Disagree on a philosophical level and you won't find many fans of that opinion here BUT for the general retail user, or even institutional level users, who don't actually use Bitcoin but hold, perhaps own wallet (paper even) is even better than hardware -- if you protect it with right measures and don't want to trust a company like Ledger.

Even I might be tempted to part with some of my BTC for 8%APY if it were regional bank (rather than a national one) that is insured and guaranteed by say, the EU instead of just a single government.

But I can certainly understand why most people, judging from the many queries from people who lost their accounts and can't recover private keys, would prefer keeping shit safely tucked away and guarded by someone else.

Exactly, well said.



Not only you're right, Binance now has lowered its interest rate % offered on USDT, it shows they are trying to keep things stable, that's what solid banks do as well - reduce the rate on savings, increase it on lending - it's not a very scrupulous step but it's necessary in order to keep things stable so kudos to them.

Once again it's important to state not all exchanges are safe but those who take precautions like Binance are much more solid than the others.

Exchanger has also risk and anyone can lose his money forever. Do you think all the exchangers are safe and trustworthy? A exchanger can run away at any time and besides that a exchanger can be hacked.

I think it depends on the purpose of keeping money and how large or small money is to choose how to store cryptocurrencies.

If you want to store large sums of money or keep it for many years then you should choose a cold wallet

If you want to store money for short-term trading for a few weeks or months or you only have a small amount of money, storing in exchanges is not a problem as long as you implement AML KYC and have a lot of security. big for them. The most unlucky thing that could happen was that this exchange was closed.

That is the last thing i will do ,I have watched hacking for years and also exchange taking our Funds.
there are also a exchange that charge you per month if you have no activities or trading that doing in their platform.
so why would i trust exchange?
I have my own storage and i also have wallets.

Hope you will not become a victim in future so you need to change your stand.

If you are ready to trade your privacy, security and control over your money for some "8% APY", you aren't a real Bitcoiners, you're just an investor who wants to make more gains at all costs. Bitcoin has value because it's not like banks, if you start turning it into a bank, it loses its value proposition. Like, one of the driving arguments in the recent years was that Bitcoin is a digital gold, but if you keep your coins in some online wallet, you don't have digital gold, you have an IOU for digital gold. And we all know what happened to IOUs for physical gold.

And despite this people still insist to store their coins there, on the surface this may seem like a contradictory behaviour but what happens is that many people never really think about the consequences of their actions and they do not believe that they will get hacked and will lose their coins, so they keep their coins at the exchange believing their coins are safer there when in fact the opposite is the truth.

Any hacker knows that exchanges are holding a fortune and as such they are always trying to find a flaw in their security they can exploit, while in the case of a user as long as he is not a whale and he takes the time to secure his coins then the chances he gets hacked are minimal.

I can't argue to this anymore and what exactly OP saying is not recommendable. Just for the sake of low profit you decide to risk all of your assets by leaving it on the exchange? Your crypto, your money. Don't let someone controls it from you—we have given the opportunity to hold and control our own money once you join in the blockchain technology

I don't agree completely with the OP for few reasons.
While it's true that Exchanges like Binance, Kraken etc.. are becoming continuously sophisticated, it's very far to say that cold wallets like Ledger, Trezor etc. are going to be history.

It's completely false to say that you are relying on a centralized private company when using a such cold wallet like Ledger.com and completely wrong to make comparison to Netscape.
Therefore, let me give you some clear facts about Ledger (also valid for Trezor and other similar devices):

• 1. You can recover your accounts on any BIP39 compatible third-party wallet, not only on Ledger devices. So you will still be able to access your funds even if Ledger disappears.
  
• 2. The Ledger device is not a centralized device as it does not connect to Ledger servers but to the Blockchain. Even if Ledger closed you would still be able to send and receive your digital assets through Ledger application and other third party platforms.
• 3. You will only need to keep your 24 words recovery phrase and passphrase (if set)
• 4. So as you can see, these cold wallets (that could be used also as hot wallets!!) are very secure and nobody will freeze (depending on which digital assets you are using - that's an other topic) or steal your assets that easy

Exchanges are great places to trade your digital assets, but NOT to keep lot of funds (if yes, then for trade only and not for long storage). I wouldn't recommend doing it. I read so many bad reviews on Exchanges like Binance, Bitstamp, freezing money of customers and asking them to provide information they can't really provide (like screenshots of the very first transaction you did 3 years ago) or events like forcing non-verified users to submit KYC, not to mention about the recent hacks.

If you want to have 100% control of your money, Exchanges are the worst place you can go for.
I don't think its worth the interest paid by some exchanges to store your money for long term on their wallets.

If you were wanting to be extra secure you could hide your 12/24 words out in the open - quite literally.

Select 12/24 outdoor locations that you can memorise, spray paint a single word in each location - as large as you can - wait for a passing satellite to photograph the word - verify via Google or another aerial mapping service the word is legible (and that it is archived) - Just ensure you don't just leave 12/24 words - do dozens, if not hundreds of words, that way no one can collate the seed words and try to work out the correct combination.  (even do some of the words in duplicate locations to further confuse anyone trying to unlock the key)

You then wouldn't even need to keep the words in a "secure" location for anyone to uncover and copy because there wouldn't even be a single copy of the list.