You're right — but what we think and want doesn't always reflect reality. The fact is, most of the cryptocurrency space at least for now is still largely speculation and not much people (at least yet) care about self-custody and self-sovereignty.

Well, sure, the currency and the exchanges are separate. But the price of the currency is determined by a market, and that market is greatly influenced by a few such entities, like Binance and the like.

There shouldn't be exchanges used as wallet software in the first place, as you're not supposed to have an intermediary when using or buying bitcoin, but unfortunately many people (who partly define the price) don't get that.

you have been around long enough to know this stuff

firstly never measure your "SAVINGS" based on the volatility of the market price because the market price is indeed controlled by exchanges..

instead if your a long term holder stop caring about the market price. and just remember its volatile..
instead remember this simple fact
there is always a periodic BOTTOM that the markets refuse to sell below. set that as your "savings value" per coin per 6 month period

the bottomline value is almost like the guarantee minimum return.
yes the speculative market can swing up above this and you can get temporary opportunities to sell higher then the periodic bottom. but if you are not in a selling mood dont care about the temporary prices

for instance late 2022 saw the bottom at $15k
early 2023 saw it at $17k (even when temporary market prices were over $20k)
now the bottomline value is over $20k (even when the market prices are over $25k)

knowing you would get a minimum of $15k late 2022 and now $20k in 2023 is much more relaxing though then daily worrying about the daily speculation and volatility of the markets that sit above the bottomline value

if you want to calculate the bottomline value.. take about 6 months of average network hashrate.
calculate the cheapest most efficient asic to work out how many asics are needed, how much electric and the cheapest effective electric of prominent mining farms. to then calculate the cost to mine most efficiently on the planet per btc

that there is the effective bottomline cheapest way to acquire bitcoin on the planet(below market rate) meaning no one wants to sell below that amount because no one on the planet can acquire bitcoin via mining, otc trading or CEX trading to get bitcoin any cheaper. so no one on planet will sell below that. which is where the bottomline support steps in to re-inforce that cex markets never correct all the way down to that level

once you know the number. you can then be rest assured that unless bitcoin really breaks you have a minimum value for your "savings" and anything else the speculative market wants to sell for is a bonus above the savings

Well spoken @op, bitcoin and exchanges are two different entities, but unfortunately, they are linked by customers who trade bitcoin on the exchanges, understand that the problem is not with the exchange themselves, but with the customers who panic sells their bitcoin when any major issue arrives, like in the FTX saga last year..

If bitcoin holders, who are also customers of this exchanges can come to their senses, and choose withdrawing their bitcoin to their private wallets rather than panic selling whenever there is a negative news, then the negative impact of the news will not at all, show on the price of bitcoin.

This clearly a case of FUD reaction by mostly traders. If we look at the this exchanges mostly centralized exchanges we would find out that most of the coins stored on them are for traders that utilizes the features like spot trading, future trading, margin trading and its likes. And binance been the largest or biggest exchange it is possible that it will have more traders on it. And we all know traders aren’t investors that would hold on to their coins or withdraw them to a proper wallet. The traders will be predicting a price drop in bitcoin and the rest as CZ is reported to be sued, and then they also would just sell off their funds to either fiat or stablecoins.

The continuous increase of different trading features on exchanges will definitely make it hard for traders mostly daily traders to take off their funds off the exchanges. Also if the many people do not only see the use of bitcoin as payment method or an asset that can be stored but a currency for different trading purposes and without decentralized exchanges matching the number of different trading features on centralized exchanges, sadly many will continue to hold there funds on platforms like binance

The value of your coins goes up not because millions of people adopt Bitcoin to pay with it for their morning coffee, it's because companies like Binance allow millions of people to quickly and conveniently invest in Bitcoin and trade it. Binance is responsible for a large share of total Bitcoin trading volume, so like it or not, exchanges will be a major factor for Bitcoin's price, until most of the trading volume will move to DEX, which might not even happen ever.

Bitcoin and exchanges are different, but there is a need of a platform through which the market for the bitcoin is built. If exchanges weren't available, what would've happened. Everyone who have got bitcoin will be holding it and there won't be any trading practice which keeps the market stable. If not we could've got moved to the ancient days or to the paper and pen on trading. Exchanges are part of the development. Everything can't be cent percent perfect, so is the service provided through the exchanges. The cryptomarket have got some connectivity with the exchanges, just because of that we were able experience downfall in the market when something good happens.

Yes, you're right. I've never used either of them too. But still, for the masses, things like that create a bad image of crypto, so it all goes down, you know how that works. We can embrace or at least endure it.

Negative news = negative effect towards the crypto market. Market is heavily driven by emotions, by sentiments of the investors.

Though this wasn't the case for some news, most of the time whenever there's a negative news, the sentiment of the investors is going negative, thus they feel panic, and they will sell their holdings, causing the prices to go down.

I don't know if it's just me, but I've seen Binance being sued for many times already. CZ denied the allegations on his twitter account, and these are just "SPECULATIONS" because of the word "ALLEGED" meaning they aren't 100% sure if it's true. Now to answer your question, I guess the fact that most of the investors are using Centralized Exchanges whenever they buy and sell makes it more important to them. I mean if these exchanges will disappear, what will be our options if we want to buy, or/and sell Bitcoin, and other altcoins.

Well like you, I will not get affected if Binance will suddenly disappear, but I doubt it will happen. Just look at FTX. It has an issue a few months ago like you shared, but it's still operating like nothing happened.

In the past, if we didn't know enough about cryptocurrencies and received terrible news about any project or thing related to bitcoin, we would panic. As a result, many sell their assets right away to minimize the potential losses that unfavorable news could bring about. If you look at the market, it has happened before. And now, people are getting matured and they no longer purchase this type of stuff because they believe it is just manipulation. As a result, even though there are several charges against Binance, the price of Bitcoin will not fall significantly.