A Tour of the Bitcoin Custody Landscape
Ideas to take with you.
- 01
Self-custody's value to the network is structural, not universal – it disciplines fractional-reserve behavior even when only a minority of users actually verify and withdraw.
- 02
Every custody choice trades one risk against another: the same distribution that resists coercion can obstruct inheritance, and the same accessibility that helps loved ones can help attackers.
- 03
Multisig's real contribution is redundancy – it converts single points of failure into edge cases, but at the cost of more items, more geography, and more coordination.
- 04
Collaborative custody products translate the sovereignty properties of multisig into a human-usable form, which is a real gain, but it re-introduces the question of trust in a company's incentives and continuity.
- 05
A diverse ecosystem of custody practices, held privately by their owners, is what makes coercive attacks irrational at scale – the defense is collective even though the setups are personal.
