The string of numbers is actually free, you can generate a thousand or a million string of numbers (private keys) for free, absolutely no charge The value comes from the crypto assets that are assigned to the the string of numbers as recorded on the blockchain In order to understand it, you'll need to do it yourself, like learning how to ride a bike... Put $1-2k worth of crtypo assets, on a crypto wallet, for example stablecoin usdt or usdc, and deposit it on AAVE, earn some interest for a week, then withdraw it to your crypto wallet Swap the stablecoin for a high-value high-liquidity crypto asset and deposit it on aave and borrow stablecoin against the crypto asset as collateral If you do those things, you'll realize a few things, you have full access 24/7 to "crypto US $" and also high-value high-liquidity crypto assets, different than the traditional financial system operating on business hours and banking hours On security, if someone guesses your string of numbers, they can transfer or spend your crypto assets, but it is unique from other string of numbers that number more than the atoms in the known universe
As to security, I wasn't thinking about someone compromising my numbers. There have been several/many(?) stories of the exchange or whoever is holding the wallets, being hacked and wallets being stolen. Aren't individual wallets inconvenient for trading?
Exchange wallets assigned to your account belong to the exchanges so any crypto assets stored in those addresses belong to the exchange, iow, custodial crypto wallets It's actually the opposite and it is not even close For example, how long would it take you to fund your Bybit account without your own crypto wallet? Wire transfer, taking into account business hours and holidays Similar to money in your bank account, they belong to the bank and the bank owes you the amount according to the ledger but if you have a crypto wallet with crypto assets, you can send $25k worth of crypto assets to Bybit and even if it's outside of banking hours, you can start trading spot or perpetual futures within 10 minutes You might have heard the term owning bitcoin or crypto assets in your own wallet is like being your own bank And to trade on DEXes like Uniswap or Jupiter, swaps or perps, you need a crypto wallet, https://jup.ag/ Wall Street and hedge funds have crypto wallets, they are active trading altcoins and memecoins, that is why the daily trading volume exceed hundreds of millions even billions of $ worth https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/popcat
I wasn't thinking of transfering money into/out of the account but rather making exchanges within the account... like from BTC to DOGE. If you're keeping you money safely in your wallet, aren't your transactions first going through your wallet rather than just buying or selling a different coin?
This typically doesn’t win me fans with hardcore crypto people … but if you are in a western democracy and if you just want Bitcoin and/or Eth and if you have a brokerage account (which you do if you are in this forum) … then just buy the spot bitcoin and/or eth etfs! all the hacking, “is my broker a fraud”, custody, security, etc concerns are solved in one fail swoop.
https://www.exodus.com/ this wallet can hold many different types of crypto. it's easy to transfer to/from. but with a wallet you're trusting that it is secure.