Hey nX,
So there are a couple of things that are useful to clear up in order to save you a massive amount of heartache in the future.
Firstly, every coin must have some method for accessing the coins, be it a wallet, central store, or some other system; There always has to be something. Just as Bitcoin uses a wallet - ripple uses a central store with an identifier that represents a sort of "wallet".
Steemit uses a wallet, if you look at your private keys, those represent you and your money on the network.
Cold storage (paper wallet) a lot of people mention, but fail to explain why you need (or don't) one. A paper wallet is an offline private key. On the network that private address can still receive coins (letting you store them), but it cannot write transactions as paper. This method is safe only if you generated your private key securely too. When you want to access your coins you "sweep" (load) that private key into an online wallet and can then write transactions to the network. This step invalidates the security of the key because it is now on a machine connected to the internet. The goal of a paper wallet is to be offline until needed, and emptied. It cannot be hacked if it doesn't touch the internet, it can still be stolen like any other physical item.
An additional note: some currencies don't support paper wallets because of how their signing works. Such as ripple, no paper wallets.
So exchanges are dangerous to use as storage. When you buy or sell currencies and are done trading, you should bring them to your wallets. This is because exchanges control the private keys. So imagine a paper wallet, but you're only allowed to use it when they say so. If an exchange dies, or deletes your account your coins are gone forever and cannot be recovered.
If you're looking for a wallet, I recommend a multi-coin wallet such as Coinomi. It is for mobile, so you can spend on the go. It also uses a phrase to generate your keys, meaning using the same phrase you can sweep you wallet into a different wallet in the future if needed. Meaning you need to protect that phrase with your life.
Does that answer your questions?
Kind of yeah I think so! Thanks for the thought out/detailed response man!
I currently use coinomi, jaxx, waves, myethwallet, multiple specific coin wallets and some exchanges. lol I'm all over the place, but would eventually like to become more centralized.
Oddly enough I know there is a downside to that, but it's so much to keep up with right now.
Anyways that helps me out a bit!
Yeah, the only major concern is that if the wallet is compromised, they get everything. The best wallet would be one where each coin has its own password to do anything. I would love that! Perhaps I should email Coinomi?
Not a bad idea! I mean wouldn't hurt, but doesn't mean they'll do what you suggest. But you never know!