Here's a self-custody habit almost nobody does, and the one that matters most: test your recovery before you need it.

Most people set up a wallet, write down the recovery words, and never touch them again. Then years later something breaks, and they find out the hard way that they wrote a word wrong, skipped one, or can't read their own handwriting.

The fix takes twenty minutes. Set up a fresh wallet on a spare device and restore it from your written words. If your balance shows up, your backup works. If it doesn't, you just found out while you still have time to fix it.

Self-custody isn't only about holding your keys. It's about knowing, for certain, that you can recover them. The whole point of holding your own coins is that the responsibility is yours, so make sure the backup actually does what you think it does.

Test it this weekend. Future you will be grateful.