Atom holders on Coinbase, take only 15 minutes to move your Atom to a native wallet.

Reading a lot of posts here, it seems that a lot of the community here like and hold Atom. This message is for those who are staking their Atom on Coinbase/Binance or any other centralised exchanges.

Why take the trouble?

Three main reasons. Firstly the staking rewards are higher - on Keplr wallet the rewards are around 18.95% whereas Coinbase is 17.66%. Yes that isn't much difference, so why bother?

Secondly. You are eligible for airdrops. If you stake with Coinbase you will not receive airdrops (airdrops are new projects that drop tokens/coins to Atom holders on Keplr wallet - for newbies here).

Thirdly - Atom represents the Cosmos Ecosystem and provides interchain security for other blockchains with their coins that runs on it using IBC (inter blockchain communication) protocol. These coins will pay fees to Atom stakers just like Neutron (a new coin that was airdropped to stakers) has started doing. I am receiving Neutron by just staking Atom.

Timing is great now just before a very possible bull market next year. Position your Atom to get some cool airdrops. Last cycle many holders profited a lot from staking their Atom earlier on to get airdrops like Juno and Osmos that got into the double digit dollar mark. May not happen again, but, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So how in 15 minutes?

You need to first download a native wallet. There are a few to choose from. Guarda, Cosmostation. But I use Keplr as I mentioned before so I will use this example. So download Keplr on your web browser (Google Chrome recommended). You can go here https://www.keplr.app/ (2 minutes).

Install app and choose a name. Now you will have a 12 word seed phrase you will need to write down with a pen and paper and store it safe (do not digitally write it). After doing this, it will test you to see if you have it all down correctly. Cool. Now you have your Keplr wallet. (4 minutes).

Look at your Keplr wallet cosmos hub address. It begins with cosmos..... copy it by pressing the copy button. (1 minute).

Go to your Coinbase (or different CEX). Choose your Atom coins. Copy and paste the Keplr address into 'send' or 'withdrawal'. Only send 0.05 Atom. Atom is really fast and very cheap fees. Send it onchain to your Keplr. This may be your first onchain transaction. Congrats! (3 minutes). Pro tip - save the sending transaction address on Coinbase so next time it will be easy to send automatically.

Check Keplr wallet. Has it come through? It is really quick and shouldn't take longer than 3 minutes (3 minutes).

Yes, it has come through. Now click the Cosmos tab and it will bring you to a dashboard and a list of validators to stake to. You see Coinbase there? Yes. Don't stake with them. Look for outside top 10 validators and stake with anyone between 1% to 5% commission fees. Can move more funds over and stake more of your Atom. You will receive your staking rewards daily and you are now eligible for airdrops. (2 minutes).

For those more adventurous, you can check out https://app.osmosis.zone/ and deposit some Atom in there and swap it and provide it to liquidity pools.

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Addition from J_cook14:

A fourth reason to stake natively is that you will receive staking rewards from blockchains that utilize the Cosmos Hub’s Interchain Security (also known as the Atom Economic Zone or AEZ for short). This actually adds a very small amount of additional rewards now, but the bull market should provide a clearer picture of what those additional rewards could add up too.