Paxful CEO Warns Investors To Not Leave Their Bitcoin On Exchanges

The need for bitcoin and crypto investors to move their holdings to self-custody has been amplified by the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange. Investors are understandably wary of the centralized exchange entities, many of which are being accused of being insolvent and running on fractional reserves. Now, another prominent individual in the space has come forward to warn investors about the best ways to secure their holdings.

Paxful CEO Says Move Bitcoin To Self-Custody

In a shocking move, an exchange CEO has advised users to move their cryptocurrencies off of exchanges. Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, took to Twitter to warn investors off of leaving valuable crypto on an exchange. The post included a screenshot of an email that Youssef sent to users, advising them to not keep their savings on Paxful or any other exchange.

The email starts out explaining that Paxful protects user funds and that he would never touch customers’ funds. However, the next paragraph would advise bitcoin holders to move their bitcoin to self-custody and only keep trading funds on exchanges.

“My sole responsibility is to help and serve you. That’s why today I’m messaging all of our users to move your Bitcoin to self-custody. You should not keep your savings on Paxful, or any exchange, and only keep what you trade here,” the CEO said in the email. “For far too long people have trusted others to hold money on our behalf but – like we saw with the banks in 2008 and recently with FTX – you’re at the mercy of these custodians and their morals,” Youssef added.

Will be sending an email every week strongly advising our people to never keep savings on any exchange, including @paxful This is the way ! Self custody your savings ALWAYS! pic.twitter.com/DI95Gaa5Y6

— Ray Youssef (@raypaxful) December 11, 2022

The Paxful CEO revealed that he planned to send an email like this once a week to users to remind them to keep their bitcoin in self-custody. Additionally, the email included two guides on how users can self-custody their bitcoin.

Self-Custody Grows In Popularity

One of the most popular sayings in the cryptocurrency community is “Not your keys, not your coins” but despite how many times this is repeated among the community, many still tend to choose to hold their bitcoin on centralized exchanges over self-custody. This is, however, rapidly changing since the collapse of FTX.

Although a devastating loss for the crypto community, the implosion of FTX has worked to remind crypto users that self-custody remains the safest way to store their coins. As such, hardware wallet manufacturers such as Ledger and Trezor have reported a significant increase in sales and orders since the FTX debacle, with the latter reporting a 300% surge in sales revenue just a week after.

Software self-custody wallets such as Trust Wallet have also seen higher patronage during this time. The Trust Wallet token (TWT) saw a 150% uptick in price in less than a week following this and traffic increased by more than 22% in November.