Philosophical reflections incoming:
A famous anarchist once said "privacy is not a right, it must be taken". There's also the more catchy "privacy is a human fight".
You should look at bitcoin ownership similarly, except a bit more optimistically: *general* privacy is stupidly hard bordering on impossible; bitcoin ownership is just "bloody hard".
There's two ways in which this affects my personal philosophy around bitcoin self-custody. 1/ i consider myself in a permanent war against others trying to steal my coins, and in an even more violent war against my own stupidity and errors. I know this sounds a bit exhausting, but it is realistic. This feeds into 2/ don't put all your life savings in bitcoin; even 50-70% of your life savings in it is *way* more risky than most should be comfortable with.
2/ almost seemed liked heresy at some points in recent years. And that's insane. It didn't used to be, it used to be common knowledge/obvious that you don't put in more than you can afford to lose. Somehow this idea that 'everything fiat is crap so put all your accumulation of wealth in btc' became not just acceptable but required in some social groups. it's wrong mainly because of the above - namely that holding bitcoin is not super-safe, people make errors, people get hacked, people get unlucky with software. it's also a bit wrong because of bitcoin's high volatility. it's also a bit wrong because diversification makes sense with savings (perhaps not so much with investments, where you need growth), but with savings, I think so.
So plan around the worst outcomes, including losing your btc (and you can plan around that by diversifying *that* into different storage clumps, but of course how much complexity you can stomach will depend on you).
All of that sounds like I'm saying, meh, bitcoin, useless, but never forget: you can lose fiat money too, just as unfairly and cruelly, in different ways - mostly through "powers-that-be" just shafting you. It's happened to me, and more than once. With that system you're little more than a slave, just hoping your masters don't decide they don't like you today. There's a reason a system as impractical as bitcoin exists.
A famous anarchist once said "privacy is not a right, it must be taken". There's also the more catchy "privacy is a human fight".
You should look at bitcoin ownership similarly, except a bit more optimistically: *general* privacy is stupidly hard bordering on impossible; bitcoin ownership is just "bloody hard".
There's two ways in which this affects my personal philosophy around bitcoin self-custody. 1/ i consider myself in a permanent war against others trying to steal my coins, and in an even more violent war against my own stupidity and errors. I know this sounds a bit exhausting, but it is realistic. This feeds into 2/ don't put all your life savings in bitcoin; even 50-70% of your life savings in it is *way* more risky than most should be comfortable with.
2/ almost seemed liked heresy at some points in recent years. And that's insane. It didn't used to be, it used to be common knowledge/obvious that you don't put in more than you can afford to lose. Somehow this idea that 'everything fiat is crap so put all your accumulation of wealth in btc' became not just acceptable but required in some social groups. it's wrong mainly because of the above - namely that holding bitcoin is not super-safe, people make errors, people get hacked, people get unlucky with software. it's also a bit wrong because of bitcoin's high volatility. it's also a bit wrong because diversification makes sense with savings (perhaps not so much with investments, where you need growth), but with savings, I think so.
So plan around the worst outcomes, including losing your btc (and you can plan around that by diversifying *that* into different storage clumps, but of course how much complexity you can stomach will depend on you).
All of that sounds like I'm saying, meh, bitcoin, useless, but never forget: you can lose fiat money too, just as unfairly and cruelly, in different ways - mostly through "powers-that-be" just shafting you. It's happened to me, and more than once. With that system you're little more than a slave, just hoping your masters don't decide they don't like you today. There's a reason a system as impractical as bitcoin exists.
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