Elon Musk Says Dogecoin Owners Must Break Free from Centralised Exchanges

Tesla CEO Elon Musk backed the idea of investors keeping custody of their crypto assets like Dogecoin, rather than relying on centralised exchanges like Binance and Robinhood. These exchanges simplify the selling and purchasing of cryptocurrencies but also hold custody of these assets — something that Musk does not seem to support. He expressed his opinion on Twitter, while replying to another post on this topic. Dogecoin was recently found to be the most searched cryptocurrency in the US.

Bill Lee, the founding partner at West Coast Holdings and an investor in Musk's companies had tweeted that unless the wallet keys are not in one's possession, they should not consider their crypto-holdings as their own.

In a one-word reply, Musk supported the notion and wrote, “Exactly”.

While Musk did not elaborate on his viewpoint, it is not surprising that the Doge-supporter is backing for people to hold their own assets rather than letting them lay with centralised exchanges.

Scammers fishing for meaty targets often view centralised exchanges as target points. Hackers keep trying to breach the servers of these exchanges and steal the stored cryptocurrencies.

Using a private crypto wallet, however, reduces the risks of being hacked or breached — while also allowing the investors to self-hold their assets.

With the crypto culture gathering steam around the world, nefarious scammers have been targeting investors from all sides.

Recently, for instance, Robinhood revealed that its servers were breached by an unauthorised third party earlier this month.

Earlier this week, Shiba Inu token's official Twitter account alerted investors that cybercriminals are replying on general SHIB-related posts and impersonating official accounts related to the meme-based dog coin to lure in unsuspecting people into their scam.

In October, a major hack attack has cost Ethereum-powered lending protocol called “Cream Finance” $130 million (roughly Rs. 972 crore) worth of crypto assets.

The total crypto crime in 2020 amounted to around $10.52 billion (roughly Rs. 79,194 crore), a report had revealed earlier in April.

The same report had also highlighted that scams and frauds that have plagued the crypto-space are a major problem that made for 67.8 percent of the total cryptocurrency crime in 2020.