In my opinion, you can not just blame this on exchanges, men must trade also. You need to let us know the name of the exchange. Normally, without private key, then the bitcoin is not directly ours and not our own on bitcoin blockchain. That is why it is very good to use a very reputed, trustworthy, reliable and a very safe exchange, trading is not easy or nearly impossible on wallets, that is why people prefer to use exchanges to trade.

Binance Dex exchange still provide customers with private keys, which can be a good alternative, but this kind of exchange have low trading volume.

Are you sure the local exchange you are using is old and legit or just a new one and proclaiming that they are legit? Because that most probably be the root of your problem. The point you told us that there is no trace of transaction in the history makes me thought already that it is sort of inside job. That was very unusual.

Once you get your money back (hopefully), the best thing to do is to withdraw it once and for all and then shift into bigger reputable exchanges like Binance in order to avoid this instance. God bless you .

You can cite the Exchange you used if you wish. Some Exchanges may be buggy, and render a balance that is incorrect and inconsistent with the TXs, especially if they don’t allocate enough resources. Certainly not a good proffesional sign. This could be your case, and the support team you’ve contacted should inform you of what’s going on. On the other hand, there are some scam Exchanges around, and you may have fallen for one.

Sidenote: You’ve made the same exact post on Serious Discussion, which goes against this:

Best to provide the name of the exchange you are using since people are so curious about this case and want to avoid the site since you are compromised by using it as you said. But also try to wait for their investigation since there are so many factors possibly happens and the developers can answer you if they are done with it. For now best to wait and also always activate your 2FA,set-up a strong password and don't install any unfamiliar links to avoid being hacked.

I understand that you might not want to disclose the details about which exchange you was using but unfortunately for all of us here this is a crucial information, so maybe in the future if you're not too worried about the details share them.

As for your money have gone missing, this is weird and if you're new to crypto might I suggest the possibility of you having used a stop-loss feature to buy in or something which might have resulted in your money going missing? To be honest, this can happen to anyone so best to check all possibilities and for the future remember to always keep your guard up.

 Personally I am surprised that some people still believe that keeping even a small amount may give the guarantee that this amount will not be stolen or disappear because of some reason. The most safe place is good wallet that is strongly secured. And of course secured not only by your seed words but secured by your following of simple rules of using your assets - good old and simple rules, that very often are forgotten by lots of users. It is better to use separate gadget where you use your wallet, and this gadget you should better not use for searching something in the Internet, watching films or working with your social profiles. Cold wallet is even better.  And of course everyone should be ready to lose because there is always such a risk. It is said not only about the exchanges, but it is said about the assets and every direction of investments or trading.

I know some users will quickly jump in on the discussion to chirp in why keeping coins on centralized exchanges is bad. When the funds are not actively been traded, that's when it should be kept in a private wallet but we can't say the same for people who make trades on these exchanges. It would be unreasonable to send your assets back and forth from private wallets to exchanges just to make trades because fees will eat up the profits you could have had.

If the funds are used for trading, Its advisable to pick an exchange with a top notch security, otherwise things might go bad in the long run.

---

@OP, Sorry about your loss. I do hope that you recover it soonest.

well, am sorry I didn't know about this rule, and thank you for bringing it to my notice, I've tried deleting my duplicate post on serious discussion session but looks like I can't, each I click delete, am always greeted back with "erro, you can't delete your post on this session"

So I guess I will just leave it there


And for those asking to know what exchange it is

First, what i will let you guys know is that, it's a local exchange as I've said before, what I mean by local exchange is that other countries can't use it cus it operates within this country alone, and also it can't be used to day trade cus there's not enough liquidity for that, I meanly use them to convert my local currency to bitcoin or ethereum which ever, and also to convert my bitcoin or ethereum to my local currency and withdraw to my local bank account if need be.

I don't want to disclose their name just yet, I want to first of all read from them, I Want to know what happened and if am gonna get my money back and the update now is that am still waiting for them to reply my mail. The whole issue might as well be a result of a glitch in their system which is what am suspecting.

But my message here to everyone most especially newbies is to not just leave their coins on exchanges when you know you don't day trade or use exchanges in place of a private wallet, its very risky, i lost coins worth over 287 usd on Cryptopia when they got hacked, i didnt get a dime of that back even though they claim to have paid some people.

Using your own wallet doesn't make you immune to hacks, just as your account got hacked, your computer can be hacked too, there's malware in the wild that targets crypto users by stealing and decrypting their wallet files, or stealing private keys from memory, or using keyloggers to steal seeds, and so on. You need to be quite good at cybersecurity to not lose your coins in the long run, one misstep and potentially all your coins will be gone, no matter if it's 0.001 BTC or 40 BTC.