does swan custody users bitcoin prior to withdrawal, or does swan trust a 3rd party for that?
ultimately I want to trust the least amount of parties as possible. with all due respect, swans move to another 3rd party custodian after the prime trust debacle feels like kicking the can down the road.
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First party or third party there is always trust. You don’t know that the “first party” custodians have your coins. You don’t know if their security model is any better than a cold card in someone’s basement. You don’t know the security budget allocated to that. A startup will not have the same level of budget allocated to security as a qualified custodian. We use a framework of qualified custody including on chain observability, state regulation, soc2 audited, etc. We assess the risks of the various models here:
Ultimately, wire in and withdraw your bitcoin within 24h. During that 24h period they are in qualified custody with all of the above in place.

Swan Bitcoin
Assessing Risk in Bitcoin Custody
Swan encourages our clients to withdraw their Bitcoin to self-custody by offering free and automatic withdrawals.
River is a 3rd party too bro. Anyone holding my bitcoin other than me is. It's a false comparison. And I would say no one is as good as Swan at education and promoting user taking custody. We're all at risk for the short intervals our bitcoin is with a 3rd party, whether it's Fortress or River.
@ben I simply don't understand your issue here with Swan. As I see it, from the arrival time of a wire to withdrawal to your own storage is 2-24 for a $50k purchase, during most of that either asset is at the custodian. I have seen buyers be in and out in under 2 hrs. Done.
Swans margin is all on the BTC deal price/ paid. They should not handle or touch either asset. Jan's answer above confirms that they don't touch it.
Also: If the custodian f's with the statements and co-mingles funds behind the scenes, I believe all 3 Nevada, SDakota and Delaware trust industry bodies (ie industry itself ) with help to jail those specific staff. They do not want their trust industry to get f'd and break 80+ years of legal precedent in their state (and lose their Trust biz to the other 2), over some pittance (to them) $100m rugpull. These are Walton level jurisdictions.
Ie: I believe there is be the genuine threat of US jail time on staff action/inaction.
We will know if that becomes true as PT plays out in Nevada court.
Alternatively, what other method do you suggest for >$50k deals except an independent custodian. That's worked for bearer assets for a long long time.
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