Perhaps storing crypto on a centralized exchange is not the great snafu it once was.
If you have been around crypto for any length of time, you have likely heard the age-old adage:
"not your keys, not your crypo"
While there is a lot of truth to that, a ton of truth actually, it might not be quite the 100% fail safe saying it once was.
There may be times, for certain users, when it makes more sense to store their coins on an exchange than to try and keep track of their private keys.
But what 
, why would you say that?
Well let me tell you!
If you are a new user in crypto, keeping track of your private keys might be something you are not all that familiar with, and if you are, it might be something that proves quite difficult to do as life routinely gets in the way over time.
In the past it was expected that you would transfer your money into a crypto exchange, buy bitcoin (or whatever other crypto you wanted), and then store it on a hardware wallet or Ledger/Trezor.
And this strategy still mostly holds true today, mostly.
I say "mostly" because there are several very large crypto exchanges that are now fully insured.
Which means that even if they were to be hacked and coins were to be stolen, you the customer, wouldn't be on the hook for any of it as your holdings were fully insured.
Gemini is a perfect example of this, I believe Coinbase is as well (among others).
Better off on an exchange?
Going a step further, I would venture to say new users would actually be better off just leaving their coins on insured exchanges such as these as opposed to storing them in their own wallet and being responsible for their keys.
The reason being that from an odds standpoint, they are probably more likely to lose their key somehow or make a mistake doing a transfer and lose access to their funds than they would be to lose their holdings on a fully ensured exchange.
Over time I think we are going to see more and more exchanges fully insured so people can store their coins on them much more confidently, akin to what we see with large retail brokerages in traditional stock markets.
This is likely something that will help further bitcoin and crypto adoption.
There are other issues to take into account such as ease of access that are a bonus and also airdrops that likely need to be considered, but overall, if I was advising my grandmother to buy some bitcoin (I am), I would tell her to go ahead and leave it on Coinbase or Gemini after she purchased it.
Stay informed my friends.
Image Source:
https://www.crypto-news.in/news/cryptocurrency-exchange-gemini-secures-insurance-coverage/