Using hot wallet is not a risk you could easily predict within a day, using it over time could be unpredictable ad to what may happen next because anything new and funny are much liable to occur with using it, your friend might never had any bad experience yet onky because it's not yet his turn to do so but i can tell you there are numbers of users having ugly encounters with using hot wallet, who knows when your own turn will come, but stay safe and use hardware wallet make use of a cold storage like electrum and have your keys in your reach, the best of it al is running a full node if possible then it's worth doing.