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