Self-Custody Protects You From Systemic Risk.

[Queen uloma]

Self-custody  is the highest essence for financial freedom in Bitcoin ecosystem, when you know your private keys, you're in full control of your assets eliminate the middleman who can deceive, fail and restrict from having access to your funds.
History has made us to know that even the biggest and well know exchanges can collapse overnight, leaving the investors helpless.
When you practice self-custody you have embrace Bitcoin core principle, which is not your keys not your coin, it encourage you to be your own bank immune from systemic risks that may come up, government interference or mismanagement,
Which it requires security awareness and responsibility.
In all self-custody isn't a technical Choice or agreement, it's has to do with independence and trust in a system that is built on transparency and ones accountability.

[Odusko]

Obviously this is a fact about self custody, but even at that we still have some who are lazy enough to leave a large sum of Bitcoin on exchange wallets and when you advice them about importance of self custody of your Bitcoin and how vital it is to keep your wallet recovery key safe and protect, they still don't take it seriously untill they freedom get taken and their lose access to funds in the end.
We keep encouraging everyone to keep they coin within they control and not third party.

[Hazink]

Self-custody is the safest way to store your coins. It also has its own security risk when you don't know how to properly protect your keys, it will be very stupid for someone who wants to run away from centralized control to create a wallet and backup the private key into their iCloud, which is an online storage which have two ways of it being hacked either through the cloud storage database it's self or through the owners cloud account. 

Prioritize learning how to protect your assets by backing up your private key in any way possible offline and making sure it's secure away from the reach of others.

[Jegileman]

This has been said here several times as the advantage of self custody cannot be overlooked on. It has become a basic and necessity for every bitcoin holder to have for the safety of their funds. Systemic risk is not tolerated by self-custodian wallets unless you make it prone to such risks. Bitcoin first preaches more about privacy and security, so if you’re into the system without having this two locked, it will be very hard to make a safe investment here. Self-custody is not a choice but a necessity to have by every bitcoin holder, only till then can you be a certified bitcoin holder without facing any potential risk of loss to asset.

[SuperBitMan]

You are right, when you want to invest and hold your Bitcoin for a very long term then using self custody wallet is the best because it is more safe you control it yourself but using exchange is a very big risk for long term Bitcoin investment because if anything happens to the exchange your Bitcoin is gone, especially when the exchange is hacked for example the Mt Gox Hack in 2014 and about $450 Million was Lost and Over 24,000 users lost their Bitcoin.
The exchange can even collapse and it will lead to you losing your Bitcoin or other crypto coin for example FTX Collapsed in 2022 and $8 Billion Customer Funds Gone.
And again the death of the owner of the exchange can also cause a problem of you losing your Bitcoin for example the news about the Canadian exchange’s founder Gerald Cotten dead and he was the only one with the passwords to access users crypto and that was how all those coins were lost.
So self custody is the best and will always remain the best.

[aoluain]

Obviously this is a fact about self custody, but even at that we still have some who are lazy enough to leave a large sum of Bitcoin on exchange wallets and when you advice them about importance of self custody of your Bitcoin and how vital it is to keep your wallet recovery key safe and protect, they still don't take it seriously untill they freedom get taken and their lose access to funds in the end.
We keep encouraging everyone to keep they coin within they control and not third party.

Yes and Its actually not often clearly pointed out that self custody of Bitcoin involves
a three-fold security approach.

Security approach 1. - Secure your hardware wallet with the seed phrase and password

Security approach 2. - Record the seed phrase on a durable surface against
fire and water

Security approach 3. - Secure the seed phrase in a discrete location against theft

So while this topic has been discussed before on numerous occasions its
important to raise the subject again to remind some people and inform newbies.

[Zaguru12]

Yes and Its actually not often clearly pointed out that self custody of Bitcoin involves
a three-fold security approach.

Security approach 1. - Secure your hardware wallet with the seed phrase and password

Security approach 2. - Record the seed phrase on a durable surface against
fire and water

Security approach 3. - Secure the seed phrase in a discrete location against theft

Another key thing that people also need to take account of is the wallet type that they want to use for self custody, yes all wallet provides either private key or seed phrase or both but they are some wallets which you do not hand over the the keys or phrases to you alone but might also have a copy of it and that’s not full self custody as there is another party in possession of the wallet keys.

This type of wallet are those closed source wallet, this doesn’t mean open source wallet all of a sudden are save just like you still have to apply those security measures but with closed source you don’t know what is happening in the backend. Even exchanges now have in built wallet on them, how are we sure that they do not have storage of the keys and that if hacked the keys wouldn’t be exposed.

Imagine having a wallet like ledger which has your seed phrase saved in the name of backup

[Odogwu-Blockchain]

There had been many times centralized exchange collapse like FTX and the rest, many investors funds were lost because some fail to understand deeply about self-custody and lack knowledge about it.

They simply thought keeping funds on Cex is safe which is the worst decision to ever made, its quite unfortunate to always play this silly game over and over again making the same mistake.

[FirmWars]

Self-custody  is the highest essence for financial freedom in Bitcoin ecosystem, when you know your private keys, you're in full control of your assets eliminate the middleman who can deceive, fail and restrict from having access to your funds.
History has made us to know that even the biggest and well know exchanges can collapse overnight, leaving the investors helpless.
When you practice self-custody you have embrace Bitcoin core principle, which is not your keys not your coin, it encourage you to be your own bank immune from systemic risks that may come up, government interference or mismanagement,
Which it requires security awareness and responsibility.
In all self-custody isn't a technical Choice or agreement, it's has to do with independence and trust in a system that is built on transparency and ones accountability.

Unfortunately it is not everybody that can apply to this rule, if truly this is a thing many people won't lose millions on the day that the whole market crashed, traders can't always keep their bitcoin in their wallets because they have to trade, if you have one btc And you are using 0.2 Btc to trade keeping the rest in your hardware wallet do not forget that some people are trading using 5btc or even more.

These type of people will always use a centralized exchange and whenever such bad event is planned to happen they will always be a victim. Vex is the only way to trade and self custody is somehow useless here, trading can't take place in a hardware wallet. There is no product or hardware that's capable of such option right now.

[Jewan420]

Satoshi's main goal was to protect your wealth and have your own freedom over your wealth. You wealth is safe and private with you, banks or exchanges call for intervention in your wealth and promote security or easy transactions. Basically, through this, they continue to expand their rights over your wealth and reduce your control over your wealth. Even the trap of fraud is not new these days.

However, your wealth is safe with you. It is never wise to keep Bitcoin in centralized exchanges. We are already familiar with the incidents of exchange scams and often we see exchanges declaring themselves bankrupt. So designate self-custody wallets to store Bitcoin and store the keys yourself. Not your keys, not your coins.

[adaseb]

Yes, self custody is very important. If you have been involved in crypto for a while, you know that it’s not safe keeping your coins on an exchange so you withdraw to your wallet but you learn later on that you need to use cold storage because if you don’t, there’s a good chance that there could be some virus which can steal your bitcoins.

These days, many people don’t even trust exchanges after the FTX scandal. Many people stopped using centralized exchanges, and they all went to decentralized, and this is why the de centralized exchanges are the hot thing right now go and check the volume. There is so much volume in the de centralized exchanges, one day is gonna surpass centralized exchanges.

[Mrbluntzy]

Had it been that Bitcoin had some set of official rules that was lay down by Satoshi himself, one of the rules would strictly say that "self custody of a user's Bitcoin is highly advisable," In the absence of no designed officials rules of Bitcoin investment, the purpose by which Bitcoin was created has already made it clare that it was to eliminate third party in Bitcoin transactions. Most Bitcoin users are ignorant of self custody but that's because they have not had any bad experience but is better to take precautions to avoid being victim like some have already experienced.

[Smartvirus]

Self-custody  is the highest essence for financial freedom in Bitcoin ecosystem, when you know your private keys, you're in full control of your assets eliminate the middleman who can deceive, fail and restrict from having access to your funds.

There is no Bitcoin without self custody.
The Satoshi intent as contained in the Bitcoin white paper did seek to eliminate middle men in financial transactions and some other ills of the system of which, centralized systems like the exchanges which largely operates how we utilize Bitcoin today in the absence of true P2P system is a downside to it but, self custody is all their should be to better enjoy what Bitcoin has to offer.

[Pablo-wood]

Self-custody  is the highest essence for financial freedom in Bitcoin ecosystem, when you know your private keys, you're in full control of your assets eliminate the middleman who can deceive, fail and restrict from having access to your funds.

We can't really know our private keys in real sense, I mean they are too complex for anyone to memorize, Imagine memorizing hashed hexadecimal usually 256 bits long, one will forget the first few characters even before the need to use them arises. What matters is that we securely safeguard and control them ourselves. That's what self-custody is truly about owning your access, not depending on intermediaries. It's the real essence and beauty of digital currency.

[fullfitlarry]

In all self-custody isn't a technical Choice or agreement, it's has to do with independence and trust in a system that is built on transparency and ones accountability.

I have to disagree though, you really need to be technical if you are going to do self-custody and hold your Bitcoin for a long term. You can't just hold in a wallet that is not open source or a wallet that doesn't have a good security to begin with.

So you need to be technical incline, you have to understand what kind of wallets that you need to secure your Bitcoin. And then be technical on how to make several back ups of your private key or mnemonic phrase.

[notocactus]

Self-custody  is the highest essence for financial freedom in Bitcoin ecosystem, when you know your private keys, you're in full control of your assets eliminate the middleman who can deceive, fail and restrict from having access to your funds.

It is kind of inaccurate information here.

"You know your private keys" is not enough condition to have full control of your bitcoins, it depends on how these private keys were generated and whether there are other parties knew about these private keys. If you use a bad wallet software for creating your wallet and private keys, there are backdoors in the software to help their developers knowing your private keys. This means you know the keys and there are other people know your keys, hence your bitcoins can be stolen anytime.

Use this website for checking insightful reviews on wallet softwares.

• https://walletscrutiny.com/

[CryptoYar]

Yes exactly self custody is final financial freedom since it gives you power to manage your own money and remove middleman like exchanges who can fail or be hacked or freeze your money which we have seen and history has shown to be very real danger. Holding your own keys means you believe in main idea of Bitcoin means not your keys, not your coin and become your own bank keeping your money out of external issues such as government rules or bad management. This is not only technical decision but step towards independence that swaps trust in person with trust in system yet this freedom is joined by great job of safely handling your secret keys and preventing scams.

[woez]

I have to disagree though, you really need to be technical if you are going to do self-custody and hold your Bitcoin for a long term. You can't just hold in a wallet that is not open source or a wallet that doesn't have a good security to begin with.

So you need to be technical incline, you have to understand what kind of wallets that you need to secure your Bitcoin. And then be technical on how to make several back ups of your private key or mnemonic phrase.

This solution, at first glance, aligns with the initial concept of achieving financial freedom independently. However, I also agree that it can be achieved by those who truly understand the technical aspects. The general public would interpret it as buying BTC on an exchange, then transferring it to a non-custodial wallet, and that's it.

There are certainly many things to prepare, but from a security perspective, this step is considered appropriate because we actually have full control over the management of all our assets, not entrusting them to a third party or generally placing them on an exchange to securely hold Bitcoin without any hassle, which is the normal assumption most people make.

[ancafe]

History has made us to know that even the biggest and well know exchanges can collapse overnight, leaving the investors helpless.
When you practice self-custody you have embrace Bitcoin core principle, which is not your keys not your coin, it encourage you to be your own bank immune from systemic risks that may come up, government interference or mismanagement,
Which it requires security awareness and responsibility.
In all self-custody isn't a technical Choice or agreement, it's has to do with independence and trust in a system that is built on transparency and ones accountability.

More precisely we try to avoid using exchanges to store our Bitcoin because in reality exchanges aren't a safe place to store Bitcoin. Some people who realize this will certainly try to find ways to protect their assets, deciding to use more secure storage that's less vulnerable to hacking. This means we've also embraced independence and trust in a system built on transparency and accountability. The most important part is how this can be realized, not just a concept.

Furthermore, many people out there may not understand asset security systems, so many people still store Bitcoin on exchanges for various reasons. Talking about the stock exchange, perhaps it is more about the use or utilization of the concept of buying and selling, otherwise there are no advantages that we can take advantage of in it and that needs to be understood by people.

[X-ray]

Not your key not your coin. But people fade this wise words for the sake of convenience. Unfortunately after the ETF there's decline in the growth of self custody wallets and people are just switching to ETF because they think it's more simpler.

I believe that if you are truly bitcoin maxi you should choose self custody everytime. It helps keep the decentralization of bitcoin holders from going down.