@bubke

1. OpenLedger is just a front-end business built on top of Bitshares. Security and logins are embedded to the blockchain itself and can't be hacked or taken over unless you provide them to someone (accidentally or intentionally). I strongly suggest for you to take a look at the latest release of bitshares official wallet UI, using the same login:
   https://wallet.bitshares.org

2. Bitshares is a smart-coin factory. As one, and decentralized blockchain we were unable to integrate centralized wallets and operations (slowdowns for example such as BTC has) to our blockchain core, just because of the SECURITY issues they will create. In order to keep the trading normal, OpenLedger as business entity and account on Bitshares Blockchain started creating open.ASSETS to replace/substitute real wallets. They provided liquidity for each currency (that mean real BTC is backing up open.BTC, etc..) so it's 100% safe to be used and traded. Taking out open.BTC to BTC is same as BTC to BTC.

Even @ravid stated properly they are IOU's, in the blockchain system they are registered and traded as UIA (User Issued Assets) where issuer is OpenLedger. There is no such thing defined in Bitshares blockchain system as IOU, even though OL created them from UIA.