deposit address and confirming the validity and acceptability on time.

I lost a small amount a couple of weeks ago when Binae changed the deposit address even though I was aware of their announcement due to my address book accidentally sending a few TRX to my old address. TBH I do have my all assets in my self custody except for a small emergency amount for making a P2P trade from crypto local, as it saves a lot in transaction fees.

We have a long history for cases like these because many time things have different views but in most cases we are having matters like this with few days back I have also done same mistake and now lost my coins forever with no chance for the return as this address is not useable and none know about anything about this as well.

In most cases we are having peoples those are not familiar with things how to use all safety acts for their coins and never use any exchange or other platform for the storing of our coins, recently I read few better things which are now going to help for having all things in better way and never have lost like this again but still we need to be done double-check before dropping our coins from one address to other as never face again any problem like this.

Not secure yet when saving assets in the exchange wallet, I am one of user Bittrex and lucky not hold much cryptocurrency coin there because last time deadline for withdrawing fund my account suddenly reset and need set up for re verifying account again although my account have been approved of KYC before. Important for every one who still save assets in cryptocurrency exchange always have an update with their social media account, my friend hold much altcoin in Bittrex but he did not follow an update from social media after passing deadline day he can't withdrawing their assets. Based on problem link source of OP looks BTC assets from Bittrex have been sent to local exchange but refused, how ever on blockchain have been appear with amount of btc and he can tries contact again what solution have to find and get back his btc fund.

It's very sad that many online companies take every chance them get to hustle their users. I always wonder where people that create business with this moral coming from, in many places you can get killed for less but them seems to be able to do whatever they please without consequences.

Most people are lazy op when it comes to these things which is why they don't really focus on changing addresses regularly. You can't really blame them since they aren't aware of the pitfalls related to reusing the same addresses for a long time.

Exchanges, wallets etc should warn them now and then about changing their addresses for their own safety.

Not really a good option to hold our asset on exchange since there are so many things that could possibly happen especially if we are not always monitoring our funds.

Imagine if we store our funds on binance and we receive this message coming from government https://www.reuters.com/technology/philippines-sec-block-access-worlds-largest-crypto-exchange-binance-2023-11-29/ and we are not aware because we are not active following the news then for sure we could provably lose our balance stored in Binance or even on other reputable exchange.

So we should store on the wallet which we are in total control like the one we handle our own private keys since this is much safer than any other platform. If we are worried about the fees I guess this is just a minor concern since for sure everything will be corrected and we can deal those fees in normal state.