It's about controlling your private keys. When you have your coins on an exchange the private keys are at that point in their control. Only when you transfer your coins to an offline wallet, may it be for example Electrum, a Ledger or a paper wallet, THEN you have control of your private keys. And this is the ESSENTIAL requirement to claiming forked coins lateron. I haven't, yet, found out how the exact process of claiming forked coins works, but I know that it only works when you control the private keys of your coins at the time of forking. I hope this helps! :)
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Not him, but thanks this was helpful!
I understand there will be a fork tomorrow. I don't have time to get an offline wallet. What is a plan B?
It is not about controlling your private keys, it's about getting the hard forked coins after all. While in GDAX, he does not own the actual bitcoin, but Coinbase does. When he moves BTC out of GDAX (Coinbase), he is in control of his bitcoins and he would own the same amount of the forked coins in the case of hard fork.