The point Saylor makes that he (FDR) “didn’t really seize the gold” and “kick in everybody’s door” is an argument for self-custody rather than against it.
Meaning, if you’e held your own gold when Executive Order 6102 was issued, you’d have been fine. But if you’d held your gold with a bank, there would be no way to get it back. You’d have to accept the conversion to fiat.
It’s great that the institutions are adopting Bitcoin now, and Saylor deserves credit for leading the way. Institutional adoption of Bitcoin was always going to be a step towards mass adoption. And it is true that certain use cases do require custodians, which is fine so long as users are aware of the trade-offs.
But it cannot be overstated that by holding your Bitcoin with trusted third parties, “the main benefits are lost.”
Satoshi warns against this in the very first page of the whitepaper.
Meaning, if you’e held your own gold when Executive Order 6102 was issued, you’d have been fine. But if you’d held your gold with a bank, there would be no way to get it back. You’d have to accept the conversion to fiat.
It’s great that the institutions are adopting Bitcoin now, and Saylor deserves credit for leading the way. Institutional adoption of Bitcoin was always going to be a step towards mass adoption. And it is true that certain use cases do require custodians, which is fine so long as users are aware of the trade-offs.
But it cannot be overstated that by holding your Bitcoin with trusted third parties, “the main benefits are lost.”
Satoshi warns against this in the very first page of the whitepaper.
10
