Cold wallet route

Do not confuse an exchange balance with cold storage.

Exchanges are useful for buying, selling, and liquidity. Long-term custody is a different decision, especially if you are stacking Bitcoin, running a small miner, or holding through multiple cycles.

Quick version

An exchange account can be convenient, but the account is still a platform relationship. A cold wallet moves custody into a setup you control, which reduces platform risk while adding personal responsibility for the seed phrase, device, and transaction checks.

For miners, this belongs beside the usual operating checklist: hashrate, watts, uptime, pool settings, difficulty, and where newly stacked sats should sit after they are no longer being actively traded.