I have most of mine on an exchange because I'm getting paid interest. Has there ever been a time when an exchange like Binance for example, steals your funds or gets hacked and people lost money?
I don't think it is a too bad idea to leave our coins on exchanges, but make sure the exchanges have good history and are friendly to their members. Of course, no exchanges are secure enough, all exchanges are possible to be hacked. However, several exchanges want to refund their members' money once there is a hack. I am sure Binance is one of the exchanges that have responsibility if there is a hacking case. So, I think we have no reasons to be so worried about our money. But never put all our money on exchanges, just put the amount of money that we can afford to lose.
^ That is correct advice, never put all your money on one exchange.
Binance is a trusted exchange for how many years but still, it is not ideal to store your coin in the long term even though they have a promise of SAFU which means all funds are safe and secure. But yet, this does not give any guarantee, everything on the centralized exchange could be hacked, so probably after trading, pull out your fund and store it on the non custodial wallet which is safe.
Investors can easily do something like this but this is way more difficult for traders, because as we know one of the deciding factors when it comes to making profits or not on the shortest times frames is speed, so if they get their coins out of the exchange and they happen to receive a signal during the time their coins are not in the exchange by the time they make a transaction, get a confirmation and their funds are reflected in the exchange then most likely the trading opportunity is over, so they do not have too much of a choice and traders will leave their coins at the exchange.