Let me tell you a story about what happens when you, and others, leave your bitcoin on exchanges. You might be surprised to hear what that means for your holdings. It might sound a lot like your own.

Let's call our character Bill. Bill has been cautiously watching bitcoin for years, hearing about it in passing and reading a few articles. After inadvertently saving a lot of cash due to lockdowns, he decided to dive into bitcoin at last. A friend told him to check out Coinbase, Binance or another popular and "trusted" exchange in order to buy his first chunk of bitcoin.

So, Bill created an account and uploaded his face, ID, social security number, address and every other relevant detail about his life until he finally reached the "Buy Bitcoin" screen. He picked up a fraction of a bitcoin, but after all that trouble, he thought to himself:

"I don't need to learn all these complicated technical details about hardware wallets and self custody — I just want my bitcoin safe."

Bill reviewed the exchange's website and decided that the security experts at the exchange, with their wiz-bang cold storage and state-of-the-art encryption, would be better at securing his bitcoin than he himself would be.