I did some research on Bitcoin because I was interested in it, and I discovered that the key principles of Bitcoin are peer-to-peer, anonymity, pseudonymity, decentralization, and operating without a middleman to ensure that Bitcoiners can have financial freedom. However, despite knowing that Bitcoiners adhere to these tenets, why do some Bitcoiners act contrary to them? Why do they continue to support centralized exchanges, use them, and retain their Bitcoin there?
Bitcoins became quite popular in the last few years and attracted a lot of new investors. Especially institutional investors were looking at ways to quickly buy large quantities of crypto coins. Moving large sums of money peer to peer is much harder and requires a lot of work compared to a centralised exchanges. I think that for the average investor who is looking to buy a few hundred USD worth of Bitcoin it's fine to engage in decentralised transactions. But for any larger corporation the advantages are with a big exchange than can quickly process their trades. Even with the scandals we had in the past where an exchange got hacked, or scammed the user out of their money, it's still attractive for many investors. Personally I have uses centralised exchanges regularly in the past and think that security risk is not that big if we regularly withdraw our coins. It makes no sense to leave our funds at the exchange for a long period of time.