Bringing it back to your ears: Not your keys, not your coins

[Wiwo]

Trusting my private keys to anyone in the name of centralized exchange or any name as follows is that last thing I'll rather do with the height of insights I have in this space. Perhaps, they have forgotten that that's why its called private keys, it's nonsharable.
Not my keys, not mine coins!!

You will not even have a private key with centralized exchange, what you will have is just a wallet address that is peculiar to your account and every other control of the funds in the wallet is in the hand of the exchange. That is how bad the situation is, as the owner of the money you do t have access to it and the exchange will do whatever their like with the money. I don't trust exchange and I categorize them under risk assets such like gamble anything can happen, but if you have your money in your private wallet with your keys properly save 💾  in a secured place were you can recover the wallet at any time and anywhere then you have a financial freedom you desired. Exchange is just a marketplace where trades happen but when it comes to storage of your asset it is secured to have them in your cold wallets and having the private keys in your control is the guarantee for a secured financial future.

[Cookdata]

Exchanges like Binance are helping the adoption of bitcoin. That is why I don't criticise them too much. If you remove exchanges and be fair in your judgement you will understand that things of bitcoin is not easy for everyone to handle. Especially people that are stressing everyday looking for how to make food for the family.
This people look for people to trust for their coins because their memories can fail them anytime.
No matter what we preach exchanges will be modifying the way they operate and if care is not taken, they will centralize many aspect of bitcoin.
We can only teach but we won't force people how to use their money.

I don't want to go into too much detail about exchanges because this topic is about how beginners should focus on keeping funds and recovery phrases safe, but if most users had followed this little warning, most of the users who got bitten by the FTX exit wouldn't be in the mess they are today, considering they were the second exchange by volume after Binance. Exchanges are important for cryptocurrency, but trust me when I say that his little cautions are as significant.

The majority of new investors come on board true centralized exchange and because they are new to the system, it is always very hard to convince them that CEX is not the best place to keep their assets, some of them don't really trade that much, they buy whatever they want to buy and keep it there instead of sending it to their own personal wallets, maybe they are too lazy to watch over their own investments their self. I'm not sure why would anyone will buy bitcoin and keep it on an exchange, for what exactly!

[Pmalek]

The major reason why DEX is not favoured by many is cause most have low liquidity when compared with bugger centralized exchanges, and this is a result of most users opting to use such centralized exchanges, boosting the userbase and its liquidity.

There is also the automation and ease of use.

On a centralized exchange like Binance, you create your buy/sell order and when the price hits that sweet spot, the order gets filled automatically. You don't need to be online or do anything else.

If we compare that with the most popular DEX, Bisq, the process is completely different. You need to check if the order is still valid, then you are required to make a security deposit. You need to be online and the other party needs to be online as well. Then the other party needs to make a security deposit. You have to manually check if your fiat transaction went through before releasing the crypto. Each transaction requires on-chain confirmations. That's going to depend on the congestion of the blockchain, the mining fees you want to pay, and how much time needs to pass until the next block is found.

It requires more time and more user input compared to automated CEXs. Since people are lazy, most will just use the stuff that requires the least amount of time no matter the security or privacy aspect.   

[Woodie]

I believe this message has been loud and clear over the years and the forum should not have a problem with this, but the target group going forward should be for those crypto users that aren't part of the forum and ignore these messages because they believe an exchange is too big to fail or can't be hacked. The best option should be to put all centralized exchanges to be responsible for sending out such messages to their clients so that such losses are minimized and the exchange liability will equally reduce .

[Taskford]

Exchanges like Binance are helping the adoption of bitcoin. That is why I don't criticise them too much. If you remove exchanges and be fair in your judgement you will understand that things of bitcoin is not easy for everyone to handle. Especially people that are stressing everyday looking for how to make food for the family.
This people look for people to trust for their coins because their memories can fail them anytime.
No matter what we preach exchanges will be modifying the way they operate and if care is not taken, they will centralize many aspect of bitcoin.
We can only teach but we won't force people how to use their money.

The majority of new investors come on board true centralized exchange and because they are new to the system, it is always very hard to convince them that CEX is not the best place to keep their assets, some of them don't really trade that much, they buy whatever they want to buy and keep it there instead of sending it to their own personal wallets, maybe they are too lazy to watch over their own investments their self. I'm not sure why would anyone will buy bitcoin and keep it on an exchange, for what exactly!

Sometimes its hard to convince newbies to avoid such things because majority of newbies has been introduce on new tokens which they bought on pre-sale and there's nothing they can do with it since mostly those tokens is listed on low tier exchange which is very risky to trade on. Also some of them got hype and stay because they think about good thing to do trades because they see a lot of option to choose if they want to trade that's why its good to see some fair warning like this since soon they realized for their selves that its not good to put 100% on a platform where you didn't hold your own keys.

[Cookdata]

The majority of new investors come on board true centralized exchange and because they are new to the system, it is always very hard to convince them that CEX is not the best place to keep their assets, some of them don't really trade that much, they buy whatever they want to buy and keep it there instead of sending it to their own personal wallets, maybe they are too lazy to watch over their own investments their self. I'm not sure why would anyone will buy bitcoin and keep it on an exchange, for what exactly!

Sometimes its hard to convince newbies to avoid such things because majority of newbies has been introduce on new tokens which they bought on pre-sale and there's nothing they can do with it since mostly those tokens is listed on low tier exchange which is very risky to trade on. Also some of them got hype and stay because they think about good thing to do trades because they see a lot of option to choose if they want to trade that's why its good to see some fair warning like this since soon they realized for their selves that its not good to put 100% on a platform where you didn't hold your own keys.

A lazy newbie will continue to be a lazy one, and in the world of cryptocurrency, being a lethargic person usually means losing money. Since it's so challenging for new pre-sale projects to get listed in an A-tier exchange, they usually settle for the least expensive options, that been said. However, I believe that most of the layer 1 blockchains on which these projects were built have decentralized exchanges where users can buy and sell coins without having to leave them on centralized exchanges.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that despite the newbie excuses, some of them have learned to keep their coins in personal wallets as a result of what we have all experienced with CEX. I can also say that despite all the hacks and incidents, there are some people who have been in this space for more than half a decade that have yet to learn to be their own custody, they would rather watch their investments on CEX on high risk.

[RockBell]

not your coin or your keys is one of the most frequently used expressions I've heard on the forum, and it's truly helped me. Even when I'm on air presenting at work, I love using the terminology to warn people about how risky it is to keep your assets in your wallet. When you are purchasing and holding, I think security comes first. What happened to FTX should serve as a lesson about why it's not a good idea to leave your coins on any exchange, but people aren't listening. Additionally, since scammers have tried to get you to connect your wallet to the exchange by pasting your recovery phrase, everyone should be vigilant and careful.