Which is better between keeping assets in exchange or personal wallet

[joniboini]

A general rule is to store some of your money in exchange if you trade regularly (only use 1 or 2 that are reputable on your country). If you don't trade at all, keep it in your own wallet. Don't gamble with the possibility of hacking or repayment since the risk is usually bigger than you expected.

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[friends1980]

As some others mentioned above, respected exchanges probably have insurance for theft (hacking). Also, in case of bankruptcy, these coins always remain yours (if, hopefully,  they weren't stolen).

I've written several extensive threads on this subject and I think its importance will only grow bigger in the future, f.i. about the bankruptcy of Cryptopia: Cryptopia Judge: "1. Crypto is property 2. Even w/o keys, crypto remains yours"

So far the good news.

Remember, in case of bankruptcy, it will take a very long time before you get your coins back. If you have been speculating with shitcoins, there's a very high probability these shitcoins in the meantime will have become useless.

Check out the thread above for some more ideas on positive and negative sides of exchange vs. private wallet, flexibility vs. security etc.

In any case, if you're only planning to hodl and not to speculate or to trade, the safest place to keep your coins is in an offline paper wallet.

[blckhawk]

A friend told me few weeks ago to keep my assets in exchange because if the exchange got hacked or my assets are misplaced, the exchange will bear the lose and refund my assets. Just yesterday, someone told me it's a lie that most exchange will go bankrupt if that should happen. I'm really confused right now. More experienced members should please enlighten me.

Yes, he may be right but are you certain that an exchange will bear all the lost funds? I mean if the exchanges have been hacked then it is automatically they made lose some funds as well thus will have a chance for you not to be covered up. Yes, you can store some of your coins into exchanges but don't make it as a wallet you supposedly use it to store a few of your funds to avoid paying huge fees. In regards to storing your coins, it is still obligatory to place it in your personal wallet. You shall not be afraid of being hacked because as long as you keep your pass from yourself and store it in a good place nothing to worry about.

[mersal]

A friend told me few weeks ago to keep my assets in exchange because if the exchange got hacked or my assets are misplaced, the exchange will bear the lose and refund my assets. Just yesterday, someone told me it's a lie that most exchange will go bankrupt if that should happen. I'm really confused right now. More experienced members should please enlighten me.

Only few instances the traders got refund when exchange got hacked because those exchanges are huge and got enough funds to fund such losses but it may not happen all the time so better keep your funds in a walket which is supposed to give full control of your funds which means you need to learn what you have to do to keep those funds secured from all those scammers.

[NeuroticFish]

More experienced members should please enlighten me.

Most exchanges did disappear after big hacks, indeed.
Very few of the exchanges did actually refund their users properly, in full and in a reasonable time frame.
As already stated, one important saying in Bitcoin community is "not your keys, not your coins", another one is "be your own bank". So the safer is to withdraw and keep the coins safe.

But before withdrawing I suggest you do some reading (and maybe asking questions too) on how to keep your funds safe.
This is important because if you are careless or simply don't know what you are doing you can easily lose your coins.

[yemight600]

It gives me joy to be here always.  I know the higher members are more than capable of solving any problem facing the newbies. I really appreciate everyone who responded and contributed in one way or the other to help me. Trust me, I've learnt even much more than I could asked for.  Thank you so much

[abokhalel2]

The worst thing is that the exchange itself can just freeze your account, take all your assets. Best kept in your personal wallet.

As for your question. Think about it yourself? If, for example, each person had $ 1,000 on the exchange and they were all stolen, how will the exchange recover all the losses?

Even so, there would be a lot of scammers.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

A friend told me few weeks ago to keep my assets in exchange because if the exchange got hacked or my assets are misplaced, the exchange will bear the lose and refund my assets. Just yesterday, someone told me it's a lie that most exchange will go bankrupt if that should happen. I'm really confused right now. More experienced members should please enlighten me.

The only funds that can be held on an exchange is your trading funds and it shouldn't be funds you can't afford to lose. If you're still into long term trades and using very large capital then you should move the coin to your personal wallets. There's more to just an exchange getting hacked that we're not encourage to leave our coin on their platforms. Centralized exchanges aren't any different from banks as they can restrict you from having access to your funds.

But with your personal wallets, you're in charged of your finance which is the beginning of your financial freedom journey. Exchanges that are less popular or anonymous would hardly take responsibility for the loses of their customers, majority don't even have enough funds for liquidity talk more of paying for lots funds. That advice was a wrong one, there's no good funds in exchange can do you. Coins you don't own the private keys aren't yours.

[traderethereum]

A friend told me few weeks ago to keep my assets in exchange because if the exchange got hacked or my assets are misplaced, the exchange will bear the lose and refund my assets. Just yesterday, someone told me it's a lie that most exchange will go bankrupt if that should happen. I'm really confused right now. More experienced members should please enlighten me.

It depends on your reason because if you want to trade daily or weekly, you need to keep your assets in the exchange and only send your profit to your wallet.
If you want to just hold your assets without the want to trade, your wallet will be better to hold because you control the wallet, and no one can steal your asset except you give access to other people to open your wallet.
If you want to trade, you need to remember that you don't have to use too big money to trade because the risk will be there, and there is no guarantee that the exchange can always protect your asset.
You have your assets, so you need to have a responsibility for your assets.
You can select the personal wallet that supports keeping for multi coins so that you can store all of your assets in that wallet.
Or you can just hold your asset in the hardware wallet.

[Tessnik]

A friend told me few weeks ago to keep my assets in exchange because if the exchange got hacked or my assets are misplaced, the exchange will bear the lose and refund my assets.

Probably he whispered the last part and you didn't hear it.
"...if you're lucky"

Does your friend know what happened from Bitcoinica and MtGox till Quadriga and Cryptopia ?
Here is a nice read for you and your friend.

What sort of friend recommended such a stunningly stupid choice? They are saying it's good to be in an exchange in case it's hacked? If it was in your own wallet you wouldn't have this possibility.

One that believed things like "Funds are SAFU" or stupid claims about having x amount insured by some god knows what bank? How many scam projects and fake exchanges have claimed this in the past? There are plenty of newbies that believe a lot of things even worse than flying pigs, I'm not surprised somebody would think exchanges have some sort of reserve funds or the money is guaranteed by the government like in banks. Actually, I would be surprised if they would less a few thousand the ones that think like this.

I was beginning to feel sleepy when reading through the message the ops want to pass, how can one compares personal wallet security to an exchange, no matter what promised an exchange make on reserve to cover for loses I can never trust that. I prefer to be in charge of my found to I get strong security on my wallet rather then risking my found on exchange.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

A friend told me few weeks ago to keep my assets in exchange because if the exchange got hacked or my assets are misplaced, the exchange will bear the lose and refund my assets. Just yesterday, someone told me it's a lie that most exchange will go bankrupt if that should happen. I'm really confused right now. More experienced members should please enlighten me.

From my perspective, if you are doing a day trading or you trade regularly it's better if you keep your assets in an exchange for you to avoid spending expensive fees. But if you are only hodling your cryptocurrencies, it would be better if you store your assets in your wallet because many people says it is not safe to store you cryptos in an exchange even you used a 2FA.

I think exchanges will not shoulder the lose and will refund your assets if you got hacked because it still depends on the situation that they will investigate it, and it might be fault why your funds got stolen.

[pakhitheboss]

I assume by assets you mean long term hold and if that is the case then you should keep them in your personal wallet and avoid exchanges. Keep on exchanges the amount that you might be using for trading, savings, staking and for other activities. Rest should be in your personal wallet. Although I do not recommend keeping anything in exchange but big exchanges are now much secure and you can keep some assets there. But, still DYOR.

[tbct_mt2]

If you can control everything at beginning, why you don't control it.
If you waive out your control on your crypto, the only thing you can do is hope: hope exchange will secure their platform and keep your account safe. If their exchange is hacked, you only can hope they will pay compensation for you.

Newbies - Read before using exchanges or investing.

If you don't trade everyday, let's go with personal wallet.
If you trade everyday, trade with small capital portion on exchange and afford any losss from trades or from exchange compromises.

[JohnBitCo]

A friend told me few weeks ago to keep my assets in exchange because if the exchange got hacked or my assets are misplaced, the exchange will bear the lose and refund my assets. Just yesterday, someone told me it's a lie that most exchange will go bankrupt if that should happen. I'm really confused right now. More experienced members should please enlighten me.

Good exchanges do have some insurance funds and they can compensate their users if any mishaps happens. An example for such an exchange is Binance who have "SAFU Funds" allocated for this purpose. However small exchanges do not have any funds and you will lose the money in case there is a hack on the exchange.

As a golden rule, you keep only funds which you want to trade frequently on the exchanges and keep your holdings in your desktop or offline wallets.

[stompix]

Good exchanges do have some insurance funds and they can compensate their users if any mishaps happens. An example for such an exchange is Binance who have "SAFU Funds" allocated for this purpose.

And you really believe that promotional crap?
NO big exchange has enough funds to cover a real hack if their coldwallet security is breached and the hackers get their hands on those coins. The whole SAFU thing is just empty words, if Binance gets hacked for the +100k BTC they hold in one cold wallet there is no chance in hell you will ever see a penny, it's a closed shop and bye bye!

If they would really have a means to protect those they would insure them, but to date, no exchange was able or is willing to do so for all the funds, including Coinbase, and you can guess why, because nobody is willing to take the risks!