A short story
Over the years I have bought privacy coin Monero (XMR) multiple times and sold it multiple times seemingly just as quickly. I've always somewhat envisioned XMR being a small-bag long-shot hold that will outperform the market if and only if people begin to realize how important privacy is. On top of that XMR needs liquidity pools that can't be delisted like they have been over the years, which is something they constantly seem to be working on but inevitably falls through for one reason or another. Most recently the play is a listing on an up-and-coming layer-one DEX called Serai that hasn't even officially launched yet. We'll see how that goes.
Point being that I always find myself dumping the token because it constantly underperforms, but I have to ask myself why that is. I somewhat surprised myself with my own answer. It was because the XMR was just sitting on an exchange, which completely defeats the purpose of the token.
A few months back when XMR got delisted from Binance it hit a local low of around $100. I believe I even reported on this and bought some at the time. But this time was different... as I got that small amount of XMR onto a wallet I actually control. Now that I did the thing I have no intention of selling the tokens, whereas if they were sitting on an exchange I'd be constantly asking myself if I should just dump them for whatever reason. So there's some interesting internal psychology going on there. I didn't buy a lot but the price is up +70% since then even after the recent bloodbath... which is pretty impressive considering it usually underperforms. Perhaps it's been suppressed as much as it can be and it's only up from here. Would be an interesting turnaround to be sure.
This whole ordeal made me realize that pretty much every asset on an exchange is just a paper asset IOU with a pinky promise attached to it. This isn't exactly a revelation or anything. We all understand we're not supposed to hold tokens on exchanges for this exact reason. However for some reason it's starting to hit a bit harder in recent days. Assets on an exchange is value that's exposed to certain particular risk, and nothing more. And that risk is always higher on the exchange than off it.
This means that Bitcoin, being the ultimate security asset, has no security on exchanges. Monero has to privacy. Hive has no governance powers. So on and so forth. The token loses 100% of it's utility and becomes a completely hollow vessel of promises. And those promises aren't even good ones because if the exchange goes bankrupt all their assets essentially become property of the court and get locked away for years. And then when users get paid back they get paid back at best the USD value of the asset (losing their price exposure), which is always less than the actual value because these things happen during bear markets. Woof!
What about meme coins?
The funny thing that I realized about meme coins is that they have no utility by design. At best you get to be a part of that particular community. Of course as far as I'm concerned Dogecoin is the only meme with a real community that isn't going to cut and run at the first sign of trouble. I won't be surprised if every one of these garbage Solana tokens gets completely vaporized during the next macro bear market (2026?). But you never know sometimes these dog tokens surprise you. If I had to bet on one it would probably be WIF, not that I'm ever going to touch those things with a ten foot pole (unless to short them).
So meme coins have no utility... I suppose one doesn't lose much by holding that asset on an exchange. All anyone cares about is the price, which is exactly what you get on Binance and Coinbase and wherever else. Of course this doesn't eliminate any of the blatant counterparty risk associated with these entities, but it is interesting to think about on a theoretical level. Can't lose something that you never had, I suppose.
The duality of the exchange.
It's also a bit ironic because exchanges provide the vast majority of all liquidity for the entire industry. So it's like they have to exist but we also shouldn't use them... or at least we should only use them long enough to make the trade and exit in order to remove that dreaded counter-party and legal quagmire that is bankruptcy and insolvency. Interestingly enough exchanges would be doing just fine if nobody held their assets on them (except for the market makers of course). In fact they'd probably even benefit in such a reality where crypto users are actually taking responsibility. An exchange has very little to gain by securing one's money and their entire business model revolves around volume and small exchange fees. What we do with that value after we pay the fee is none of their concern, and in fact they benefit when it leaves their platform by way of exaggerated on-chain fees and a smaller honeypot to attack.
Of course if exchanges didn't offer the ability to allow users to bank there no one would use them so there is no other way around this type of infrastructure other than decentralized exchanges... which may or may not takeover one day. I'm rooting for them but who knows. Even if they do becomes the primary vessels of transfer it's hard to imagine them being able to provide a fiat ramp that most users require these days. I guess the ultimate goal on that front is to not need the fiat ramp or the retail banks in the first place... but surely these goliaths would not just lay down and die with a whisper, so all we can do is anticipate more drama and extreme regulatory overreach as disruptive solutions continue to be invented in real time.
Of course I can't even say the word "disruptive" anymore without cringing as it's become an absolutely pointless nothing-word used by every marketing team in existence. "Our product that doesn't exist yet and is a solution looking for a problem will be very disruptive and innovative." Cool story, bro. Tell it walking.
Conclusion
The only reason to hold crypto on an exchange is to turn the value there into more than what it is today. It's somewhat disappointing to realize this is only thing most people care about, but it is what it is. Money is very important and it's hard to care about anything else when we don't have enough to live comfortably (which seems to be a common theme this day in age).
There is a certain level of convenience to storing value on an exchange, especially when that exchange is a fiat ramp linked to one's bank account, but is it really worth the risk? I suppose that depends on the individual. Plenty of crypto has also been lost by user error and elsewhere while under the control of the individual, so it's not exactly a cut-and-dry situation. Which reminds me I'm holding $1000 on Coinbase right now that I need to cash out. BRB.
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