You can do that, especially if you don’t have that much money in Bitcoin (BTC).

Hell, up until a couple of weeks ago, that’s where about half of my crypto was held (the other half was in Robinhood, which I’ve started to believe will find itself in deep 💩 if my predictions about the financial world turn out to be remotely correct).

What you gain in convenience for holding your Bitcoin on these services, you lose in security. It’s super nice to be able to click a button, purchase your BTC, and then have the swanky Bitcoin charts to check and see how much money you’re making:

The issue is that you don’t have control of your private keys, which means the Bitcoin aren’t actually in your control – so according to the Bitcoin blockchain, you don’t own them. According to the Bitcoin blockchain, Coinbase owns those coins.

And if Coinbase loses them, good luck getting your $ back. Crypto isn’t FDIC insured.

People have lost a lot of money holding their Bitcoin the wrong way. It’s one of the main reasons people don’t trust cryptocurrencies. Mt. Gox is the most famous exchange for losing people’s coins. During a 2011 hack, they lost 2,609 BTC (today worth $23,592,613). In 2014, they lost 750,000 BTC (today worth $6,789,435,000).

This scares some people away from owning Bitcoin. They think it’s not safe, but that’s just because most people are holding it in the exact opposite way that it was designed to be held (by using centralized services like Coinbase).

Some people don’t think Bitcoin has any value. We won’t dive deep into that during this post, but the reason I believe Bitcoin has value is that central bankers do not have control over it – and they seem to be very fond of printing currency, causing it to lose value over time.

So if you have something with a limited supply (that is not beholding to central bank printing), it’s probably going to perform well relative to fiat currencies tied to printing presses that central bankers use to solve each and every problem the government faces.

Anyways that was a longwinded way of telling you that this post will detail how you should hold your Bitcoin. It’s pretty simple. Costs $39. And if you’re considering holding any substantial amount of Bitcoin, this is the tutorial for you.