Bitcoin Forum

That quote "Not your key not your coins" I just know work from today when looking how difficult to withdraw our money if we don't have the private key and seed.

As I know, this is not the first time the exchange or other platform hold customer money in their pocket. it's obvious de facto, it's our money but they can't give to us.

So my friend or the community, for this incident I hope you don't keep your money on exchange again, trust me!. this thing keeps repeating many time, we have to worry if happen in small exchange, but this very big exchange. So, are you sure in the next not happen in Binance, kraken, crypto.com, coinbase, and etc.?, I don't believe is not happen again on big exchange, because this already happened, believe me the big waves will come be much bigger

I am very grateful to save my small money to wallet where I have the key. I don't worry, I sleep well and have sweet dreams.

There are already wallets where you can keep the private key with free and open source, I don't know why they don't think that. I don't know why they believe the exchange than himself?

The reason some people leave their coins on exchanges is because they are ignorant. Some people do not know the differences, all they know is that they want to buy and hold some bitcoin or any other crypto. Some people will even tell you that Binance is a wallet.

My advice is that if the amount to hold is large, cold storage is better (because it is secure and safer) than hot wallet that can be hacked. If cold storage wallet can not be created by newbies, they can get a hardware wallet that is open source.

Because some people, don't really know why having a non-custodial wallet is very important. Having your Bitcoins in a wallet to which you got only access is lifechanging and it will help you to be safe with all these issues right now especially centralized exchanges. Some also, want easy access to their funds because we all know exchange only got email addresses and passwords.

Who on earth would leave their coins inside the exchange? it must be a dumb people since they're very careless and doesn't want to understand to secure their coins. When I was still new about Bitcoin and I read someone post about Mt.Gox hacked, I never believe anymore with centralized exchange.

It's still not enough because if your phone are connected with internet and there's a malware inside your device, your wallet could be compromised. The best is just bought a open source hardware wallet.

After Mt Gox you'd think people would learn. I have a friend that has all his crypto on an exchange wallet. I have been telling him for over a year to take them off. I even offered to help him free of charge. He just doesn't care or think that anything bad could happen. This same person I told to sell at the top $60k and he was hypnotized by YouTube pump and dumpers that Bitcoin was going to hit $100k+ by the end of 2021.

Thank God he listened to me about XRP. He was ALL In on XRP, and finally came to and exchanged for BTC. He's still down 90%+ net worth but newbs will be newbs.

It is definitely said for a reason and not just to be cute.  Plenty of services have gone down over the years costing their users everything.  Especially in times like now, it's extremely important to take custody of your coins and keep them in cold storage where they will not be at risk.  Everyone should be taking this opportunity to do a 'bank run' on these exchanges and make them prove their reserves.  Don't be the guy who is lazy and helps contribute to them being able to continue running rampant with our funds.  Withdraw everything.  Wait a month, then put it back if you feel you must.  It is extremely important that you do not do nothing and then complain later if you are never able to see your funds again.

I would also blame laziness. In my opinion, quite a lot of people have somewhen heard about hacks / fails of centralized exchanges and are well aware that such issues are possible in general.
But when it comes to moving these coins out of the exchange, some people are just lazy and keep their coins stored on the exchange, for whatever questionable reason such like keeping them there for a possible trade (not recommended) or whatever reason. Most often it's just laziness.
When recommending to transfer all coins to cold storage, such people might say "It won't happen to me", "It's a big exchange", "Exchanges have become safer now" etc.
Sure, until it happens...
And when it happens such people are being butthurt...  :D

But you are right of course, quite a lot of them are also extremely uneducated, like referring to Blockchain.com as Bitcoin operator (explaining that Bitcoin would be stored in the Blockchain(.com).  :D)

This big lesson resonates well right now with the collapse of FTX where we are seeing how SBF and his gang mismanaged the assets entrusted to him from unsuspecting and trusting customers, investors and token holders. However, one big reason why many people still are holding their digital assets in centralized exchanges is that of convenience as there is no need to transfer the assert into another platform just in case one will decide to let go of them. This is quite true with me but assets I left in exchanges are not that enormous though I will still cry in case I can lost them. And people are still giving their confidence to big names in the industry notably Binance, Kucoin, Coinbase and some other players.

It's because of the number of users that they have. That's already enough to them as a standard to trust them with their funds, it's sad to see that those that don't have in depth knowledge about keys and wallets are not keen in learning more about it.

They're just letting the exchange do the thing that they must do and that's to keep their money. It's not going to hurt them a lot of time to learn how to keep it to themselves and learn the basics of keeping the private keys on their own.

There is various reason why people would do so, apart from laziness and ignorance as above already mentioned. Mainstream's motivation into cryptocurrencies mainly resonated from its investment opportunity. A varies backgrounds of people, and we did not know their own digital literacy. We can agree that keeping a fund on an exchange is way more convenient rather than comprehending and implementing how to securely store a coin in a wallet.

With that in mind, people should be directed into comprehending the essence of self-custody, if people get the reasoning behind it, they should have would take a deeper look to learning how to manage their own cryptocurrencies.

That's not the reason, there are different reasons, my friends also lost a lot of money from the FTX crash, they are merchants, buying and selling, exchanging P2P on FTX. All are aware that leaving money on FTX or binance is like depositing money in a bank, risk is always lurking, but their job, their profit is from there, so they have to accept the risk and continue to work.

Many accounts hold millions of dollars and they have been around long enough in the market and are well aware that storing assets on exchanges is different from storing on cold wallets.

I would agree on the P2P exchange scenario, if I'm not mistaken, they have to like put $1000 as collateral when they do P2P trading. And so with the collapse, their capital + their collateral is gone. And so that is the risk that businesses has to take.

It's really unexpected though, no one really knows that this will happen and I will say majority has been caught off guard resulting to them not withdrawing their money on that exchange on time.

Cold storage is not just "better" it is the best when it comes to safety and security. I also notice a lot of people feeling secured whenever they hold large amount of money in a
crypto exchange without knowing that it is still vulnerable into some advanced hackers. If we want to control the risk where we can be secured and have feeling of safety in our funds, ten the best way
is to buy cold storage. We should learn from what's happening today and from the past for us to have a bettter future.

It is very important and even vital. The Security Checklist (https://cryptosec.info/checklist/) can help newbies with more advice.

In addition, to choose wallets, let's choose non-custodial ones and better if it is open source.

Recommended wallets (https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information/recommended-wallets.html)

Exchanges can have some endings

• Hacks and unable to compensate users
• Bad management to over-degen risk taking (like FTX)
• Bankrupted
• Scam exit
• Still operating but reject to approve your withdrawal, reject your KYC etc.

Exchange graveyard (https://www.cryptowisser.com/exchange-graveyard/)

It's the harsh truth which people need to realise that if someone else is in possession of your funds the possibility of you losing your funds is very high and this happened with FTX this time another one of those exchanges.People were unable to withdraw funds and now even if they will be able to get it would be penny of what they were holding few days back.So this is one more example of why we should avoid having funds over these exchanges that can put you so much down within days.

No one should be surprised about the inability of exchanges to give withdrawals at lousy times, it's pure business and a measure they must put in place to avoid panic withdrawals. And yes, our money might not be our own when it is with exchanges, they want to be like banks and financial institutions, but they are too small for that. It is our money that sustains them.

Panic withdrawal could cause any exchange to go bankrupt easily, and perhaps if they have allowed all withdrawals at this moment, there might not be exchanges anymore. This is because they don't have sufficient liquidity to back things up, so what do you expect?

I can assure you that FTX would be long gone by now if they did not apply this measure in recent times.

How many people draw the right conclusions after we sometimes hear about bankruptcy or revocation of licenses from some banks? What do they do next? They go to other banks. I think the same will happen after the FTX bankruptcy. I don't understand why there is so much trust in centralization when the idea of bitcoin is completely different. People are lazy and greedy, and for some reason, many people have a strong belief that all bad stories will never touch them. The impression that some people live in parallel worlds and do not see obvious things. People need experience to sober up.

I just pity those already stucked in the current hack on FTX because it is too late already to make any decisions now and many have been warned already on several occasions to stay off centralized exchanges but due to indecision they remains there forgetting the risk it may place on them at any time, only the newbies that were not aware of the risk or earlier informed were those i consider to fall a victim because they just don't know, but it keep bothering me seing that bitcoin is meant for decentralized network but many don't know how to avoid being centralized with bitcoin.

Let's try to look again, these people are not stupid, just being unlucky.
Since the incidents with MTGox, Criptsy, etc, people have learned a lot. Some people affected by similar incidents are people who have been careful. They already have a secure wallet and their coins are safe. But then, they put some of their coins/tokens into the exchange to convert into fiat, sadly at the same time the incident happened.

The case of FTX exchange recent days is a good example for bankrun (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bankrun.asp) in cryptocurrency market past few years.
In other words, it is a run to exit a bank when there is only one exit gate but there are too many people which overwhelm ability of that bank to proceed withdrawal request.

When a bankrun happens, it is too late to stop that or to reverse the panic trend. After a death spiral starts, it is impossible to stop it.

No exchange is above bankruptcy but CEXs cannot be avoided completely. Not everyone who got affected by FTX collapse are holders some might have moved their coin there for a possible swap and others for quick sell to fiat but ran out of luck. If they was a way to sell direct to cash in DEXs i think CEXs manipulations would have been a long forgotten story. Avoiding this exchanges would have been much more easier if there were better options because not everyone is conversant with Bitcoin has legal tender so many still see it as an asset because of its volatility and how about the aged in underdeveloped countries who sell in local markets how do they get paid in BTC so one will always have to swap to fiat to fit into the society the belong.

This had always been real but people overtime do really get confident on using up platforms as their main wallets considering that these kind of events doesnt really often happen which means they would really be

having in mind that they could bare up with the risk and on the time it did happen then this is where regret do really start out.We've seen lots of exchange hacks in the past but seems people doesnt really
learn up with those lessons.

I know on some point on pulling your funds on an exchange actively does really cost time and fees which would really be hassle and hindrance whenever you do make out some trading
activity but in speaking on minding about the risk then its better not to make yourself tolerate on risk handling.

Hacking in the past has been quite frequent and has harmed many people, including myself who have experienced it. Assets cannot be withdrawn and just disappear. and now it's happening again on the FTX exchange and SBF says they've gone bankrupt and there's still no good solution for FTX users. in the end, all will lose very much. This will be a regret as well as a disaster for FTX users. We really have to learn from past events.

Withdrawing assets gradually will avoid risks like today. Although it costs a lot it is highly recommended. Do not store all assets in a centralized exchange because we do not have complete control. The Exchange is only a temporary trading place and the main storage place is a personal Wallet which is fully controlled by ourselves.

Hopefully, we can all learn a lot from this FTX incident, we don't want something like this to happen again, here very bad for everyone.

Based on what I understand on FTX current situation. User can still get there funds once the FTX manage to file for bankruptcy to liquidate there assets for paying back customer money. Even Mt Gox is now paying back there customers after a long year while FTX is a regulated exchange on US which means users is protected by the law and has a chance to claim back there funds.

But the inconvenience of can’t use your money out of exchange is frustrating and the chance to wait for a long time just to claim it like Mt Gox all over again.

     One reason is people being lazy, they are lazy moving their funds in and out of the exchange since it needs three verification processes at most in withdrawing the funds, email otp, mobile otp, and 2fa.  For people who are in rush, they find it annoying so they just keep their coins on exchanges to avoid such steps.

     Others are too trusty.  They never think that exchange would be messed up and will freeze their fund.  But there is always a first time for everything, so I hope those who experienced this FTX fiasco will learn their lesson well.


     It is a matter of trust not that they are doubting themselves.  Once a person trust a platform he won't hesitate keeping his funds on that platform.

I agree with you, any company can go bankrupt but CEX is somehow important in cryptocurrency trading so people who are into trading different cryptocurrency would gladly use centralized exchanges.  Although centralized exchange may got hack or get bankrupt, there are already safety measure for this kind of event and it is very simple, it is by not keeping our funds in any centralized exchanges.  Only put the cryptocurrency that is for trade and withdraw after the successful trade.

Do you expect everyone in this crypto to be the same? It's never really possible, especially about how they save and manage their finances.

While the best practice for asset security is to keep them in non-custodial wallets ^{[hardware wallets recommended],} this practice seems to be very often ignored by traders trying to profit in the market. I agree, but if you ask me I can tell that the majority of investors have good security practices for their assets.

Is so funny, how some cryptocurrency holders still trust exchanges with their money, how can you store a large sum of assets in an exchange where you can be locked out at any time with access to the wallet even as the owner?
How can u ever trust a third party with my money the only time I can consider using an exchange is when I want to trade one token for another other and I take the exchange as a bus stop for my money and not a destination so I can't hold my asset on an exchange no matter what I rather hold in a cold wallet where I have total control of the wallet keys.

There are only two explanations that come to mind, the first one is that this is simply ignorance, those people should know better but they treat “Not your keys, not your coins” as some sort of slogan not to be taken seriously.

The second option is that humans have a huge bias when it comes to judging themselves, we see ourselves as more capable, skilled, intelligent, good looking and think we are above the average person, so people think that something like this happens to other people but it is impossible it will happen to them, and they will never believe it until they receive a reality check, but by that time there is nothing which can be done about their coins lost.

The reason people use a centralized exchange is that if there is a dollar there, it's easy to buy and sell any coin from there at any time with no extra fees, but if you keep your funds in a personal wallet and you exchange it from the DEX.  If you want then your fee will be cut more and to avoid this extra fee most people use centralized exchange but it is a risky thing many will never think but after the incident of FTX crash everyone will be careful to keep their dollars in CEX and  Think twice . so if someone want to hold there coins then they should use hardware wallet which will safe there fund as well

What you say is true, but unfortunately FTX is only registered for business in the US so US users will definitely be protected by law, so they will get their assets back. But in other countries the chance of getting it back will be very low, they will be compensated if FTX can afford it and FTX really wants to return the assets to them, otherwise users cannot sue or be protected by law.

I agree and I don think this can be over-emphasized any further. I really don't see the need to have your crypto held in the exchange wallets, especially for those investors with quite an amount of volume. Does it mean they don't understand and have not heard of incidents with crypto exchange hacks previously or do they just believe it can not happen to them? Any investor that has that amount of funds for investment should be able to obtain a hardware wallet to hold your investment off the exchange wallets.
I guess this just continues to prove how some investors can be lackadaisical about being informed about their investment and doing the needful.

We can only use some measures like you mentioned to reduce the risk, we can't help but use the centralized exchange, I think we have no other solution. There are a lot of people on this forum who hate centralized exchanges, nothing wrong with that but they are long term holders not day traders or P2P traders. Without centralized exchanges there would be no day traders, a market without this piece would be like a dying market. CEX will still be there, there will be an exchange to replace FTX and we will still use them, but be more careful as you say.

This all means there is no trusted centralized exchange. The only problem is, converting bitcoins to fiat or trading bitcoin is very important to many people (that's a fact). Unfortunately, we have to be connected to one of the CEXs to do it, while the DEX can't help us with that thing. Any solution for that?

Yeah, smoothly inserted into the system now and should be followed by everyone. I think it’s very important that at least forum members must follow this formula and tell the same to non forum members. This will slowly make bitcoin very strong in the coming days and on top of that it would bring less fraud, less scams and less theft of our own money from the exchanges itself.

Exchanges are just businesses who will look after their own good and quality service etc etc remains only in the book of rules. Follow your own wallets and enjoy the decentralisation. :-)

You guys don't understand a concept of a trusted exchange. If you send money to a person or a company it means you trust them. Ever bought anything on an exchange? If yes then it's your trusted exchange. That trust has some limits though.

You can trust an exchange to perform a trade for you and allow you to withdraw, but you cannot trust it to keep your money safe. Exchanges aren't meant to hold your coins for you and people forgat about it because it's convenient if you don't have to worry where you left your hardware wallet or if you remember your password. You can set windows to remember your pass and have an email recovery option and you're safe, right? No you're not! Use centralized exchanges when you want to exchange but then keep your coins offline! I've been using centralized exchanges for the past 8 years and never lost a single bitcoin.

DEX and cash can be combined by connecting people in p2p deals. Main problem is that you can never believe someone totally anonymous in a p2p transactions and there is no way of safe proving that someone gave cash. So if you want to have a deal with cash you need to be prepared to lose your anonymity. And that's why DEXes don't work with fiat currencies: it is easier to use CEX if you lose anonymity anyway. And if you withdraw all assets just after buying, CEX is not so unsafe place to trade.

So true. I think it's not that people believe the exchange instead of themselves or something. Instead it's just the ease that people like the most. The ease of forgetting the password, the ease of buying selling anything pretty swiftly and the ease of fiat conversion as well. All these things make exchanges popular amongst folks. If decentralised exchanges are made which can do these things as swiftly as CEX I assure you people will start using DEX only. But yes for storing coins which you are not planning to exchange or sell in coming weeks you should always use a private key wallet only.

There is no alternative solution.  We must use a CEX to convert our bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies to fiat in which case DEX cannot help us. But in this case we need to use a proper and trusted centralized exchange.  However, no CEX can be fully trusted in the current situation.  Because when something like this can happen with a big and popular exchange like FTX how can we trust a cex completely now.

In my opinion the main problem is the lack of easy and secure (for expert and newbies) ways to store your coins.

You can get a hardware wallet but they cost money, they (or the app working with the device) can be hacked.

Same thing for a software wallet.

And then you have the issue of where to store the seed phrase, what if I lose it, etc.

At the end of the day people leave coins on exchanges because it’s just more practical. You forget your password? The exchange will help you recover it. You don’t need to buy an extra device, you don’t need to trust an app on your iPhone, etc.

We need better and easier to use solutions to store coins.

I hope everyone gets back their coins but isn't this a story we have already heard here in the forum several times?I think that the title of this thread is great and extremely important to emphasize that every fund that we hold through some third party no matter how trustworthy they may be,they still remain a third party at which we have not the slightest control whatsoever.

I was personally a victim of Cex.io where they refused to continue give me service after I declared them that the funds that I exchanged there were from mining activities,even send them pictures and videos yet their customer service was so incompetent and not at all tech savvy that they still asked me for an email for my wallet password  ;D not knowing what Electrum was at all,they stopped my account but they were kind enough to let me withdraw anything I had there.Based on my personal story I have said several times in other parts of the forum here especially in the Exchanges part that everyone should get their funds out of them and if they want to trade to keep only the amount they intend to do trading with.

The possibility of the exchange getting back their money is very limited, and since FTX is not like Binance that have a large reserve to take care of hack issues to repay customers, I don't know if FTX have Safe funds to cater to situations like this but. we can't tell if all clients will sincerely get the money back after the investigation.

We are seeing real world situations from these things. Exchanges that are in hot seats are having hard time to allow their users to withdraw money.
Banks that don't have that much money left or is controlled by the government ordering to delay withdrawals of their customers money. So, there's really nowhere to go if you're trusting your money to them.
They'll give you a very hard time to even get your money from them. That's why the meaning of the known reminder is really applicable, if we don't the keys, we don't own our coins.

Exchanges are a necessary evil, especially if you're trading on a daily basis, even though there are a few decentralized alternatives. The main point is to avoid storing coins somewhere you practically have no access to. Would you trust a stranger with your money? Nope. Well, exchanges are something similar. While I don't believe that Binance would suffer something similar to FTX, it's best to be on the safe side, which is also the main reason I keep my Bitcoin out of reach.

Not only do you pose a risk from exchanges themselves, but also from malware or phishing attempts. Not long ago, I was scammed through a Chrome extension.

Actually, it is nearly impossible.  They declared bankruptcy meaning the exchange hasn't had enough funds already.  Then they announced a hacking incident that stole a huge amount of money.   So from the situation, I do not think that FTX has enough funds to reimburse their clients.  Let alone the exchange is already suspected of misappropriation of funds.

If they have had enough funds to reimburse their clients, they would have not submitted for bankruptcy Chapter 11.

Sam Bankman-Fried did not see a light at ending of tunnel. He got no help from either Changpeng Zao and Justin Sun or other cryptocurrency billionaires. He had to exit and filing for bankruptcy is his last choice.

I believe FTX exchange is not an only exchange which handles customer capital inappropriately and unsafely. In the past two years, we have been witnessing many attractive programs from exchanges: staking with high Annual Percent Yields, staking with stable coins. Moreover, abundant stable coins were created in the last bull run.

In previous years, there were very limited stable coins but in 2020 bull run, I even can not remember how many stable coins were launched and even did not know all of new stable coins.

The downside of this is to see how the crypto space, which grew out of the idea of P2P, in many cases like this one has ended up acting like the institutions the White Paper sought to flee from. They have taken the deposited bitcoins and gambled with them as if they were in a casino.

When FTW declared bankruptcy, other exchanges have had to come out to prove their liquidity, which is also questionable, as there have been some strange transactions in between. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5419386.msg61284826#msg61284826)

Storing large amounts of assets in the stock exchange is indeed a reckless act. However, I still keep some of my assets on exchanges like Binance because I still carry out my daily trading activities. but for long-term investment assets then of course I never keep it on exchange. because I knew that it was a reckless act.
but it seems that today after what happened to FTX, people have come to their senses. and start moving their assets to personal wallets.
even according to the news I read that Bitcoin outflow from Cex in recent days has reached a record high in history. Sourch : Exchange outflows hit historic highs as Bitcoin investors self-custody (https://cointelegraph.com/news/exchange-outflows-hit-historic-highs-as-bitcoin-investors-self-custody?utm_source=Telegram&utm_medium=social)

People are used to custodial wallets where a centralized authority guard and manage their money for them, so they should also accept the risk that come with that. We live in a world where lazy people want convenience and these central authorities offer that for them on a plate. (at a cost)

The people who use methods to store their coins, where they have full control over their Private keys... are the people who understand the risks associated with the use of custodial wallets. (They saw what happened in Cyprus, where the Banks took people's deposits and they also saw what happened with Mt Gox and all the other Exchanges that got hacked)  ::)

I think those people who are like that are a newbie in crypto and are used to centralization services but once they hang out more here and increase their crypto knowledge, that's the time they realize the importance of decentralization. They will realize that non-custodial wallets are the best wallet to use, not custodial and centralized exchanges.

If it's about convenience then I think decentralized platforms are a way to go because they don't require sign ups, they don't require KYC bull shits. They are just plug and play kind of a thing but if we are not organized then it will be a big problem because we can miss place our private keys.

I read an article today that said, '15M/19M BTC are held in self custodial wallets'.  https://cryptoslate.com/ftx-crash-pushes-bitcoin-to-self-custody-ethereum-switched-for-stablecoins/ .  I wonder if there's a way to fact check that?

They have declared bankruptcy, which means there is no more reserve capital to pay investors, so it is hopeless to expect FTX to pay back. Only investors in the US and Bahamas can get a refund under the law as FTX is registered to do business in these two countries so they have to follow the laws of those two countries or SBF will face the law. Other markets have no opportunity because they are not protected by law.

From now onwards the useful thing we can do is tell our friends, relatives, family and those we know to immediately withdraw the money deposited in the exchange.

Bitcoin makes it easy not to complicate.
Don't be surprised when you wake up, you're already in the galaxy.

This will be the time that they will realize that non-custodial wallet is important and the reason why many people are using it. It is expected that most newbies are using centralized wallet given the fact that centralized wallets are very easy to use and there's no hassle in buying and selling especially that there are so many features in it including those trading features. Though this incident should make them realize how prone it is for such hacks, funds locked and other common centralized problems. Actually I have friends who are only using custodial wallets and some of them are using exchange as their wallets, I just know this until they messaged me and I opened a topic about it when we are conversing. Of course my advise is given to them and I'm pretty sure they have their own non-custodial wallets now.

Lol, the exchange had already filed bankruptcy, and I think that hack is an inside job.  One way of the management to lessen the financial burden of the exchange since they can just blame hackers for the lack of funds  to reimburse their clients.  If ever the clients failed to get their money, the only course of action is to file a lawsuit against the exchange management.

It's as real as that.
You know, exchanges are just like banks, most of them are centralised and so they call the shorts, just like banks. You might have an account number which is synonymous to an account number and a password just like you've got on exchanges too.
They are at right to limit your withdrawals, access to your accounts, demand compliances, froze your account, keep records on you with the the authorities if necessary and more.
It's truly centralized and you don't have access so, you've got to tread carefully. Try not to leave large amounts on an exchange. You identify the advantage you wish to benefit from, make use of it and your out.

True, but the exchanges are not made to bank our funds.  They are made to exchange cryptocurrencies and we must use it according to its function .. to trade and not to bank our fund and keep it on the exchange.  We will see how devastating it is if we keep on using exchanges as bank when the exchange got bankrupt or hacked (FTX the recent example).


Yeah, since they(exchange) own the key where we keep our funds(if we keep our funds on exchanges), they have all the power and authority to use our funds and we can't do anything about that.

Government could only touch up crypto transactions and making out some surveillance via these exchange platforms which we do know that they are regulated or centralized then expected that every
transaction on which an account make would really be not anonymous and this is the thing you should accept and be wary on the time that you had deposit into an exchange.
This is part of the risk and you should really be that prepared for whatever things that could happen on an exchange since we know that we dont possess it wallet keys then
everything that might happen will really be that in resulting for possible lost of funds forever which its not really that surprising imho.

I think it's ok if only for a moment such as swapping then immediately withdraw it, And, what the problem now is when you keep it for a long time in exchange like in some cases in several exchange.

It's difficult when they don't prove the address. Just try to ask directly to the official, I am really sure they don't want to share it.

exactly what I thought. But the fall of FTX seems to have brought many lessons and raised awareness among many people who previously had too much faith in an exchange. In fact, many people don't hesitate to store their bitcoin assets in large quantities on an Exchange. But now it seems that people have learned lessons and awareness. and now they began to do what they should have done long ago. i.e. keeping their assets in private wallets. and now the withdrawal of the number of bitcoins from the exchange to a personal wallet has increased rapidly even according to the sources I have read in the last 7 days the number of bitcoins that have been transferred from the exchange has reached 192,340BTC. The main outflows have been from exchange giants such as Coinbase pro (70,101 BTC), binance (58,689.42 BTC) and Gemini (13.270,80 BTC).
For more details, we can read it in many sources, but the source I read is this Watcher.guru (https://watcher.guru/news/a-whopping-192340-bitcoin-have-moved-off-of-exchanges-in-the-past-7-days?utm_source=TelegramNews&utm_medium=TelegramNews&utm_campaign=TelegramNews) & Coinglass (https://www.coinglass.com/Balance).

We all know this story is not new about the exchanges and the other similar companies where get your bitcoins and other assets and they guarantee you the security of your assets while the shiny promise seems good and tempting for most people there is also a chance for the people to lose all their bitcoins on their platforms even if the claim to be a trustworthy and well-known company. The place to hold your bitcoins is also inside your private bitcoin wallet where you can have access to your private key and recovery seeds.

We know that. I mean, this is about the worst scenario. For example, we have 1 BTC in our personal wallet and want to convert 0.5 BTC to fiat through CEX; then an incident happens when we send our 0.5 BTC there. So there is no trusted CEX right? ^{If you have a problem with that phrase.}

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Please explain how it can happen. It will be useful for some people.

Even if it’s the juggernaut Binance itself, I wouldn’t store my hard earned coins and tokens there in the exchange. Since I do not own a private key or seed phrase there, I wouldn’t have full custody of my assets. It’s just a gateway for me to convert to fiat via P2P.

Always save to a non-custodial wallet (especially hardware wallets like Ledger Nano S) as you are having full custody of your crypto assets.

The majority of consumers are avoiding the burden of transferring from an exchange to the wallet they occasionally feel is easier, even if they are generally aware of the risk of maintaining their assets in an exchange. For instance, selling is a relatively simple process. However, failing to consider the danger involved could result in you losing all of your money, which would not be amusing. Looking at what is happening to exchanges right now makes it quite evident how unsafe it is to keep your money in an exchange, despite the numerous warnings I have seen, people still don't pay attention. Love this good work op.

that's a very rare occurrence, He always keep the money in the personal wallet around a year, and then suddenly have an urgent matter where need to cash it on the exchange. After the deposit, the exchange stops operating and crash without he can't do anything. This is very unlucky case where maybe 1 between million people.

P2P also need trust for each others, I ever scammed via p2p person, I send him the coin but he don't send the cash.

It is not the first some users lost their coins because they didn't have access to their own keys. Do you really think all those that used or stored their coin on FTX never head about "not your key, not your coins"? Do you really think that they were not aware that they don't own the coins? Do you really think that they didn't know something like this could happen? They knew all of it. But they chose to ignore. They thought that it could never happen to an exchange like FTX, but they were wrong. But guess what, people will still keep on holding their coins in exchanges or non custodial wallets and act like nothing will happen to them. Right now, yes people are withdrawing coins from exchanges, but give it a week or two, people will go back to holding coin in centralized exchanges.

FTX has more than 1 million users and many of them hold money from a few million to several tens of millions of dollars, they know what they are doing. That's exactly what you said, I believe everyone knows what they're doing with their assets, they're not stupid enough to not know what it's like to put money in centralized exchanges. The only problem is their choice.

The need for centralized exchange will never go away and people will quickly forget everything and once again they will look to centralized exchanges. Binance announced that they are holding more than 74 billion and in the past days there have been a large number of investors withdrawing to non-custodial wallets but it only stopped at 150 million, a very small number compared to the 74 billion that Binance is holding. That shows a large number of investors are still using the centralized exchange on a daily basis.

It’s definitely an old story, I remember the very first one I witnessed was in 2014 and there was also mt.gox which was already a problem back in those days, and even earlier.

There is no way there is a good thing coming out of this exchanges getting hacked deal, and it’s too common which means that there isn't really a big problem at all if you could avoid it by putting your money somewhere safer. Exchanges have too much money, and I mean way too much, billions, which means that you should be protecting your money by just depositing and then trading and then withdrawing right away which would be the way to trade otherwise there would be a lot of trouble.

That's right. I just want to clear my opinion with darkangel11. In the end, we still can't trust CEX, and things got worse with the FTX incident a few days ago. Remember, we are still dealing with popular exchanges that often cheat in the name of system maintenance when the crypto price goes crazy.

FTX was VALUATED as $32billlin
but thats not 32b of custodian held assets. thats a FIAT paper spreadsheet valuation based on the math of 1share price X total shares

its a meaningless statistic like marketcap is. its unbacked by real fiat

there were about at one point 12billion in customer assets deposited
which if you average this better measure. meant the 1.2m customer of FTX had an average deposit of $10k

that said. whats actually the case is there were a few whales that invested millions and alot of minnows investing less than $10k

there were less than 1000 people investing more then $1m
bit these names were big celebrity/big name people

and its these big names that made FTX suddenly a popular speaking point to mention

its big names not big numbers.

mtgox only had about ~24k customers
so FTX 1.2m is a steep amount higher victim base

but.. coinbase has 60m customers
binance has 26m customers

so in todays scheme of customer bases. FTX was not that high in customer numbers.. but it was high in popularity with say a couple thousand whales that have celebrity level reputations to retain

Having cold wallet is one of the most secure storage methods so definitely, it’s way better than other wallets that are connected in the internet. Whether the amount to keep is small or large, it’s best to keep it in a private or in a cold storage. Not your keys, not your coins, this is really true as you don’t have to trust other wallets or exchanges, except from your personal one.

People had just made out decisions on using up online,exchange platform and other wallets which are centralized and non custodial due to some obvious reasons.It is really just they do really
make themselves really that confident when it comes to safety or security of their coins but to mind off on what are the things that happened in the past will really make you tell that its never
been recommendable on making them as a storage.Nothing beats out on a wallet which you do possess its keys.Its never been that recommendable on trusting up that
much and forget about security.

It is true that some people don't know the risk to keep their coins in exchanges, they think it is safe enough because it is the top exchange and used by many people around the world. Moreover, according to some hack cases that happened previously, the people got their refunds from the exchanges. This makes the people more trusted on the exchanges. But on the other hand, there are some people who know well the risks and they are not dumb. They keep their coins on the exchange because they are daily/weekly/monthly traders. Keeping the coins in exchanges will make them easier to sell the coins any time there is a pump, they don't need to send the coins from private wallets and they don't spend transfer fees. Sometimes sending the coins take a long time and it spends a lot of transfer fees. This makes people prefer to keep their coins on the exchanges.

Look like playing an extreme job when knowing the risk but still ignoring it. Maybe because the top big 10 exchange is not mean haven't risk when investing. Each people have a purpose for what for his investment but sometimes doesn't know how to manage it when the goal has been achieved, after a tragedy happens, they feel regret but happens again in the next time, This type of person is very much like an exchanger enthusiast.

This incident has taught us the hard way to avoid storing coins in inaccessible places. Exchanges are like banks, mostly centralized, and they have access to your account.
Do not leave your money on exchanges in case you lose them. Keep your crypto assets safe in a wallet that only you can access.

Same thing goes with banks, they have access to your account as well, this is why they can see if an irregular amount have entered to your account. The point here is that, storing crypto assets in an exchanger is not advisable simply because there are tendencies that it will be accessed by other people simply because it involves a device which can do something about your holdings once there are people who knows your private keys. You cannot do anything about it because we are all anonymous in this industry. Your money your rules but that is also your responsibility. Storing for a bit like 1 week is just fine but to put 100% of your assets and store it for months or years won't be.

No doubt with your words about "not your key not your coins" based on happening with FTX exchange market, can't guarantee how must trusted with exchange market and the owner based on not have controlling by our self when withdrawing funds. Until one week with FTX exchange collapse not any positive respond yet about withdrawing fund process, actually I have bad feeling FTX will be next list scam exchange like Cryptopia actually after announcing with hacking cases difficult get back fund in FTX exchange.

Right now better hold and save our assets in trustwallet or metamask and better with hardware wallet, were we have controlling with private ky by our self and possible withdraw when we want.

It’s always best to keep your Bitcoins in a safe offline or hardware wallet. In your trading account, keep only the money which is required for trading, else definitely you gonna lose your all coins. Not your keys, so definitely not your coins. Basically what happens is that, when we keep money on the trading, we don’t have complete access on it. On the top of that, we also give access to our funds to others. So yes, we need to be very much careful with our funds.

The problem when keeping all our crypto in a private wallet is needed many fees to have to transfer back and forth. Inflation has grown up day by day, we need a lot of cash to buy something, if we continue to keep it, we can't buy something, we can't buy some food because the gasoline price makes all important products more growing up.

The centralization exchange is like Hero for right now, many people don't know how to use p2p exchange like HODL HODL and Bisq.

so just be careful, I imagine many big centralization exchanges will follow FTX next.