The capitulation (or soon to be) of Steemit, and the creation of Hive has led to many changes in this space. The sentiment on Hive is pretty positive, and most people I follow have seen the light. However as I see no future in Steemit (that I want to be a part of anyway!). So as I have mentioned I have retracted my delegations and will be powering down, and converting my Steem to (mainly) Bitcoin. This is where the dilemma begins for me - I have little if any knowledge about trading for Bitcoin, and safely storing them.

Questions

I managed to do a small test and trade some Steem for Bitcoin through Binance, which seemed painfree enough. Firstly, is this a reputable exchange? It seems to be one of the larger ones that I could find, and was impressed with all of the security, such as 2FA etc. However, I know they got entangled in the Justin Sun dramas. I obviously want an exchange that I can trust!

I have left my pittance in their wallet - is this safe and wise, or is it susceptible to getting hacked and stolen? I didnt like that I dont have access to my keys. I have read somewhere that there are hardware wallets, which is something I will look into in the future, but for now I want to keep it stored online somewhere safe.

There are so many other exchanges out there it is hard for a crypto rookie like me to know how they all differ - remember for me security of my funds is probably the number one most important factor! When it comes to Hive, for now I am going to accumulate and power up, but sometime I might want to diversify - especially if there is a recession and I get desperate!

In this wild west of cryto I am very skeptical and dont trust alot of people. It took me a long time to trust Steem, and to start trusting new people and projects as they came along.

Any advice would be appreciated!