Stop pretending that self-custody of Bitcoin is easy; it is not.

Bitcoin’s self-custody is fraught with complexities and risks that ordinary people struggle with, and the authors call for more intuitive and secure solutions to achieve true decentralization. This article is derived from an article written by Bitcoin Magazine, organized and compiled by the dynamic area. (Synopsis: CryptoQuant analyst: Bitcoin returns to the 115,000 level, futures cool! Waiting for the Fed to speak on Friday) (Background supplement: U.S. policy nuclear bomb proposal: Suggest that Trump take tariffs from other countries to “increase his position in bitcoin” to ensure that USA is great) Just write 12 words, anyone can do it. When discussing Bitcoin (Bitcoin) self-custody practices, this is probably the most commonly heard phrase in this ecosystem. Just keeping some words, it’s so simple that anyone can do it, right? All the criticism and reasons people give why they shouldn’t be self-hosted are (FUD) fear, uncertainty, and skepticism. The FUD of all this can be resolved with that phrase, right? Withdraw your tokens from Coinbase now! Wrong The framework and argument of this fallacy is no different from the statement that “shooting is just aiming and pulling the trigger, and anyone can do it.” Shooting safely is much more than just aiming and pulling the trigger. First of all, you need to really understand what a gun is and the possible consequences of using it. Those irreparable consequences. A gun is not a toy, it is a tool that can kill. Without a real awareness of this, people may be careless in operating firearms, and once they inadvertently cause harm to others, there is no recovery button. Time cannot be turned back, and the dead cannot be brought back to life. Just like Bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed. Writing down 12 words doesn’t solve everything. First, the user must really “understand” what those 12 words are. They must deeply understand that those 12 words “are their money.” To protect their Bitcoin, these words “must” be kept secret and secure. Just writing these 12 words is not the same as having this recognition. Then, they needed to physically protect the 12-word backup to ensure its confidentiality. The premise of keeping Bitcoin by themselves Can they really store their mnemonics safely? Do they have safes? Do they live with other people? Is there a spouse or children to consider? Does living with them mean that someone else will come into your residence? Are they trustworthy? What about scammers, hackers, and social engineers? Are users alert enough to tell that they are interacting with these people? Do they understand the boundaries of malicious actors trying to gain access to their private keys? Do they know how to verify software downloaded from outside the App Store? Are they even observant enough to detect signs of fraud and malice in the App Store software? What about long-term compatibility? Are there any non-standard designs for a particular device or software? Strange derivation path? Customized backup solutions? Are users aware of these issues and can deal with them, or will this eventually force them to trust a third party who might scam them to deal with it ten years from now because wallets or backups are not compatible with modern solutions? And that’s not even talking about hardware devices. Can the average person verify the integrity of the device? No, let’s take a step back, can most people even assess the architecture of a hardware device and the credibility of the production company? I don’t say this to scare people away from self-hosting, nor out of defeatism. This is a realistic reminder. “In the long run, Bitcoin requires people to self-custody their funds and use them directly to maintain decentralization.” If it’s a scary, dangerous, and unfamiliar experience, people won’t do it. It’s simple. Constantly telling people not to mess up won’t magically stop them from messing up. Constantly telling people not to be afraid and anxious won’t magically stop them from being afraid and anxious. Pretending that those technological traps that are insignificant to you and me does not exist will not make them disappear for ordinary people. Bitcoin Multisig We have a lot of tools to deal with these issues. Multisig schemes allow keys to be rotated and may provide assistance to fix errors. Schnorr’s multisig solution further optimizes this, reducing additional complexity for users. Both of these multisig scripts can benefit from other improvements to create privacy. Extended reading: How to use Bitcoin multisig wallet? Top 10 tips for getting started with tidying up the user interface The way the user interface is designed can go a long way in dealing with scammers. The architecture used by different wallets or devices can eliminate the attack surface altogether, or make it irrelevant if the attack is limited to a single device or software. Today, a decade or more after I first used a Bitcoin multisig wallet, using multiple independent software to create a multisig wallet is “still” unintuitive, cumbersome, and sometimes impossible. These issues need to be addressed if we want people to self-custody at scale (which is necessary for Bitcoin itself to maintain true decentralization). Things need to be really intuitive. Things need to be truly cross-vendor and software compatible. Users actually need some assistance similar to what they are used to with fiat money services. If these things don’t change, if they’re not built and perfected, if compatibility doesn’t improve, then people just aren’t going to self-custody their money. These things need to be experimented, tested, and perfected, and ultimately cater to the actual needs of ordinary people to not only feel safe when self-hosting, but truly safe. If they don’t feel safe, people won’t do it. Related reports Listed medical company KindlyMD completed $200 million in convertible bonds: will be used to increase positions in bitcoin, the stock price does not rise but falls below $100,000 for 100 days but no one cares, why is there less retail investors in this round of bitcoin bull market? MicroStrategy Strategy has issued $6 billion in perpetual special shares to raise funds to buy bitcoin “Stop pretending that bitcoin self-custody is simple, it’s not” This article was first published in BlockTempo’s “Dynamic Trend - The Most Influential Blockchain News Media”.