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The 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 crypto

The 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 ago
Exactly. 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.
- aml183 9y ago
  The insurance coverage is limited and doesn't cover theft of individual accounts.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- vkou 9y ago
  No exchange has a full insurance on their cold storage. Not a single one.
emiliobumachar 9y ago
There 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 ago
Honest question. How is this possible? Isn't it as simple as copy and pasting the public address?
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  Among 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...
- chatmasta 9y ago
  Well, you’ve also got to keep track of the private key...
- avenoir 9y ago
  I've had an instance where the withdrawal to my wallet seemingly didn't even make it to a block on the chain. This happened on Coinbase and took over 2 weeks to resolve. With their non-existent support I pretty much considered that money lost until the whole thing finally got resolved. But I can definitely see somebody fat fingering the wallet address being one of the bigger reasons.
- lorenzq 9y ago
  Take ETH and ETC for example, they both have the same address format and accidentally sending from one chain to another results into your crypto being locked away forever.
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  You could ask this guy: https://etherscan.io/address/0xa8f889a066519ffb552a571d553b86ddee155efd#comments https://etherscan.io/address/0xa8f889a066519ffb552a571d553b8... Looks like he copy-pasted a corrupt version of the address. There are three transactions to this destination, from different exchanges.

DSingularity 9y ago

Exactly. 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.

aml183 9y ago
The insurance coverage is limited and doesn't cover theft of individual accounts.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
vkou 9y ago
No exchange has a full insurance on their cold storage. Not a single one.

emiliobumachar 9y ago

There 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 ago

Honest question. How is this possible? Isn't it as simple as copy and pasting the public address?

ceejayoz 9y ago
Among 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...
chatmasta 9y ago
Well, you’ve also got to keep track of the private key...
avenoir 9y ago
I've had an instance where the withdrawal to my wallet seemingly didn't even make it to a block on the chain. This happened on Coinbase and took over 2 weeks to resolve. With their non-existent support I pretty much considered that money lost until the whole thing finally got resolved. But I can definitely see somebody fat fingering the wallet address being one of the bigger reasons.
lorenzq 9y ago
Take ETH and ETC for example, they both have the same address format and accidentally sending from one chain to another results into your crypto being locked away forever.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
You could ask this guy: https://etherscan.io/address/0xa8f889a066519ffb552a571d553b86ddee155efd#comments https://etherscan.io/address/0xa8f889a066519ffb552a571d553b8... Looks like he copy-pasted a corrupt version of the address. There are three transactions to this destination, from different exchanges.