You love your home, right? If you have a car, that too I would guess. Imagine leaving access to those treasured aspects of your life to someone else. A stranger, in fact. So that every time you wanted to gain entry or utilise them in some way, their exclusive permission would be a mandatory requirement. Sounds horrific, I'm sure you'd agree. But this is the exactly the case when we deposit our precious crypto holdings onto a web-based exchange. Hence public awareness of this fact needed more attention and is presented to us in the form of a "Proof-of-keys" event day, which falls... today!
Whilst many of us having been long enough in crypto to understand the dangers of keeping our funds on an exchange, many are not so enlightened. Be it the convenience factor or just simpler to trade for other currencies, an exchange can have it's plus points. But the overriding negative is by far the biggest elephant in the room. And that is as long as you don't hold your "private" keys to your wallet, those funds you keep on there are essentially the exchanges property. They can shut shop tomorrow and whomever had anything on there, would have lost it all to an invisible third party.
The safest option is to have them "on your person". In other words, held within a private wallet which only you have access to. Essentially making you the one fail safe point against theft of your crypto. Now, it's perfectly possible to forget your password or lose your backup, but the harsh fact is even that onus is on you. Then the finger of blame, in terms of lost crypto, can only point in one direction. Such is the importance of this subject that these initiatives are a necessity to spread the message of security when it comes to crypto. Responsibility of our actions is paramount to protecting our digital ownership of funds.
So the message is loud and clear. If you have a choice and can keep your crypto in a personalized wallet for yourself, then do just that. As the prices of these coin increase over time, so will your peace of mind that they're safe and solely in your possession. Big up, "proof-of-keys" day and safe actively vigilant!
