The purpose of Bitcoin is to make an investment in Bitcoin at a lower price and then sell it at a higher price, thus reaping a profit.

People used to use it a lot for illegal stuff, but they have mostly switched to Monero for that, or so I've heard.


Custodied funds are stored under your name, which cannot be taken away from you.

The only reason your house or your car is yours to use is because there are documents with the government saying it's yours.

Today Bitcoin is used almost entirely as a meme investment instrument.

I feel it is to teach people to hold their funds instead of trusting banks and financial institutions. And there are more than 47 users who are responsible hodlers of their own Bitcoin... you know that right? lol

if self-custody is done correctly it cannot be seized. Maybe it can be given up but not seized without the owner allowing it.

It surprises me that you don't  think they can kidnap and force people to enpty their custodian wallets just to save themselves or their relatives while still torturing  and even killing victims ?
You're acting like it's kind of totally immune to such

So far, they are holding it the right way. They are supporting the great cause and in one way or the other, they are forced to learn something. But does it mean that because they want to learn, they shouldn't care about the profit ?

Those who do not use it and simply hodl it have missed the point. It was designed and intended to be used as money.

Announcing version 0.3 of Bitcoin, the P2P cryptocurrency!  Bitcoin is a digital currency using cryptography and a distributed network to replace the need for a trusted central server.  Escape the arbitrary inflation risk of centrally managed currencies!  Bitcoin's total circulation is limited to 21 million coins.

Self-custody has always been a bad idea for the simple reason that most people are not security experts, they do not live their lives in a high security context, and most importantly they do not want to. What good is having more money when that money diminishes your lifestyle? Living in constant fear that you may accidentally lose your life savings, or that you may be beaten or killed because of that savings is no way to live. If you have to wake up every morning and check to make sure your self-custody product(s) are still secure, your life is diminished.

That said, none of the users of that CEX were killed, tortured, or had their loved ones threatened--unlike what can happen if you use self-custody.

Recently we've read a lot of stories and there has been much discussion here as well about how best to secure your investment in Bitcoin.

The stories about self-custody are not new: people have been losing their Bitcoin due to theft or accidental loss since Bitcoin began. And this has not just been due to their own direct actions, but the failure of self-custody products are well.

Self-custody has always been a bad idea for the simple reason that most people are not security experts, they do not live their lives in a high security context, and most importantly they do not want to. What good is having more money when that money diminishes your lifestyle? Living in constant fear that you may accidentally lose your life savings, or that you may be beaten or killed because of that savings is no way to live. If you have to wake up every morning and check to make sure your self-custody product(s) are still secure, your life is diminished.

This is all why almost everybody in developed countries use banks and other entities to guard their money for them. They leave the problem to experts and pay them a small fee of some kind (often just in the form of interest spread). That way the individual can live their own life comfortably, and focus on their own area of expertise.

Centralized custody, however, has its own problem: the institution can fail to protect your money. I won't rehash all of the failures, because we've read all of the stories.

There is, however, a solution to centralized custody failure: insurance.

Insurance, as a human innovation, has been around for thousands of years. Insurance basically says, "if this unusual things happens you'll pay me for my losses, an in exchange I'll pay you a little bit". The insurer, on the other hand, tries to make sure the unusual thing doesn't happen so they profit.

In the context of an entity holding your money, you want them to be insured against something unusual happening, e.g. an attack on their storage of your money. This costs more money, of course, but economies of scale mean that the cost to you will be minimal.

But the rewards to the consumer are excellent: you research an entity that has a good record of keeping people's Bitcoin secured, and you research their insurance as well: does the insurance company have the assets to cover your CEX in the event of a total loss? Does the CEX have the proper relationship with the insurance company? And is all of this properly regulated by a government to insure that you are not being defrauded. This requires some initial overhead on the individual's part, but it's a one-time expense.

Everybody wants a "set it and forget it" approach to holding your savings. We want to save, invest, profit, and then spend our money and enjoy it. We don't want to think about guarding it. There's no "perfect" solution, but the very closest thing to it that humans have created thus far is a CEX that is insured by a strong insuring entity.

I don't blame people for not wanting to learn, theyy are free to choose to use a custodial wallet. But using self-custody comes with the responsibility of learning "what is" and "how to", even if it's only about basic holding and selling.