Today I'll be telling you about a friend of mine. For the sake of the story I'll call him Mr John Doe. Ok let me begin.
It all started far back in 2016, Crypto was just starting to get popular and people didn't want to miss out on this new money that's flowing. Mr John Doe didn't have an idea of what crypto was, all he knew was that there was something called bitcoin and that if he buys it, the price can rise and he can make a lot. But then It was quite expensive, so he decided he'd just stay away from it. This was until one day a friend of his required his courier services and offered to pay in bitcoin.
At first he was a bit skeptical, but then after his friend promised to add an extra tip he agreed. He went online and searched for the best ways to receive crypto. He found bitmit, a centralized crypto exchange. Then he didn't know a single thing about crypto, or what that meant, he was just excited to finally receive crypto. After doing his job, his friend was to send him 30 dollars, but instead decided to send him 50 dollars worth of btc. At the time that was 0.1 btc.
Time passed, as faith would have it Mr John Doe's paths crossed with crypto again. In 2021 He got involved in a crypto platform called vibe, and little by little,thanks to the amazing community he had around him he started to learn about not just the vibe token, but also the entire crypto world in general.
One day we were talking about some stuff, and somehow bitcoin reaching an all time high became the topic, that was when he remembered that he had 0.1 btc in bitmit. He quickly ran to login to his bitmit wallet, but he couldn't log in. First of all he realized bitmit had changed. They even changed their name from bitmit to Lino. And each time he input his login details it kept telling him the account didn't exist.
He was so angry, he even sent a message to the support who said they'd get back to him in 5 working days, but they never did. He checked the value of 0.1 btc at that time. It was peak bull market and that btc was worth 6,480 dollars. He nearly weeped.
You see, Mr John Doe's story is a very painful lesson. It teaches why we should never leave any substantial amount of crypto on a centralized exchange. if you're not trading there's no point storing it on that exchange. Mr John Doe's story is not the first and they're many more who have similar stories. They've been times when exchanges crash and users lose funds (for example the bitfinex case). When you have your crypto on an exchange you are at the mercy of that exchange. They can even choose to block withdrawals and deposits even though it's your funds. Anyways I think I'm straying off topic. The main point is that you remember not to save crypto on exchanges. Rather, use a cold wallet or even a ledger.
After that incident Mr John Doe never stored his crypto on any exchange again. We still joke about how rich his 0.1 btc would make us till this day.
NB: Though the events are real I used fake names for both the exchanges and the character involved.
