Safeguarding funds , your funds on exchanges are safe?

[Dragonfund]

Sometimes early this year, I was able to attend AMA with Kucoin exchange CEO Johnny Lyu . It was time for community members to ask him questions after introducing himself and some little questions by the admin, one of the member ask a question regarding their  security system and hacks attempts on the exchange, kucoin was one of the popular exchanges that hasn't been hacked at that time.
His reply was: the exchange is secure and they are very confident about that and don't play with security but apparently kucoin was later hacked in September as an insider Job.

NO matter what, it's always risky when you keep your funds on these exchanges especially when they don't have insurance to back the customers damage.
#peace

[yurez]

If you are an active trader, then you will have to take the risk anyway and transfer your coins to a centralized exchange. If you are an investor and a holder, then keep your funds in a cold wallet and sleep peacefully, your coins are safe.

[DarkDays]

As a trader you have no choice but to take risk on putting your money in exchanges even if you know hackers are just there waiting for their moment because the fees will eat all your capital if you do a lot of transactions from your wallet to another wallet.

This whole exchange hacking system is so cumbersome to traders  But in essence if you're a trader you need to face reality and thats the risk of losing money is something was to go wrong. I understand that having most of your money in cold wallet is safest but the issue with doing this is the impracticality of it.  Transferring funds across is also quite expensive specially if you do that with BTC but I suppose better to lose that in fees than lose it all.

I'm not demeaning the importance of assets' safe keeping on cold wallets I'm just frustrated at how much harder it is to do that, and as a trader that is a bit impractical. However, one can only decide what's best for ourselves!

[wheelz1200]

Many of you are wondering if your funds on exchanges are safe (SAFU anyone?). Here are some tips for you, and how I manage my own funds.
Time for a short thread
Exchanges act like banks with the ability to buy and sell tokens and coins. The simplest example you could think of is you can go to your local bank, and exchanging USD for your local currency. Now, what happens if the bank is on hold? (Vacation or completely shut down?)
You end up waiting until the issue is resolved. Banks have reserves in order to cover their client's funds. Insurance funds that exchanges operate are more or less the same.
But you wouldn't trust the fund to be able to cover everyone now, would you?
Welcoming cold storage. What is cold storage? Cold storage is a hardware (there's also the paper version) wallet that you own and is inaccessible by exchanges.
No one can access it but you, think of it as your physical wallet that you hold cash in. Ledger is one example of cold storage,TrustWalletApp is considered a hot wallet (they operate online).The way it goes is that you transfer the amount of your portfolio there that you do not want to trade.

What's the best way to maximize your fund's security?

Well, for starters, no one should go "all in" on a trade. You always need to keep liquidity on the side and avoid heavy losses if a trade goes south. You also want to avoid any shenanigan that might happen to your favorite exchange, and you caught in the middle.
Do some research online, purchase a hardware wallet, I personally use ledger Nano X, I've heard of other good alternatives. It's a matter of choice.
While I do not recall the names, a quick google search should do the trick.
First thing you need to do after you get it is transferring the amount you're absolutely not okay to lose (mine hovers around 80% of my entire portfolio, hence I trade with 20% of my funds only).

You own the keys, no one can take them from you.

The better question is, how do you consistently manage your funds? Well, if you had a successful trade, then you would transfer a part of your profits to the wallet. I usually transfer 50% of the total profit on a weekly basis and increase my trading account with the rest
So let's say your entire fund is 5000$. You would transfer 4000$ to your wallet, and trade with 1000$.If you made 500$ on a trade with the 1000$, you would then transfer 250$ and trade now with 1250$.
Easier and safer than most think.No one is responsible for your own funds but you. Trusting exchanges isn't the smart move, otherwise, why are you on board with this entire decentralized finance train? Might as well stick to your local bank.

The only part I disagree with is keeping any funds on an exchange. If you are going to trade put crypto on exchange, trade then pull off 100% until ypu are ready to trade again.  Might be a pain in the ass but if you always keep 20% of your stack on an exchange for trading it ultimately will will always get "hacked".  100% of your crypto should be kept in a place where you and only you own the keys

[Eternad]

I have a bad experience with losing funds on the exchange and for that I always transfer the funds I have in my personal wallet because it's safer, I transfer when I want to sell it

If I will not trade in a day or not consecutively trading I make it to a point not to keep them in exchange it's better to be in my wallet than it the exchange. I only keep some in exchange when I have a specific coins that I'm monitoring but if I knew that it will be long again before I trade again I will just keep it in my trezor for safety purposes and much easier access. I also remember in my early days in crypto that I forgot in what exchange I put my coins then when remembered them they have no more value so only keep coins that have potential and if it will take time better sell it if we know we will not be able to monitor it as some alts lose their value easily.

[bttmember]

After working for many months when i check my wallet now there are not many tokens that i can be proud of so all i can tell you is that market nowadays is such that only if you get lucky you are hoing to get some decent reward otherwise you are going to get scammed or paid peanuts for months long campaigns.

[forexandcryptoauditor]

Very information thread. Highlighted important topics that are essential in this crypto market.
Just to add another point, if cold/hardware wallet is not enough or not possible, we should keep our funds to different wallets or exchanges. This way there will be diversification and any hack or other not wanted thing, will not result in loss of all your investments at once.

[Yatsan]

It is really up to you if you are going to store your funds on an exchange or into your private wallet. But for me, it is not really advisable to store funds or assets into an exchange for it is not the purpose of exchange but for a private wallet. If you are a trader, then it is good for you to store your funds into an exchange of your choice because you are accessing it from time to time and you make use of it on a basis. Unlike for long time holders since you are not still going to trade or exchange your crypto coins, better be safe to just store it into your private wallet until such time you have decided to trade those. Both exchange and private wallets serve and exist with purpose better use those accordingly.

[jcarlo]

I have a bad experience with losing funds on the exchange and for that I always transfer the funds I have in my personal wallet because it's safer, I transfer when I want to sell it

Agree, there is a term not your key, not your coin. Storing coins in exchangers is quite risky even though some of our coin exchangers are guaranteed to be replaced. There are many types of wallets that we can use either in the form of mobile wallets or desktop wallets and I think we can transfer our coins to personal wallets unless we are a daily trader.

[krisnajsadrak]

but how if the exchange being hacked mate,, thats mean our funds isn't safe right ?
in my opinion its better to hold our assets on personal wallet, because its safer rather than if we keep our assets on exchange

[Zeke_23]

It is not safe and it was being advised not to store funds in an exchange. There is a high risk of losing your money if you store your money on exchange. It is better to store your money in your private wallet to at least avoid losing it. There are some situation before like hacking in an exchange, and this is what we can avoid if we do not store our funds in an exchange.

[AliMan]

I do not hold funds on exchanges, it is not safe at all. Exchange can be hacked, your account can be suspended/blocked/frozen. I hold on the wallets with full control of private keys, mnemonic phrases, etc. I use exchanges only to sell/buy/convert some assets and withdraw it immediately.

Holding on exchanges isn't safe for long time, just like the experience I had before after withdrawal of my tokens the site immediately closed their trading. I remembered cryptopia last 2018, their situation went so bad after hacking of their funds occured drastically. Fortunately, I was able to pull out my holdings and trasfer it on the safe wallet that's I intended for my asset only.

[justdimin]

First of all, an exchange isn’t a good idea of where you can store your coins, and it is not new, we all know this and how exchanges keeps getting hacked, unless someone is a newbie and isn’t aware of the things that’s going on. Although some exchanges might seem to be good depending on the level of features they are offering, but still that’s not enough reason to be leaving funds on exchange except maybe the twenty percent as the op said.

Like I know some exchanges that insures all funds that belongs to their customers, and they also have a cold storage. But still never store all on exchanges.

[luckyflop]

You are lucky that you are making profit from trading not everyone here can, and this is the reason why people prefer to HODL than to trade, they know the risk of storing their coins to long on exchanges for trading purposes, it's good if you can retain only your profit in exchanges but it's very tempting to store your coins in exchange if you know how to trade or very active in trading, this is one of the risk of traders.

I am not a day trader, and yes I agree with you about it is not easy to make a profit in trading, best traders have a lot of money to be the bests and not everyone can tolerate that much loss, Actually, I am not a fan of holding and I always would rather keep the extra money that I am not working with , in the form of stable coins, I am not very interested to get affected by fluctuations of each coin, not even bitcoin, I always would change some of my profit each month to gold, so I know that I would not touch it and keep my profit out of access because even If the internet goes down I can still sell gold but maybe not bitcoin!

[luckyflop]

The only part I disagree with is keeping any funds on an exchange. If you are going to trade put crypto on exchange, trade then pull off 100% until ypu are ready to trade again.  Might be a pain in the ass but if you always keep 20% of your stack on an exchange for trading it ultimately will will always get "hacked".  100% of your crypto should be kept in a place where you and only you own the keys

Yeah I understand, with all those hacking happened to Kucoin and rumors coming from Huobi, I think that is a wiser Idea to keep the money in a cold wallet and transfer them whenever we want to trade or just simply use DEXes like UNISWAP, but still, some of this yield farmings like Easyfi , APY finance, needs money locking in the website, they say no pain no gain and I say no risk no profit, the profit in the crypto market comes with risk and we need to find out each time if risk/reward would worth it or not in each trading, in each decision.

[ice18]

I only store my funds on one exchange like 3-5 months and its on Binance yeah its really not safe to store for much longer time but I fully trust this exchange because funds on Binance are SAFU meaning its safe and your money are insured once something happens to that website you can recover your money Binance has emergency reserve to be use to payback traders in case of hacking but like the most advise here if holding huge amount of crypto then best to send it to your own wallet for longer storage purposes.

[leea-1334]

Funds are safer in your wallet than exchanges, don't listen to those praising top exchanges, even coinbase or binance can still get hacked, if you are a full time trader always move your profits off the Exchanges to your personal wallet that you owned the private keys, don't....

1. Use coinbase wallet to store funds, it's centralized
2. Make sure you use 2FA code for your exchanges too

Yes,,, never get fooled by what you see online. I do definitely think that some exchanges are better than others, and some take good care of you, etc,,, but in the end, if something bad happens (hack or crash or whatever) you as the customer will pay first. This is the rule of business at all times when it comes to profit. So do not allow that possibility and keep your own funds.

[Twinkledoe]

I only store my funds on one exchange like 3-5 months and its on Binance yeah its really not safe to store for much longer time but I fully trust this exchange because funds on Binance are SAFU meaning its safe and your money are insured once something happens to that website you can recover your money Binance has emergency reserve to be use to payback traders in case of hacking but like the most advise here if holding huge amount of crypto then best to send it to your own wallet for longer storage purposes.

Recently, I got prob with google authenticator with binance, I just used it last week so I know my phone is not a prob. But when I did my tx this week, it says invalid input from my google authenticator. I panicked. Tried many times (turn off my phone/turn it back on), didn't know what was wrong. So I ended up removing the google authenticator in my security settings. Withdrew successfully using email and sms only but still wondering why my google auth didn't work. I know my funds are safe but if that kind of issue arises while I am doing my withdrawal, guess it is always better to send your coins back to your wallet.

[Spaffin]

Once I received a very good reward for the UBEX Bounty Company and withdrew coins immediately to Hotbit, expecting a good price. I didn’t strive to sell my coins right away and was confident in the safety of my coins on this exchange, since the account registration was tied to my phone number. But the whole problem arose due to the fact that during registration I indicated the phone number in the format (+380) that the exchange demanded from me, but after a while the requirements changed and the number zero in front of my number was no longer required, since the dialing already automatically there was a code simultaneously with the choice of the country of residence. Thus, After a while, I cannot access my account, because in fact the number associated with the account is already different and has one more digit, which it should not. Thus, I lost my funds forever, because I did not go through verification using documents and it was not mandatory, and the administration is not too eager to help with this. And this is another fact that confirms that you can never keep more on your account without an exchange than you need to trade or sell.

[Akiko]

I only store my funds on one exchange like 3-5 months and its on Binance yeah its really not safe to store for much longer time but I fully trust this exchange because funds on Binance are SAFU meaning its safe and your money are insured once something happens to that website you can recover your money Binance has emergency reserve to be use to payback traders in case of hacking but like the most advise here if holding huge amount of crypto then best to send it to your own wallet for longer storage purposes.

Recently, I got prob with google authenticator with binance, I just used it last week so I know my phone is not a prob. But when I did my tx this week, it says invalid input from my google authenticator. I panicked. Tried many times (turn off my phone/turn it back on), didn't know what was wrong. So I ended up removing the google authenticator in my security settings. Withdrew successfully using email and sms only but still wondering why my google auth didn't work. I know my funds are safe but if that kind of issue arises while I am doing my withdrawal, guess it is always better to send your coins back to your wallet.

For the problem you experience you only need is to update your time on your location you just need to update it with the right time,that's the only sulotion for that problem.
How long it takes for you to widraw the balance ? As I understand once you remove authentictor or change password you need to wait 24 hours or more before you can widraw your balance . That's happen because of security reason.