Does anybody leave a percentage of their BTC on the exchanges, or do you guys store all your BTC in your wallets, etc?

This guy has a point:
You're missing out on so much of "the Bitcoin experience" by not using it! Try it, send it, test some wallets, get the feel of how it really works. Fund a Lightning channel, make a few payments, see what works for you. If you ever want to use it (to buy a jet or something), it comes in handy if you know what to expect.

If you are a really an old hodler then you already answered your own question. How can you safely got this far if btc isn't safe from being hijacked? Because, if it did then it was being hijacked long time ago. They have a better chance doing it since the network that time is much weaker and the prices are less expensive than compared to today yet they still didn't do it. That simply means that btc is truly strong and cant be hijacked.

What the governments are only doing is they create their own kind of bitcoin/crypto which is centralized that they can fully control but no one is going to buy that. There is only one literal hijack that can happen you, that is if when you are not careful on securing your bitcoins.

Good lord, could you be any more immature and juvenile? I call BS on your story. If you've really been holding since 2013 you wouldn't be asking basic Bitcoin 101 questions like this, and you would have taken some (serious) profits by now and your "friends" wouldn't be chastising you for it. And please, chill on the cringy Reddit lingo.

All you have to calculate is for how 51% attack is possible, check the present bitcoin mining hashrates and see the total. So, an addition of 50% of the hashrate coming from the attackers will make 51% attack possible on bitcoin mining hashrate. Presently the bitcoin mining hashrates is at 213 EH/s. Miners from all over the world are contributing to the total bitcoin mining hashrates but that is not stable but either increase or decrease over time, but the hashrate is so high and strong to the extent no one can ever as of now think he wants to provide half of such total bitcoin mining hashrates. Even if such happens, it would be difficult to maintain, which makes it not to worth wasting money, time and effort to carry out 51% attack on bitcoin blockchain.

You seem to be trapped in a bubble, especially looking at America only. The banks in America are charging ridiculous fees to their customers and many of these don't exist in places like Europe. Bitcoin will always be competing with the fees charged to businesses by payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, that's what you should be focusing on and they are in the range of 1-3.5%. In hindsight it seems rather foolish to supposedly having held your Bitcoin all this time - if you had sold a chunk near the peak, or even as it slowly dropped down, you'd be able to buy in more as it continued to drop. but admittedly that gets into trading territory that some people avoid.

i don't think it is a smart move showing off to your friends about your BTC stash. because these days, you don't know who to trust anymore. better keep it to yourself. you will have more peace of mind if very few to none know about your BTC holdings. also, don't ever post it in your social media channels that you are holding it very long. you are just subjecting yourself to scamming, hacking and other fraudulent activities. but if you are so proud about this, then go on, but don't blame anyone if your computer starts acting strangely.

Considering that $15B then i could say that it is really that doable if they are really that serious on taking Bitcoin down but it seems no one or they arent getting that support on doing so in speaking on giving out

a network attack and minding off on how the hell they would really be spending out on something which it cant even assure if it would totally kill down the network or just giving out some temporal effects

but not totally a reason on making it dead? For sure there wont even how filthy rich are those people who do tend to support such agenda but well we dont know on whats coming though.

I am not the best ELI-5 candidate but I can give this a try.

If the 'US gubmint' decides to take Bitcoin over, they would need a LOT of mining equipment.  All of this equipment they need obviously requires resources to be produced and there is of course an approximate or specific amount of such equipment that can be produced per day or year.

The government needs to own 51% of the hash rate in order to 'overtake' the network.  Since more and more and more powerful mining equipment is added every day, they need to have all this massive amount of equipment built, shipped and ready to be powered on in a reasonable time.  Otherwise, if all of this is done over years, the mining hash rate may increase enough so the government needs even more power to compensate and reach 51% again.

Now say they have everything planned so well they actually do get to own 51% of the network.  Now they 'control' Bitcoin.  What happens next?

Bitcoin developers, miners et cetera move on to another mining algorithm.  If the algorithm is changed and Bitcoin 'splits up' similarly to how Bitcoin split up into BTC and BCH years ago, the government's massive effort are redeemed worthless and useless immediately.  Because their massive amount of equipment now can not mine the real Bitcoin.  It can only continue to mine the old Bitcoin that they attacked.  But as soon as you and I find out there has been an attack, we will discard the attacked network in favor of the new one.

Let us say we get to change the algorithm so that this special mining equipment can not mine Bitcoin any more.  Let us say we get to change it so that computer graphic cards can be used for mining instead.  Now the government needs to purchase enough graphic cards to own 51% of the new, intact network.  If they can do this, we just move on to another algorithm.  And so on.

At the end of the day, it is just wasted time and efforts for them.  If someone has something to correct about my 'theory', please chime in and do.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

An S19 Pro costs about $8k and has a hash rate of 110 TH/s. For a 51% attack, at least 200 million TH/s is needed, so about 1.8 million S19s, with a cost of about $15 billion. There is also the cost of the supporting infrastructure, labor and electricity.

As far as your concern about changing the rules -- it is not possible. Changing the rules would simply cause a fork, like BCH, BSV, and BTG, that can be ignored.

The most likely attack would be a denial of service. The government would prevent other miners from adding blocks to the chain and publish empty blocks for as long as needed in order to kill the network. In the end it would be expensive, but it is probably doable if there is sufficient political will behind it.

I think it is time for you to switch focus.  From how easy it is for a government to 'hijack' Bitcoin to how difficult it would be for the same government to re-hijack Bitcoin once everybody forks to another algorithm.  I do not know how easy it is to switch to GPU mining, but I assume it would be one of the choices if possible and easy to apply.

Here is the hardest part of the hijacking thing.  Sure, let us say the government has enough resources and time to create the perfect mega mining rig to 'overtake' Bitcoin.  It would take HOURS at most for us to put everything back in place after which all their resources and effort become worthless and useless.

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Regards,
PrivacyG