I think most people are into online wallets because it's very easy to use, especially if you just got into bitcoin and are still learning. Desktop wallets take up a lot of space which some people don't have.

There could be several reasons to this and unfortunately many fall prey to it. Few that I could think of are:

1) Ease of access of funds: Many prefer the ability to easily access their funds from an exchange website through a portable device, probably their smartphones.

2) Laziness and/or lack of understanding about security: Sometimes people prefer exchanging altcoins and monitor the prices, they prefer to keep it there for days or weeks or even months and wait for the opportune moment to trade without realizing it's risky storing them on web wallets. Most exchanges give importance on "fees (methods to earn commission)" and easy "exchange" but ignore security factors. People assume a web wallet with 2-factor authentication keeps them safe, but it need not be the case. Until and unless you alone have access to your private keys (considering it's not a multi-sig wallet), it's good to understand that the cryptocurrency you store on these exchanges may not be yours.

Its easy to access funds using online wallet, but i dont keep large amount of BTC in an online wallet, jsut enough for casinos and altcoin trading

to be honest bitcoin can never go mainstream if it was not for all these online wallets , just hearing about the other option makes most people get a headache and never want to touch bitcoins, the online wallets made it so easy to use and to understand what u see when u look at your screen . and im one of these beginners also i have used both but i prefer online wallets feels way more natural and something that you are used to thanks to banks having online services same with betting and alot of other stuff, so it just felt normal.

but the theft have to stop in someway or bitcoins is dead becuse then it will never atract more people, if they cant use online wallets :/

Here we go and we conclude that it is needed to have more than one wallet, one for every day use and another one (mostly hardware wallet) as a cold storage for savings.

It's depend on what wallet you're using.

If you are using bitcoin core wallet, then there is no other option except for downloading all the blockchain.

But for other wallet didn't have to download all the blockchain.

Like multibit in desktop, my cellium on mobile, and blockchain.info in web wallet.

I cannot store all my coins on my computer as it will occupy a large space as we all know the wallet grow large as time goes by so we need an online wallet to keep some of our coins,but I make sure that only alt coins that has small value are kept on this online exchangers  and exchange them when the right time to trade

I don't think the reason why people are storing their coins on exchanges is because of simplicity, I think they're traders who want to profit from the market and because it takes a little time to get coins into the exchange, they leave it there. Which is a big mistake.


Thats not true, Electrum would work everywhere and even if you can't connect it, you can always make a transaction using it, sign it and then broadcast it using any broadcast service such as, https://blockchain.info/pushtx, https://blockr.io/tx/push.

Your coins still remain safe and secure in your wallet.

because they start using their brain "after" they were burnt. but as long as they see the beautiful design with beautiful words of a "website" they are happy. they exchanger claims to be safe in the first page with pictures of safes with big locks and they think to themselves we are going to be fine. and apparently they don't know about google and how to search about these stuff.