If you want to exchange, that is buy or sell, you'll need such a "centralized" exchange. Same for trading.

So even those that keep their assets offline on an airgapped machine in a nuclear bunker, will occasionally move crypto assets on- and off these exchanges. And especially when you hold the crypto truly offline, it's a hassle to get it on- and off exchanges. So you'll probably keep several months worth of sales or buys before moving it.

Point being: even those that still believe in the "decentralized" currencies will have some of their assets on "centralized wallets", even if only for a short time.

And yes, I am aware that one can "decentralized" buy and sell for and to fiat. And yes, I am even aware that sometimes in some situations, one can even avoid exchanging to/from fiat to pay rent or gas. But that's far from practical and probably never attainable.

It is this time of the year again. I always write the same. HN is not regular people. For a high percentage, CEX wallets are the safer option. There are 1-10 topics of people who are not able to access their wallet anymore each day on r/bitcoin alone. There have been hardware wallets hacks on mass. On an exchange like kraken, coinbase, bitstamp or Binance there is a high chance you wont loose your money, even after a hack. You have apps that work out of the box to watch your investment. You can easily go back to fiat. Most of them now also support tax reporting.

Because no one cares about the nerdy stuff, they just want Lambos

because crypto is just an excuse to speculate in an unregulated market