The main difference is that on an exchange we don’t hold our keys meaning that, if something were to happen to the exchange, our bitcoin is essentially gone. Recent examples of this were bankruptcies of the FTX, Celsius, and BlockFi exchanges.

Whereas if we’re not on an exchange, we’re holding our keys. Hardware can and probably will fail at some point. But we can always use another hardware device as long as we’ve safeguarded our keys (e.g. the 12-24 secret words).

After the events mentioned above, I’m no longer willing to risk any bitcoin on exchanges because no amount of yield could justify the risk of losing any #bitcoin