Hello guys,
Is it possible to find out where the coins in a specific wallet are stored e.g. an exchange, an online wallet or cold storage?
Thanks in advance
The coins are stored on the blockchain. Wallets let's you access the coins and to do transactions with them, to move them from an address to another address. That's the main funcition of the wallets' to let you tell the blockchain that coins are moving from one address to another.
The wallet itself specifies _how_ you can access the bitcoins, and from this point of view, you can determine the type of the wallet:
Exchanges: not real wallets, you can access the bitcoins via their website with proper login informations
Online wallets: similar to exchanges, you can only access the bitcoins with login information at their webpage, they keep the private key to addresses, so if the webpage is down, it's impossible to move the coins in their wallets.
Desktop wallets: the information (necessary to transfer the coins, private key, etc.) are stored on the PC, as long as the PC is OK, the access to the coins are safe (need for proper backup plan)
Mobile wallets: similar as desktop wallets, but the PC is the mobile phone in this case. The mobile wallets are usually don't downloand and handle the whole blockchain, but usually just lightweight clients and rely on some servers to gather information from the blockchain.
Hardware wallets: Similar to an USB thumb drive, they handle the specific part of the transaction, they handle the private key for an address and sign the transaction on themselves and only send the signed transaction to the PC or mobile phone in order to keep the private key secure in any circumstances.
