Dear newbies, please treat exchanges, such as Binance, KuCoin, Kraken, Huobi, OKX, and Coinbase, as marketplaces. What do I mean? Just as you do not leave your goods on the market after you have paid for them, you take them home with you. Consider your coins as the goods you bought at the marketplace. Your bitcoins should only be stored in cold storage wallets after purchase, and transferred out when you want to sell them. It takes less than 10 minutes. Remember, if you don't have the keys, it's not your coins.
This advice is seemingly one of the useful ones here in this forum. To be honest, I somehow feel guilty about this given that I have been in this forum for five (5) years now. Majority of my BTCs are inside my local exchange and the reason on why I do not transfer them to a hardware wallet is the convenience that the former provides in converting my BTCs to cash whenever I need it.
I guess that maybe, this is the sign that I have been looking for. Newbies, follow this advice and avoid the problems that most have already encountered. If you have invested a hefty amount of BTCs (bought them at exchanges), then move it as soon as possible to a hardware wallet.