Bitcoiners Who Kept Their Coins on Exchanges Faired Better Than Those Holding Their Private Keys
So a couple days back on August 1, 2017 the Bitcoin hard fork or split happenned leaving us with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Now something I found ironic about the whole situation is this. Everyone preaches to hold your private keys and I agree with that sentiment don't get me wrong. When you keep your coins on an exchange your trusting them to hold them, your trusting them to give them to you when you want them, you're trusting them not to get hacked, you are putting a lot of trust in them.
That said I just find it ironic that the people who before August 1 sent their Bitcoins to say Bittrex an exchange for example had the chance to cash out their Bitcoin Cash at upwards of $1300 where as people like myself and others who kept are Bitcoins on a Trezor or Electrum are unable to access our Bitcoin Cash, at least not in a way that's 100% safe to do or easy to do so. I just found that ironic.
One other thing I wanted to comment on in this video is I think the people in the Bitcoin world who choose to store their coins on exchanges are underrepresented. I see a lot of people saying they are stupid. Don't get me wrong I'm not arguing that an exchange is better than controlling your own Bitcoin, however not everyone is super passionate about the technology, not everyone is a techy, and some people are worried and probably rightfully so that controlling their own Bitcoins could be more dangerous than storing them on an exchange if they don't know what they are doing.
I'm not saying storing your coins on an exchange is free of risk, however the same way we trust Charles Schwab or Scottrade or eTrade to hold our stock as opposed to holding physical stock certificates, there's a portion of the population who are just investors or speculators and are not developers or techies who want to invest in and be a part of the Bitcoin space but would prefer to let an expert like Coinbase store them for them as opposed to storing them themselves.
And again while I'm not necessarily recommending people store their coins on an exchange, I think exchanges have come a long way since the days of MtGox. Coinbase for example is licensed and insured and to the best of my knowledge has not been hacked and I feel like their vault feature is pretty darn secure so if someone wants to store their coins on Coinbase I don't think it's the end of the world.
What's your thoughts? Drop a comment below
I can see that it may appear like that and for small amounts you may be happy to leave on an exchange. But in reality, although you may have had the opportunity to dump at the peak, this still supposes you know it was the peak.
Plus, you only have to look around to see all the issues with polo freezing withdrawals again to see why people (myself included) are much happier keeping my coins under my control. I may have lost the opportunity to dump my new coins at an artificial price, but I know I have the opportunity to dump my BTC at a time of my choosing, not when the exchange decides to allow me to have access to them!
I personally chose to keep my coins myself as well, I had considered sending some to Bittrex or HitBTC, I didn't trust hitBTC and in the end decided not to send them to Bittrex but people who did use Bittrex have ahd control of their coins sooner than the rest of us who control our private keys and faster than myself who chose to keep them on a trezor. Personally had I had the opportunity I probably would have sold mine at $1100 and then bought back a day later at like $400 but I'm not hugely concerned over it and I'm not smart enough to figure out how to get them off my trezor at the moment so for the time being I'll leave them be.
Also, I should add having funds frozen was the reason I ddin't trust hitbtc, when I tried to do a little research on them I kept comming across articles that talked about them freezing peoples Bitcoins.
I had BTC at both Kraken and Bittrex during the fork. Apart from Kraken sort of falling apart at times during the day, it was a pretty good day. I managed to pick up some BCC (or BCH) fairly early after the fork and was able to ride it up for the most part. When Kraken became unworkable, I bought 15k Doge and transferred that over to Bittrex and converted that (through BTC) into BCC. I played around with the wave most of the day and a bit during day two for the second rally. I'm still working with small amounts of coins for the most part, so it wasn't exactly a huge haul, but I was able to increase my numbers a bit. As for the future, I sold out of BCC completely, but may go back in once things have stabilized a little. I see BCC evening out around $350-450 over the next month or so, not sure after that. It will be interesting to see what happens once people are able to deposit and withdraw BCC directly...
I wish I could have sold earlier, finally claimed it through my Trezor, briefly freaked out as I thought it got lost in space but was just in pending status on my Bittrex account for a day or so. I'm not willing to sell it for $200 but if we get up to $300 or $400 I'm gonna dump it in a second and buy some alts
I also moved my Bitcoin off coinbase to my own paper wallet, but I plan on holding onto the BCH to see where it goes. What if it spikes past that initial high? It was free anyways!
Hey @cryptostache I'm kind of in the same boat as you, I was somewhat expecting it to go to 0 so wasn't all that concerned. I thought about moving it to hitbtc but didn't really trust them so didn't wanna send them my coins. I'm not really freaking out about not having access. Had I had access I probably would have flipped half them for $1100 but so be it. I'll just sit on them for now as soon as I'm able to access them in my trezor
hang in there buddy! crypto is a wild mustache ride of a time!
Looks like Coinbase caved as I suspected it would and will be supporting Bitcoin Cash by the 1st of the year. Who knows were the price will be by then.
Yeah they are already down pretty low, I'm tempted to buy some but worried it will keep going lower as I think many people still don't have acces to their BCC to dump
Yea, I haven't looked into the BCC trading volume much. I'm not a big fan of it myself but I wouldn't be surprised if does trade higher in the coming weeks. I stick to BTC, LTC some Monero then have tiny amounts of some random coins that Exodus Supports.
Do you think Litecoin ever has a chance to really skyrocket in price or do you think it will remain where it's at but be like the stable crypto when everything else is not only rising but also crashing?
LTC is the stable Crypto. I do think others will move and it will lag. I am a buy and hold person but a trader might do well playing the aspect of the market. I really do think everyone should treat Coins even privacy ones like Dash and Monero different than everything that is on the Ethereum platform. I think the entire Crypto space is bullish but the Ethereum platform worries me in the long run.
I've always liked Litecoin and I hold a good bit of it. I kind of want to sell as I feel there's an opportunity cost to holding something that never moves but at the same time with my luck despite having been sitting on this forever, as soon as I sell it it's gonna moon shot lol.
I also have 88 Litecoins which means I'm part of the millionth club ie there's 88 million Litecoins so I'll own 1 Millionths of all litecoins in existance. I missed the boat on doing that with Bitcoin and having 21 Bitcoins so hesitant to sell off my Litecoin position. I may start flipping it though. I bought some at $35 on the most recent dip, rode it up to $50 or $51 and cashed some out but kept majority and now were back at like $45 again.
I think litecoin could act like a tether that USD based Bitfinex currency to ride out crypto storms because it's so stable. By that I mean if your up $600 on bitcoin and want to lock in those profits maybe go to litecoin
Yes I also regret I didn't move them to an exchange. Don't want to risk my btc to claim bitcoin cash. But ok soon there will be some secure wallets I assume.
Yeah I'm still scared to do it. I guess Trezor does offer a way to do it using some beta.trezor site but I'm just gonna sit tight and wait til they do it for me.
I'm also not in a hurry but would like to see them :-)
For a newbie in cryptocurrency (which I am), it was quite hard to understand the process of creating paper wallets for all your currencies. If you send them to the wrong address, you're screwed...
I can imagine people store their coins on exchanges, especially when you have made only a small investment. If it is a small amount, you probably want to take the risk. Also, using exchanges it is easier to have an overview of the performance of all your coins.
But personally I feel more secure storing my funds offline. You didn't mention it, but there is also the risk of getting hacked yourself instead of the exchange. I'm not sure what hackers are capable of, but there is always some information to find on your pc...
Hey @theonlywayisup yeah for my first couple years in Bitcoin I kind of took that attitude, basically there's a higher chance of me screwing something up than Coinbase getting hacked so I stored my coins on there for the most part.
Same. The first $1k I put into bitcoin at like $265ish a coin was just play money. I was more supporting a cause than thinking it would really amount to much. I had some Litecoin I bought in 2014 off eBay that I played with on my own wallet. Bitcoin at $265 I was afraid to lose, then it spiked up to crazy amounts. The $50 worth of Litcoin I was sending to friends and giving away, I never thought at like $3 it would go back to $40 range. To be honest I never expected any of the Alt Coins to do much of anything.
I ended up coming out ok so far with this. I had a very small amount on Bittrex.
Most of my coins were on Electrum. This morning I saw Bittrex open up deposits and acted immediately. I'm in one of the first blocks that is going to reach Bittrex through a deposit. I'm 13/20 confirmations in and I sent them at 8am this morning and it is almost 10pm. Some blocks are taking almost 4 hours. Once it gets there I'm going to sell. I was able to do some good trades over on HitBTC today. Bittrex prices will get hit hard when these coins in these blocks hit 20 confirmations.
Thx for share