Nowadays there are quite a few extremely reputable and solid exchanges, insured, following all regulations, etc. For example Gemini run by the Winkelvoss twins,

Nowadays there are quite a few extremely reputable and solid exchanges, insured, following all regulations, etc. For example Gemini run by the Winkelvoss twins, and Coinbase/GDAX (a YC-funded company.) MtGox has never been reputable. It was the biggest, and it worked, but it has always been sketchy. I say this as a MtGox user through 2011-2013. And yeah I stopped using it about a year before it got shut down because other exchanges more reputable than MtGox started appearing and it was more and more obvious MtGox had serious internal issues (delays in processing transactions, one of their bank account seized by the feds in 2013, etc.)