Quote from: iamnotback on March 31, 2017, 06:24:05 AM

What about coins on exchanges? Do we lose the staking benefits thus we are being debased if we HODL them on exchanges? I realize HODLing coins on exchanges is risky and stupid. (⊙_◎)

You can't HODL coins on exchanges, can you ? You can hodl IOU on exchanges, while they are hodling coins (or playing with it, or buying cocaine and prostitutes with it). You hodl tokens in a centralized database for as long as the owner of the database wants to let you own them, but you don't own any crypto tokens. Essentially, you've bought exchange IOU tokens in their database with crypto tokens with which you paid them.

Exchange IOU tokens are like holding bitcoin and thinking you hold the fiat you paid for them. You've *bought* bitcoin with fiat, and your fiat is gone.

In the same way, if you "deposit" bitcoin at an exchange, you BUY their database IOU tokens with your bitcoin, and your bitcoin are gone. But you hold exchange IOU, which are more fluid, fast etc... (inside the exchange) than bitcoins. But your bitcoins are gone.

So as you are not holding any bitcoin it is normal that you can't profit from whatever these bitcoins were supposed to bring you.

==> holding exchange IOU is EXACTLY THE SAME as holding FED dollars in a bank ; except for the fact that a bank has a whole legal machinery on its back that will trigger and put the banker in jail if ever he doesn't do what the law prescribed ; while an exchange is mostly unregulated, can delete its database and delete your IOU with it, and you *don't hold any coins or fiat* with them, so then all of that is gone.

Exchanges are unregulated banks in the crypto world.