Maybe it’s because @Michael Saylor, $trategy and BlackRock haven’t realized the following, @Jor: 1. A Coinbase IOU ≠ Bitcoin 2. "Not your keys. Not your coins" 3. "Your bitcoin having a custodian is like your girlfriend having a boyfriend" But BTC/USD, $MSTR and $IBIT are trading around the claims that: - $trategy got 671,268 BTC at Coinbase - $IBIT got ₿ 772,584 BTC at Coinbase - The black box Coinbase haven't been hacked, even though Coinbase went down two times in ~8 days in October (when Amazon Web Services broke 1/3 of the internet) What’s your insights into this matter @jack mallers? View quoted note → View quoted note → View quoted note →

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Thomas 's avatar
Thomas 5 days ago
So you think Coinbase is a possible attack vector / growing risk for the market? Or just the problem not your keys?
This is the core distinction many miss and I’m glad you’re calling this out. A custodial balance or ETF share is a claim on Bitcoin, not Bitcoin itself. The protocol recognises only UTXOs controlled by private keys, not brokerage statements or fund disclosures. Centralised custody concentrates risk, shifts price discovery to paper instruments, and recreates the same trust assumptions Bitcoin was designed to remove. ETFs and treasury companies may increase exposure, but they do not strengthen the network’s monetary properties. Sovereignty, censorship resistance, and verifiability exist only at the protocol layer. Bitcoin works best when custody, verification, and settlement remain distributed. Everything else is convenience layered on top, with trade-offs.