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Don't ever keep coins on an exchange. Use a hardware wallet. If you don't have them in your possession they're not really your coins and you can get "Goxed" - ie. the world's largest exchange at the time, Mt Gox, disappeared with most of the user funds.

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Yes, all reasonable paranoia. However I do trust Coinbase/GDAX as far as BTC, ETH LTC are concerned.

It's a pain to store a few K USD worth of altcoins in my hw wallet (which I'm not even sure supports most of them). What if I'm at work and an event happens that makes me want to sell? The wallet requires an app to be installed.

If there's a hint of an issue with Bittrex, I'll trade to ETH and move them to GDAX.

Am I being a fool here?

You are being a fool. Exchanges have been known to close, be seized, and be stolen from, without warning.

Cryptocurrency frees you from needing to trust central banks/exchanges... so why continue to trust them? Especially un(der)regulated ones?!

At best, store only the smallest amount you're willing to lose, so you retain some liquidity for sudden trades...

Based on my research it seems like Bittrex allows the trading of Tether and lets people cash out to USD. Poloniex also. Seems like a round about way of getting USD out of Bitfinex.

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