tl;dr: the market for self-sovereign security is growing. Why that’s a good thing

I probably received 10 forwards and another 10 offline mentions of the story from the NY Times about the guy who was on the verge of losing $200mm worth of BTC.

The idea that “there’s no one to call” if you lose the password is a tough one for many people to get their heads around.

But, as they say, that’s a feature, not a bug.

The whole point of a decentralized economic system is to give individuals a full range of choice about how they wish to secure their funds.

On the one hand, they can leave it with a custodian such as Coinbase or Gemini. That removes the risk of “no one to call,” but as another saying goes, “not your keys, not your crypto.”

This is why, when one of the earliest crypto exchanges, Mt. Gox was hacked (or any of the subsequent exchange hacks since then), there’s no way to recover the funds…because the keys were compromised.

Then, there’s the middle of the spectrum with software wallets such as Edge or Argent.

A bit further down are the hardware wallets such as Trezor, Ledger, and ColdCard.

But that’s not it.

An app like Casa is on the phone, but has a multi-signature component which allows you to integrate the security of a hardware wallet.

There are paper wallets, crypto steel backups, and many, many more.

And that’s the point.

In our current financial model, you can keep all of your money with a third party custodian or in your mattress.

In a crypto world, you can mix and match anywhere and everywhere along the spectrum, accepting more custodian risk, more personal risk, or some combination thereof.

It’s a free market for security. More choice, more options, more needs met.

I think that’s a good thing.