Hey guys
My first post of many
I searched high and low but couldn't find an answer so I'm hoping this is the right place and you can help me.
I want to know how an exchange handles the coins someone deposits and if when you decide to withdraw your coins, are they the EXACT same coins as you deposited or, are they different coins, as the exchange pooled them with other coins and simply gives the coins the coins out without respect to the account that deposited them?
Please move this to the correct section if I didn't post in the right place.
Thanks in advance everyone
There are various hot wallets that an exchange has under their ownership.
Your withdrawal is most likely processed from one of them, which could just happen to be someone else's deposit address for all that anyone knows because the exchange wants to save on transaction costs as much as possible. To correct jackg, not all deposits are directly sent to the cold storage in most cases.
Unless you make an extremely large withdrawal, it's unlikely that your coins will be directly sent from their cold storage wallet.
To address the other part of your question, I've never personally had my own deposit sent back to me as a withdrawal before, but theoretically, it could happen.