Do you trust yourself to manage your own private keys?

[oblivi]

I think the whole point and what makes bitcoin cool is being your own bank, beside the great way to do worldwide transactions easily. I like the feeling of controling my own wealth. Of course guaranteed I get why some people would choose to not do it themselves.

[rio3232]

yes i am, no one know my password/private keys. and i have many recovers for forget password and etc. 

but the problem is if u save ur private key on wordpad or something on pc/netbook if ur pc/netbook crash it will hard to recover, i done this before 

[Xapo]

I think this thread has back fired for OP. Xapo did not think so many people would only trust themselves with their private keys. As far as I know, Xapo wallet do not give users their private keys.

My follow-up question would be, how many many people who voted Yes, 100%, have more than 10BTC? I'm curious if people's sentiment change as they get more BTC, or if people think there is only MORE reason to own your own private keys as your total BTC count increases. I know that most hedge funds, institutional investors, and high worth individuals do not protect their own private keys, they use a company like Xapo that specializes in security. Whether you TRUST someone else is another issue. What is undeniable is that our security infrastructure is obviously more sophisticated than what people here have suggested (USB stick in a floorboard, giving a private key to a friend, burying them in different locations, etc). How many of those who voted Yes are even producing their keys offline in line with deep cold storage practices? Yes, you must trust a third party, but if you can trust them like you trust a bank, no one denies that a checking account is more secure than a mattress full of cash.

[WhatTheGox]

I trust myself vs anyone else, my long term holdings are all offline, im backed up in case of fire/theft.  In order for someone to steal my coins i'd have to be very unlucky and figure its about 0.001% chance.  At those odds i feel about as comfortable as crossing the road after looking both ways. 

[MCHouston]

I have more then 10 BTC and I replied yes.

As a network security engineer, I know there are bad ones out there.  Any company could easily have a bad one and a bad security engineer at a Bitcoin exchange/storage and you will be hacked.  Even companies with good security engineers get hacked it is a race against time.

I would only trust a company with my private keys, if they were audited by a 3rd party company for security and also insured by a large 3rd party insurance company.  Even then it would be awhile before I trust them with a large amount of BTC.

[DannyHamilton]

no one denies that a checking account is more secure than a mattress full of cash.

In the U.S. that's because a checking account is insured by the FDIC and highly regulated by the government.  The banks also most undergo extensive third party audits for both financial status and security practices.  Futhermore, and perhaps most importantly, the banks have extensive powers to reverse payments.

There aren't any Bitcoin businesses yet that can say that they have all 4 of those features (full deposit insurance, regulations, security and financial audits, and transaction reversal powers).

[manselr]

I do, but I don't think trusting myself is enough.
I gave my best friend my private keys.. tho he have no earthly idea what it is.

better ask him to delete your private keys now he still don't know what it is.
if he does know what it is and it has decent enough value, then your friend might not be much of a friend anymore.

I wonder what the hell did the dude smoke to give his friend his private keys. I mean what's the point? He will probably lose them specially if he has no idea what that is, might throw them to the garbage bin one day.

[needFREElunch]

An interesting concept would be a bitcoin investment bank. You could put your bitcoins in and they would invest them by doing loans (like a bank) and then give the people putting there money in a percentage of the income(interest). I can see this happening with all of the people putting there money into ponzi's these days. Although the problem with this is that it would go against one of the points of bitcoin which is not relying on banks.

[Xapo]

no one denies that a checking account is more secure than a mattress full of cash.

In the U.S. that's because a checking account is insured by the FDIC and highly regulated by the government.  The banks also most undergo extensive third party audits for both financial status and security practices.  Futhermore, and perhaps most importantly, the banks have extensive powers to reverse payments.

There aren't any Bitcoin businesses yet that can say that they have all 4 of those features (full deposit insurance, regulations, security and financial audits, and transaction reversal powers).

Not quite yet, but Xapo passed a Service Organizational Control 2 (SOC2) financial audit by Burr, Pilger & Mayer LLP, and our Vault storage is covered by two policies that cover a wide range of potential situations, both an A rated insurance group, and Xapo's own captive insurance company.

[nambich]

Criticism often comes to online wallet providers (Xapo, Coinbase, etc) saying, if you don't own your private keys, you don't actually own your bitcoin. On the other hand, if your cash is in a traditional bank, you don't really own your cash either. The only possible difference, traditional banks have been around longer, and more people trust them. Many bitcoin users who criticize bitcoin vaults, store their cash in a traditional bank. Hypothetically, if Bank of America, or Barclay, or DeustcheBank announced they've invested millions into a highly protected, advanced, security architecture, would you trust someone to store it then? I personally don't trust myself to store my own bitcoin, for now. That could change in the future, but right now, I'm not a fan of the options, as the technology depends too much on my ability to maintain hardware, or, not lose something. I think about pictures, movies, files, documents, I had on my computer 10 years ago (and I always backed up), and I probably couldn't retrieve a single one without relying on a cloud-based service (Facebook, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.). I have no idea where the original photos of my trip to Indonesia in 2008 are, but I know that album is still easily accessible on Facebook. Are critics right to say, don't use an online wallet provider, it's not safe?

No, I have never believed in myself in case of management my own private keys

[unamis76]

Came here from another thread... Damn, if you don't have 100% trust in yourself to keep Bitcoins, that's pretty risky, in my opinion. Don't take me wrong, but if one can't store his own Bitcoins, he loses something that is, in my opinion, one of the biggest advantages of Bitcoin when we compare it to fiat: you can safely store the funds yourself without the fear of getting robbed, if you know how to do it.

If someone hasn't got the will to search for methods to protect his funds, and to find time to implement these methods... Maybe he should just have fiat.

[Lauda]

Came here from another thread... Damn, if you don't have 100% trust in yourself to keep Bitcoins, that's pretty risky, in my opinion. Don't take me wrong, but if one can't store his own Bitcoins, he loses something that is, in my opinion, one of the biggest advantages of Bitcoin when we compare it to fiat: you can safely store the funds yourself without the fear of getting robbed, if you know how to do it.

If someone hasn't got the will to search for methods to protect his funds, and to find time to implement these methods... Maybe he should just have fiat.

Well people aren't simple and it comes down to the individual. I've stored mine in a secret place that I only know of. I can't lose them, unless I get a disease or something that makes me forget things.
It's not that hard to be your own bank.
I guess one of the best options would be to get it carved in stone or something. After all, paper can get easily destroyed.

[kpitti]

I like to manage my finance and keep it in hand. With fiat it`s difficult today as you need to trust bank, but this is different as I can have many of confirmations and informations how my bank works and how stable is. Therefore I trust my judgement. With Bitcoins it`s different. I am not in position to trust any of online "bank" yet. Only for limited amounts which I need to have ready for urgent transactions. Majority of my Bitcoins are kept with my complete control of private keys.

[Hazir]

Xapo, do you think that all people are idiots unable to administer their own belongings? And your mission is to help poor, undecided people and store their private keys in your online vault? Because there - in you hands people's keys are forever safe. And no hackers, nor any other calamity could ever take out these keys... Right...

[chmod755]

Xapo, do you think that all people are idiots unable to administer their own belongings? And your mission is to help poor, undecided people and store their private keys in your online vault? Because there - in you hands people's keys are forever safe. And no hackers, nor any other calamity could ever take out these keys... Right...

Maybe you can do it, but the vast majority (99%+) of the world population has no idea how to protect their computers - even people who worked as "IT security experts" for years occasionally fail to keep Bitcoins secure (e.g. Antonopolous).

[bornil267645]

What's the point of having a "Bank" of any kind if we are trying to use bitcoin instead of cash. So, yes, I'm responsible for my own keys. No way I am keeping my keys on a bank.

[randy8777]

trusting yourself shouldn't be a problem. bitcoin is about being your own bank. we don't need services to store value as we can do it ourself. there are so many secure options to store your coins offline in a safe place.

[boopy265420]

I voted for first option because I am confident of myself and always manage personally my important things from private keys to every little data about my financial and everyday used things.

[Barney Stinson]

More than anybody else thats for sure its a easy skill to learn and you get to brush up on security

[Lauda]

Xapo, do you think that all people are idiots unable to administer their own belongings? And your mission is to help poor, undecided people and store their private keys in your online vault? Because there - in you hands people's keys are forever safe. And no hackers, nor any other calamity could ever take out these keys... Right...

Maybe you can do it, but the vast majority (99%+) of the world population has no idea how to protect their computers - even people who worked as "IT security experts" for years occasionally fail to keep Bitcoins secure (e.g. Antonopolous).

A lot of those "IT security experts" or just "IT experts" are in general unskilled. I've seen examples of this throughout they years (no I'm not saying Antonopolous is).
We should work on educating people on proper security methods for both their wallets and computers at the same time. Both are connected. We should also recommend keeping funds in their own wallets instead of online services/wallets.