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Conclusion: If you keep any cryptocurrency on an exchange or online service that can or is capable of controlling your private keys - MOVE all your cryptos to y
by gesman 9y ago
Conclusion: If you keep any cryptocurrency on an exchange or online service that can or is capable of controlling your private keys - MOVE all your cryptos to your own deterministic wallet YESTERDAY!
- simias 9y agoYou also have to take into account the probability of your exchange of choice being hacked vs. the probability that you'll get your own wallet compromised/destroyed/lost etc... Given that cryptocurrencies have become pretty mainstream and given the average level of technical literacy among the general public I can understand why some might prefer to keep their coins in somebody else's hands.
- notyourday 9y agoYou mean probability of people who run the exchange/work there deciding that they have a better use of your coinz?
- lumberjack 9y agoThere is risk either way, though. Say you want to sell fast because of something major (that is not just hype). If your monies aren't online you will be the last to try to cash out.
- wsc981 9y agoI agree, which is why I prefer to: - keep only (most of) my long term holds in my hardware wallets (e.g. NEO, OMG, ...) - spread my shorter term holds over several exchanges
- bkolobara 9y agoThe possibility of an exchange getting hacked is much lower than the possibility of users losing founds by transferring them to their own wallet. I run a cryptocurrency forum and in 99% of reported cases users lost their founds by moving money from an exchange to a local wallet or even a hardware wallet. I always recommend everyone to keep it on an exchange.
- DSingularity 9y agoExactly. And the top notch exchanges keep everything in cold storage AND they take out massive insurance policies on it. Keep coins there unless we are talking millions of $ worth.
- emiliobumachar 9y agoThere may be reporting bias going on. I suspect a high percentage of people who lose BTC by themselves will report it in a forum, since, as far as they know, their case might have unique details in which a more knowledgeable person might find a solution. But a low percentage of people who lose BTC due to an exchange hacked will report it, since the information they need is already in news and blog posts all over the web.
- monadmancer 9y agoHonest question. How is this possible? Isn't it as simple as copy and pasting the public address?
- ceejayoz 9y agoAmong other things, there's malware in the wild that rewrites public addresses when you paste them into the major exchange's "send coins" forms. https://www.investopedia.com/news/new-bitcoin-malware-changes-destination-wallets/ https://www.investopedia.com/news/new-bitcoin-malware-change...
- ht85 9y agoI think the biggest problem is having a single point of failure. I personally keep about half my coins on exchanges, but no exchange holds more than 10%. Storing your coins might be the best solution in theory, but in practice unless you're very savvy about the whole stack - hardware, OS, software and blockchain tech, it's hard to be sure you're not making a dumb mistake and exposing your whole stack. Even hardware wallet can have vulnerabilities, and any form of "paper wallet" can be physically lost or destroyed. My opinion is that you should hedge to make any loss tolerable, instead of trying to prevent it completely.
- dangero 9y agopaper wallet generation software can also have bugs or be intentionally rigged and people have definitely reported both quite a bit. You're right on with your approach -- I think the answer is multiple wallets -- even multiple brands of hardware wallets, multiple exchanges, multiple computers, multiple different types of paper wallets stored in different places, even multiple cryptocurrencies in case one has a catastrophic issue.
- naveen99 9y agoYou can keep just 10% on bitmex and use upto 10x leverage. If you get liquidated take another 10% out. If you make profit, send it back to the icebox.
- Kiro 9y agoSome of us think it's worth the risk so that's just your personal conclusion.
- tomc1985 9y agoI would have had Bitcoin at a much more opportune time if I could have gotten Armory to work. The idea that one must download the entire blockchain makes maintaining a wallet very difficult for some, esp. if the wallet software doesn't accept the data at the end of the dozens+GB download.
- staplers 9y agoThe idea that one must download the entire blockchain makes maintaining a wallet very difficult Totally false. There are plenty of wallets that allow you to connect to a decentralized network of servers hosting the blockchain. Electrum, Multibit to name a few.
- tomc1985 9y agomaybe, but I don't recall encountering any of these years ago
- staplers 9y agoThey have been around for over 5 years. I used them 5 years ago..
- 52-6F-62 9y agoFor Ethereum as well— the official wallets will let you run them in light mode which brings the chain size from approaching 100GB down to a few GB
- ReverseCold 9y agoNEM (the coin that was stolen) doesn't make any local wallet user download the chain. Instead, it uses a client server model. https://nem.io/ https://nem.io/ As such, the wallet is super lightweight and easy for an average user. Doesn't protect you from exchange hacks though.
- lawlessone 9y agoeh, not all wallet require the whole blockchain. e.g electrum
- agumonkey 9y agotx fees are around 10$ so it's meh
- SwellJoe 9y agoCounterpoint: I've lost all of the coins I held in local wallets (a variety of stupid reasons, but still gone nonetheless). I still had the coins that I'd been holding in Coinbase for years until I recently sold nearly all of them because I'm reasonably confident the Tether scam is going to trigger a massive price collapse across the board once folks notice they're just printing money over there and gobbling up about half of all miner output with funny money (it's really an astonishingly bold con).