I’ve been in this space since 2019 and never came to a conclusion if it’s better to let my assets at a CEX or having a cold wallet. I know that common sense says that ‘not your keys, not your coins’ but it’s not that simple.

Market evolved a lot, exchanges are bigger but we still see cases like FTX and on and on. In the order hand, subreddits of hardware wallets are full of people that lost all they’re assets and doesn’t even knew what happened.

As markets goes up and there are newcomers, I’ll list pros and cons of Exchange and hardware wallet.

DEX

If you take all the security measures here’s what you can do at Binance, Coinbase, etc that’s the pros.

1) Whitelist some addresses. You can’t withdraw to different addresses. If someone add a new address, you receive an email. And the attacker must wait 24 minimum to transfer.

2) Use an extra key like Yukibey. The robber can’t login at your account, no malware can even.

3) Just lock your all account for some time. No one can unlock it.

CON

The major risk: the exchange can be hacked or just close, like we’ve seen before.

Hardware Wallet:

PRO

1) Coins and tokens are yours. Government can’t touch them, exchanges can’t freeze them.

2) Exchange hacks or bankruptcy risk is zero, since the tokens are with you.

CONS

1) You have to deal with a lot of networks, pay fees for transfer then to the hardware wallet and back to the exchange.

2) You can interact with malicious contract and your tokens are gone.

3) Someone can steal your seed phrase, you can lose the paper, fire and everything else can happen and it’s gone forever.

4) For some people it’s a lot to manage.

5) If you pass, imagine your son and wife trying to understand what’s arbitrum, cosmos etc.

What’s your opinion about it? Where do you feel more secure?