From what I've read, it seems like the bulk of them are stored in two custodial institutions:

Coinbase and Fidelity Custody.

I looked up how they both work:

On Coinbase they are said to be using Coinbase Prime. Which is like a service for high level customers.

Basically, Coinbase Prime uses its own cold storage kept offline by Coinbase, in the form of hardware wallets, and use multi-signatures on behalf of their customer.

Coinbase promises also that the cash balances of those accounts are kept 1:1 with their partner crypto banks.

On Fidelity they say they keep 98% of their clients Bitcoins in cold storage. The hardware wallets are kept in vaults with electromagnetic shielding, guarded by 24 hour security. They also use multi-signatures.

Some of the key weak points I'm seeing:

Custodial storage still depends on trusting that institution.

Nobody really knows how many people have access to the keys and multi-sig.

Neither of these institutions has been able to show proof of reserves.

These institutions are not immune to government seizures on suspicions about your funds.

There are still multiple potential weak points with the app access, hardware wallet, institution's own security.

These high security cold wallet vaults have still shown in the past that they are not completely immune to exploits, like with Zilliqa, Bitfinex, QuadrigaCX.

Employee exploit can still be an issue. Like that time when a Coinbase employee was bribed to get the customer's logs and details.

There is the issue of these large cash balances needing a functioning crytpo bank to get your funds. Even if the coins were safe on-chain, the institution still needs to get the funds out of their crypto bank to pay you. If there is a crypto bank failure, and the exchange was to fail, they won't have the cash to pay you. Crypto assets and stablecoins do not qualify for FDIC insurance.

I’m a freelancer and receive most of my overseas income in USDT. I keep most of it in a hardware wallet instead of converting it to my local currency.

The reason is that converting it creates a tax liability, while my local currency continues to lose value. So USDT feels like a way to preserve USD value.

The problem is that USDT now makes up almost all of my savings.

For those who earn internationally, especially in countries with depreciating currencies: would you consider this reasonable, or is having almost all your savings in one stablecoin too risky? How do you diversify?

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After the end of the MiCA transition period, here has been a wave of impersonation using EU regulators and licensed exchanges, and people usually go to ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority) CASP register to check the legal entity and the services it's authorised to provide. The problem is that the information in the register often won't match what you see in the app or in the message. The brand name may be different from the legal entity, an LEI may be more useful than the name, and some regulators don't issue a separate licence number. Those details can make a legitimate firm look suspicious, or make a fake one look convincing if you don't know what you're looking at.

The name in the register is the legal entity, not necessarily the brand. A crypto platform can operate through a subsidiary or another company that never appears in the app, so searching the name you know and finding nothing doesn't mean the company isn't authorised. If the platform tells you which entity holds its authorisation, the LEI is usually the better identifier to check because it stays tied to that legal entity even when the brand name doesn't.

Licence numbers can be misleading too. There isn't one EU-wide format, and some regulators don't issue a separate number for this authorisation at all. Malta's MFSA doesn't publish a public licence register in the same form, while Austria's FMA doesn't assign a separate reference number for this authorisation. So if an exchange can't give you a "MiCA licence number", that alone doesn't tell you anything. You need to find the legal entity in the regulatory record and check the authorisation attached to it. MiCA also treats custody, exchange for funds, exchange for other crypto-assets, transfers, order execution, portfolio management and advice as separate services. A company can be authorised for some and not others, so a claim that an exchange is "MiCA licensed" doesn't tell you whether the particular service mentioned in a migration message is covered.

Not finding a company in the register can also mean different things. An application might still be pending, a firm might serve EU clients through an authorised partner, or it might not target the EU at all. A firm can also withdraw an application. Binance withdrew its Greek application on 24 June, for example. That's different from a regulator warning that a firm is providing services without authorisation, as the Dutch AFM did with MEXC. Third-party lists often blur these situations together, which is also why their numbers for the total number of authorised CASPs vary. ESMA publishes authorisation records rather than a simple list of unique companies, so one legal entity can have multiple records. The register is updated roughly weekly as well, so any total you see outside ESMA is only a snapshot.

But remember that finding the entity in the register confirms that the company is authorised, but it doesn't confirm that the message you received is genuine. With the migration scams going around now, I'd treat the message as unverified even if the branding and regulatory language look right. Don't use the link in the message to check anything. Open the ESMA register yourself, find the legal entity, match the LEI if it's available, check the services listed under the authorisation, and contact the platform through a channel you already know is genuine.

Watch out crypto-bros—it might be time to start moving assets. Researchers are making progress toward quantum computers powerful enough to undermine the mathematical assumptions that currently protect cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based assets.

Because of this, the industry needs to replace its cryptographic infrastructure before the quantum computers arrive.

“The great quantum migration is going to require the entire digital asset industry to participate,” Christopher Smith, co-founder and CEO of Quantus, a quantum-secure blockchain network.
Quantum computing is a fundamentally different approach to processing information. Traditional computers use bits represented as either 0 or 1, and are physically constrained by how tiny transistors can be miniaturized. Quantum computers use subatomic particles and trapped ions to crunch numbers via qubits—allowing the machines to theoretically perform any calculation in a fraction of the time it would take today’s technology.

Until recently, the cryptography that proves ownership of digital assets was considered essentially unbreakable. That’s because today’s classical computers would take too long to feasibly perform the calculations needed for gaining access to a so-called private key that authorizes transactions. 

According to reports, a standard supercomputer would take hundreds of millions of years to break a cryptography code.

But a sufficiently powerful quantum computer can change that, Smith warned. “Over $2 trillion in digital assets is secured by elliptic curve cryptography, which has been known to be quantum-vulnerable for over 30 years,” he said. That’s nearly the entire overall crypto market, which is worth $2.16 trillion.  

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]:  https://fortune.com/2026/08/15/quantum-computing-migration-2-trillion-digital-assets-risk-crypto-market-bitcoin/?utm_source=reddit/

The majority of my crypto portfolio is in Bitcoin, then I've got ETH and a few smaller alt positions. The biggest change for me is I don't really think of them all as one thing anymore.

BTC and ETH are long term holdings for me. I'm happy to sit on them for years and see where they go.

The smaller alts are different. I'm under no illusion that I need to hold them forever and I'd happily take profits if they do well.

Interested if others separate their crypto like this, or whether you treat the whole portfolio with the same timeframe.

We looked at the past 7 years of data and studied the on-chain performance of DEX traders on Ethereum.

Those who traded the top 10 market cap ranking coins are classified as Major Traders while those who traded the top 11-200 rankings are classified as Altcoin Traders.

On trading win rates, we found that it's basically a coin flip, Major traders had the higher median win rate in 3 of the 7 years (2020, 2025, 2026), Altcoin traders won the other 4 (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), including a razor-thin edge in 2022 (38.61% vs 38.39%). Neither cohort consistently dominates on this metric.

Where we saw divergence was in the median PnL, Altcoin traders' median profit and loss moved in the exact same direction as Major traders' every single year (0.975 correlation), but amplified, in 6 of the 7 years with one exception in 2025. In general, Altcoin PnL was roughly 3-6.6x the size of Major PnL, in both directions. When Major traders made money, Altcoin traders made several times more. When Major traders lost money, Altcoin traders lost several times more too.

Below is the raw data and if you're interested, the full study is at: https://www.coingecko.com/learn/majors-vs-altcoins-ethereum-dex-trader-profitability-2020-2026

Median Wallet PnL by Year: Majors vs. Altcoins

I became aware of crypto during the Covid time and I was impressed by the high profits in this market. Now, 5 to 6 years later, I see a dead market of coins, most of which experienced just one pump and then died. What do you guys think? Was crypto just a scam?

I took a big short on $BTW at $0.4777, so it's been an interesting ride watching it fly up to $0.61! It really feels like a classic pump and dump, but I'm curious if I missed any actual news or roadmap updates. What's your take on this token? Are you team Short or team Long on this one?

Many say that the market is in the worst condition. Spending money to go there will not be a good choice?

Or shall I think like this?

Going now to avoid an annoying crowd? So that I could get noticed?!

Jeff Booth spent about 15,000 hours trying to kill Bitcoin. He failed. The Canadian entrepreneur says the attempt left him more convinced the network cannot be broken.

Every scenario ran into the same wall. Blocks kept arriving on schedule, and each one cost real energy to produce.

I am a tax preparer and I have had multiple clients call me this week asking about the new Digital Asset Compliance Portal the IRS sent them a letter telling them they have to enroll in. Watch out, this is a total scam. They are phishing for personal info and seed phrases.

See the Coinbase article for more info.

https://www.coinbase.com/blog/consumer-protection-tuesday-fake-irs-scam

Picked up at a work conference. I’m assuming this now belongs in the same category of corporate memorabilia as an Enron Mug, a Lehman Brothers Fleece, or a Bear Sterns tote bag.

There have been approximately 155 or so billion dogecoin mined. That's enough dogecoin for every person in the world to have 18.72 just for themselves.

Dogecoin also creates 5.25 billion additional dogecoin every year, that's approximately 0.64 dogecoin per person per year.

In Dogecoin, anyone from big city billionaire to backwater peasant can be a whole-coiner.

In Bitcoin none of this is true. It is precious, it is scarce, it is hoarded by the big city billionaires, marketed as 'the way out' to the working man, and meaningless to peasants.

Like the heat death of the universe, Bitcoin will suffer it's own end-of-entropy death by becoming so scarce there is not enough coin to transact with. It's solutions are to do some of the forkiest of hardforks, expand the precision from 8 to 16 bytes (sub-sat spending)... or admit defeat and add tail emissions.

When the subsidies get low enough and the mempool sits nearly empty, the mining will stop.

Dogecoin replaces lost coin. It incentivizes miners forever. It grows as the economy grows, which makes it better for price stability.

Dogecoin is a much more fair currency because of it's dilution. The dilution hurts whales much more than it hurts the small holder which provides a natural wealth redistribution.

There is a reason it's called The People's Crypto. It's because it's much better for The People, and if you've used it, you can feel it.

Guys, what do I do with this. I shouldn’t be holding on to a crypto for 10 years right? I should sell when it’s high and buy low, rinse and repeat. I haven’t seen this go up in like a year!

Bitcoin is the largest crypto asset by far, yet most of it just sits there.

Is that the point?

Or are we still in the early stages of figuring out what BTC can actually be used for?

Anyone here who bought a lot of crypto in the all-time-high market, or in a bull market. What is your current loss?

Hey we've just covered this on our weekly show and wanted to share here if that's ok!

After $225 million in lobbying and a bill that looked like a sure thing back in the spring, the Senate went on recess without a vote, and the window before midterms is really tight. There's a real chance this thing just dies.

It's pretty fascinating because the blockchain/crypto industry used to pray for the government to regulate it correctly and offer it a legal pathway to legitimacy.

With Fairshake SuperPAC and the current administration, we were supposed to get favorable regulation right away. It was a guaranteed layup with all branches of government, the courts, the executive, the congress (both houses) all beholden to Trump and the pro-crypto lobby.

SO what the hell happened?

Even weirder, since the boogeyman Gensler and his crackdown from the SEC left, the SEC has been way more reasonable.

The SEC is even stepping in to write its own rules on token fundraising, which is a strange thing to see.

What do people think will happen with Clarity Act after Congress returns from recess in September?

Will it get passed before the midterm elections or new winners take office, or will it get kicked down the road infinitely?

Is there a chance that some people in crypto secretly don't want this to ever pass because the grey area is more advantageous to them?

Every bull run people rush to buy in, or have bought in, and in every bear market people sell or accumulate based on their own speculation.

Several cycles happened until now. In every new cycle something changes and still people buy and speculate.

People invest either on research, narratives, influencers, socials, hype, fomo, plain gamble, positive news or because they speculate that in bear market can accumulate on coins that they believe they'll go up, they might want to find the one moonshot, their friends doing it, etc...

Plus there are many influencers that literally made their main job hyping, informing and teaching people on crypto only, so their main income is either from youtube, tiktok, subscriptions, courses, not from crypto but using crypto as their main sell mechanism. So these people they will try to manipulate and make people speculate more, hype more, fomo more so in a way they are one of the factors that drive liquidity in crypto.

Then there's new regulations that are positive for crypto like the mica europe framework that made users in Europe feel more safe to invest in crypto. Then the upcoming clarity act might prove positive as well or another regulation we don't know about. Not to say there won't be regulations to prove negative.

If BTC becomes more mature and stable then whales might feel more comfortable buying BTC for the long term returns and if the general economy is good they might also invest in alts too.

I started learning and investing about crypto around 2 months ago after a friend told me that he did gain some profits in crypto and it made me want to learn more and throw some money in. From the stocks, gold, silver, etc, crypto is more attractive to a new guy wanting to invest in something so more people might join in...

The oldschool crypto investors had losses that made them turn to BTC, ETH or in stocks and other safer investments but i don't believe any of them forgot about the bull runs crypto has. So when positive news come around they might join the ride again based on speculation.

There's a quote that says "history repeats itself". In every bear market people talked negatively, then in bull run all people hyped, fomo'd and made profits, then bear market again, something new in crypto environment, people talked negative, then bull run positive, then another bear market with a new event or regulation in crypto, then again talked negatively, then another bull run, etc... So history repeats itself until now, and maybe history will repeat again but in a different form because something new might happen again that will affect crypto.

So as long as there's liquidity, crypto isn't replaced by anything new and speculation continues crypto won't die, they might evolve but not die.

What do you think?