GM @Rich Nost pura vida! 💜

It’s not a solution for the majority of people.

I consider you a very smart person.

Not that that is saying much.

I’ve always considered self custody as a vital defense to a potential 6102 or a cross-border move in the context of a fallen government / disorderly country. Do you consider those risks impractical or immaterial?

Yes. It's in as far as nobody gives a shit about a bunch of warmed-over goldbug paranoia fever dreams. Give me one single reason for self-custody that doesnt need to invoke crackpot libertarian fever persecution dreams about government standoffs. JUST ONE.

Worse than self custody however, is spending $300 on a Q or some other shitty overpriced overdesigned hww times 3 to protect $20k. Maybe do something nice with your $900 instead of burning it all on an overpriced overcomplicated setup You’re protecting $20k against what exactly? “Oh but bitcoin will be $1M” do it when it actually is If there was something somewhat better than an exchange, then that would be amazing: 1. Doesn’t have much business except to hold coins at a fixed % rate per year 2. More “security hardened” with 24h delay + phishing-resistant passkeys and no SMS 2FA I don’t see reasons for self custody for the average normie. If you can get used to it, then it is a good choice for some cases, but it has its risks

We focus so much on irrelevant risks, and focus so little on relevant risks. Losing your keys, phishing/scams, malware, locking yourself out. Much more likely than a $5 wrench attack, confiscation, and evil spies. But note, I’m developing a hardware wallet. For those that do self custody, I want to have a good solution. But I can’t see the need for anything beyond a smartcard or small USB stick with 2 buttons and a display. I don’t think the other options have much benefit, except for show-off. Which the market unfortunately wants… Bitcoiners spend too much time and money talking about self custody and doing a pissing contest of which setup is better, I wonder if it was worth it at all Also, seedless is likely much better for normies. Advanced users can have it, but it’s not the way for normies that decide to go this route

Keep paying those taxes. Your owner appreciates your servitude.

Rehypothication, commingling, fractional reserve, bail-in, windfall gains taxes, bank holidays. It’s a never ending list of shenanigans.

How much bitcoin does someone need to own to worry about that, in your opinion?

I honestly don’t know

I do think, though, that a time like the one in which we’re living is the perfect time to fuck around and find out.

Good morning ✌️🧡 For a tiny population of people, self custody is the rational choice. For everyone else, relying on others is best. Hopefully, with Bitcoin custody, those others can be held to account better than the current system, making non-custody a genuinely safe and robust option.

Well GM!

You guys have not learned the lesson from centralised third parties doing fractional reserves on Monero. Self-custody is not really about protecting your coins from tail risks, though CEX rug pulls happen all the time. It's about keeping the collective social contract intact, that there will only be 21M coins (and a couple more IOUs), but not 210M or 500M virtual Bitlycoins that play silly games with underlying centralised (custodied) supplies. It fascinates me, how many Bitcoiners do not get this. It's also the reason why Monero people warned about ETFs. ETFs are a tool for centralised control over price.

Your ranking is right: loss, phishing, lockout beat the $5 wrench. But they need different fixes. The 2-button signer kills malware and address swap; it does nothing for a lost seed or a lockout, which needs a restore you have tested. Seedless just moves recovery to the vendor.

Disagree with this. Happens all the time outside the US, and 6102 happened in the US. Especially considering the direction everything is moving, protecting your assets from government seizure or border confiscation is a risk worth solving for. I think your argument is a better one with respect to sizing — i.e., how much allocation to bitcoin and how much of that needs to be in self custody

This!!! So few get it and so much education to do!