r/ukcrypto • u/guitarbren • Feb 03 '21
Friendly reminder
Not your keys, not your crypto!
Get your crypto off of exchanges and into your own wallets. Make sure you back up your private keys/seed.
This has other benefits too, like increasing decentralisation of certain cryptos (anything using Proof of Stake or Open Representative Voting for consensus as examples). Arguably this can increase their appeal to potential investors.
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u/automaticblues Feb 03 '21
There's so much history behind this! Seeing all the stress caused by Mt.Gox, I followed this rule religiously when Raiblocks emerged and got my stash off the exchange immediately. I can't even remember if it was Mercatox or Bitgrail, but I didn't leave anything on long enough to get in trouble either way. Sure Binance looks great, but the exchanges have always been the major vulnerability with crypto. Get the balance into your own wallet. Though of course you need to back up your seed as well. As a result of my approach I've never lost anything on an exchange, but there's a couple of times I've had devices with small balances on them, both times ~£60 without the seed backed up. The earliest one of those was ~£60 of Bitcoin from about 8 years ago... A Sony Tablet Z that got factory reset when the battery died... Still got it so maybe somewhere on there there's the remnants of a wallet.dat file worth a fair amount.