On an exchange you see BTC and USDT. It looks like “a wallet”. Legally and technically it is an IOU: they owe you, while they operate, while they have not frozen withdrawals, while they have not lost the cold keys.

We already compared custodial to non-custodial. This is the household practice.

What the exchange gives you

  • Buying with rubles / cards / P2P.
  • An order book and liquidity.
  • No thinking about gas while the asset sits on the exchange account.

What it does not give you

DeFi, NFTs in your wallet, Telegram gifts, independence from a KYC pause. And an exchange balance has no seed phrase — it should not. If an “exchange manager” asks for your MetaMask seed, that is not the exchange.

A sane cycle

  1. Buy a stablecoin on the exchange.
  2. Withdraw to your address on the correct network (USDT ERC-20 ≠ USDT TRC-20 ≠ USDT Solana).
  3. Leave on the exchange only what you will trade this week.

API keys in Crypto360 are read-only. We do not hand over withdrawal rights and we do not ask the tracker for them.