After reading a dozen articles on the upcoming hardfork on BTC, I have came to the conclusion that it would be in my best interests to move my BTC out of coinbase.
I had not really looked into the Hard Fork for August 1st a whole lot until the other day when I received an email from coinbase that the upcoming hardfork would not effect customers who hold BTC with coinbase, but they also will not be supporting Bitcoin Cash or BCH as it will be reffered to after the fork...I looked a bit more into and all the big players like @Jeffberwick and others all have the same consensus that you should hold your coins in a proper wallet where you have control of your own private key
. As of the time of the hardfork your BTC private key will be able to support both BTC and BCH essentially adding alot more value to your portfolio, the same happened when Ethereum hard forked, it split into ETH and ETC and all users got both. The best of both worlds...
now platforms such as coinbase who hold your private key will essentially reap all the benefits of BCH from your BTC, it took me a bit of research to setup an offline wallet but I found mycelium is most trusted.
I downloaded mycelium wallet and created an account and secured my private key. It was a pretty straight forward process over all..a quick look on YouTube can show you.
I also put half my BTC into Bitfinex.com who sent out a statement claiming whoever is holding BTC with them at the time of the hardfork will automatically be credited the appropriate amount of BCH. Bitfinex are arguably the most trusted exchange with the highest quality software.
Coinbase is easy to use and serves a good purpose, although I beleive it is better to do the research into crypto wallets and be in full control of your currencies... I still hold half of my litecoin and ETH on coinbase and the other half on a nano ledger but I will probly look at moving away from coinbase altogether soon for storage and just use it as a platform to purchase..
This is just my opinion and not to be taken as financial advice...
Remember you are the bank now you can cut out the middle man, do the research and be in full control of your crypto's, by knowing and keeping your private keys safe and offline..
Cheers for reading and upvotes.
You have reason in saying that exchanges that you mentioned should just be used for their purpose and not necessarily holding funds there however from a traders point of view it would give you a bigger chance, if I can say so, to fast exchange the currency in a spike for example.
Yeah that is a really good point...i still hold a bit in bitfinex for that reason but only as much as i am prepared to lose...i think if you are saving for long term profit hold in an account you fully control and hold the private keys for..
Thanks for the heads up. I trading some BTC for steem earlier just to be on the safe side. Kept seeing strange warning on the coinbase website itself that freaked me out so I started looking to trusted sources. Thanks again.
Bad decision from Coinbase, they should credit the customers accounts if they are not supporting Bitcoin Cash.