Why you should be thankful: The ability to hold your own coins is part of the value proposition of most cryptocurrencies. From the perspective of the Bitcoin system, one of the value propositions is that there is a finite, provably scarce number of bitcoin. If exchanges were found to be circulating an amount in excess of the number of bitcoin issued (i.e., they are selling paper, fake bitcoins rather than real bitcoins) we could: a) out some bad-faith actors in the space and b) see some crazy price movement as the demand for “real, actual” bitcoin spikes dramatically.
