Today we learned of the hacking of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. What is surprising to me is that there are people out there acting like this is the first time an exchange has been breached. Cryptocurrency has been around less than a decade, and in that time we've seen numerous exchanges suffer the same fate.

If you don't control the private keys, you don't own the bitcoin.

This seems to be lost on a lot of people. Bitcoin uses asymmetrical cryptography (a public/private key system). Leaving your bitcoin stored on a website you have no control over leaves you vulnerable to losing it all. Proof of ownership in bitcoin is as simple as 'he-who-holds-the-private-key'. You don't hold the private key? You don't own the bitcoin.

Until your bitcoin is sitting at an address you hold the private key to, you are doing nothing more than trading IOU's.

So how do you protect yourself? Simple. Store your bitcoin in a wallet (or address) you control. Bitcoin.org lists a number of well known and trusted bitcoin wallets here

So stop owning IOU's and get your bitcoin back in your control!

*This has been a P.S.A from your friendly neighbourhood @random-potato