One of the main advantages of crypto is that decentralisation means no one else can stop me transferring money to people with other addresses on the same, or in the age of cross-chain bridges, different networks, for a relatively small fee in most cases.
But there are plenty of 'crypto-like entities' out there that remove this advantage by effectively controlling your money.
There are at least three of these entities I deal with on a regular basis...
Binance (or any other CEX)
Anyone that's ever sent anything through Binance will know that as soon as your funds are on Binance, you have lost control of them....
The giveaway is in the delay between you authorising a withdrawal and the withdrawal being initiated (I've even had this put on hold for 24 hours before), but EVEN with deposits there is a delay... with Hive, for exampl, it takes far longer to send Hive to Binance than it does to send Hive to another Hive account....
The hint in the later being that when you send Hive to Binance, you send it to '
Crypto.com
I like the credit card, it's convenient, however when you send USDC from Polygon to your crypto.com address there is a 10 minute delay between sending and confirmation, it's always 10 minutes, a 10 minute reminder that there is an intermediary sitting between you and that address, which isn't yours don't forget!
I assume it's a similar story for other cryptos you might want to deposit too.
Publish OX
I recently made my first withdrawal from this platform, only $30 worth built up over a year of posting mainly duplicate Splinterlands posts...
And here again... a delay - that money, not mine, until someone decided the following Monday after I make a withdrawal request, that I'm worthy of the money.
This platform gets an award for the oddest withdrawal policy too - once a week authorisations, that's just random....
I could go on...
Any other exchange, not to mention Celcius and BlockFi I think it was called, all centralised, not your crypto projects. I lost money with the former, pulled out everything before the second one collapsed thank God!
Final thoughts...
Lessons learned - my policy is to leave as little money as possible tied up in these centralised exchanges, it's a painful reminder every time I use them with these little delays, that I am basically giving up on the 'trustless' aspect of the decentralised networks as soon as I send anything to any address associated with one of these agencies!
I need to find more avenues for interacting with just crypto I think!