According to the external media review, after the partial contraction of services as a result of the European regulatory adjustment, the funds of European users were not transferred to other compliance exchanges on as large a scale as expected from the outside world. According to Binance, about 70 per cent of the money that went out of the platform went into the self-hosted wallet, about 30 per cent went to other regulated trading platforms.
70% goes to the wallet.
According to the article, with the tightening of controls, the market would have expected users to re-register other centralized exchanges and continue to follow the old hosting model. However, it appears from the data disclosed by Binance that more users choose to transfer assets back to their own wallets rather than continue to be held by the Platform.
The author also mentioned that this group of data is derived from Binance itself and is not independently audited and is therefore more appropriate as a trend observation rather than as a precise statistical exercise. However, if this ratio is generally established, at least one thing is clear: many users remain on the exchange, more for convenience than for long-term dependence.
Decline of threshold for hosting tools
According to the article, when users buy bitcoin a few years ago and switch to other chain assets, they often have to open a centralized exchange. The platform is responsible for both hosting and undertaking complex aspects of cross-chain transactions and brokering. Alternatives were limited at that time, and it was difficult for ordinary users to bypass the exchange for these operations.
However, the situation has changed in recent years. MetaMask and others have lowered the use threshold, hardware wallets have made cold storage more accessible, and some cross-chain agreements have begun to support users in the process of converting their original assets without handing them over to a centralized institution. The article cited the example of THORchain, stating that such agreements allowed users to complete cross-chain exchanges while retaining control of assets.
Exchanges remain easy but less sticky
The article does not describe self-care as a cost-free choice. Self-custody of the private key means that the user has a higher responsibility and, when the assistive words are lost, there is usually no way to recover them. For many users, the services, hosting and operational facilities provided by the transaction remain of real value.
However, according to the article, the transfer of funds by European users shows a growing willingness to rebalance convenience and control. They are more inclined to hold their own assets directly than to resume the registration and compliance process on the new platform.
From this point of view, the centralized exchange has not disappeared, but its role is more like an entry point for transactions and a place for liquidity, rather than being a natural default location for users to keep large assets on a long-term basis.