> Only fools keep substantial Bitcoin balances in exchange wallets. Or, "regular folks". My in-laws who have no idea what it actually is that they purchased u

> Only fools keep substantial Bitcoin balances in exchange wallets. Or, "regular folks". My in-laws who have no idea what it actually is that they purchased use Coinbase and have no idea that doing so is not much better than giving your wallet to a stranger and asking them to keep the money safe and have it available when you want to go to McDonald's. Is it all that much better than them keeping it in a local wallet for them? I wouldn't trust my in-laws to keep their computer safe from the myriad of threats that the Internet has to offer. I wouldn't trust my parents to use a password more complicated than one originating from the Spaceballs movie to protect their private key (let alone them understand with any level of accuracy what a "private key" actually is). I'd put more faith in Coinbase handling that for them, despite being a radically larger target than they are as individuals. For us? Yeah, it's an insane proposition. My ETH lived in my Coinbase wallet from about the time that I noticed the transaction went from Pending to Completed to about the time it took me to fill out the form to turn it into cash to deposit into my savings account at my local bank. And the first time I used Coinbase, I moved the first couple of coins one at a time just to limit my losses if something went horribly wrong. The thing is, to secure it well, locally, you have to do quite a lot. My wallet keys and wallet aren't even stored on a computer -- I've got them on three encrypted thumb drives, one in a safe at my house, one in a safe at my parent's house and one handy. I fire up a VM started from a checkpoint just after installation (after running updates) which itself is stored on an encrypted volume when I need to move money from my wallet to reduce the risk that my machine was compromised with something looking for those keys -- ready to swipe them on access[0]. My parents inherently trust the software and their computer to not become their enemy and wouldn't take even the most basic precautions around protecting their key from loss (Hi, son, I was wondering how to reset my password on my wallet; I forgot it) let alone protect their key from folks who write malware designed to steal it. [0] All the while not being sure something exists out there for ETH, but knowing that if the price continues to go where it's going, it absolutely will.