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338 sats \ 10 replies \ @ek 24 Jul \ parent \ on: Scenes from the frontier of Bitcoin Treasury Companies bitcoin
civilization was built on the division of labor, so far people don't consider custody of assets an exception to this rule
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I do, but I also think I should clean my own toilets, take care of my own home, and education my own children (tack a "mostly" on to all of those).
I do think self custody is an exception to the general rule that division of labor makes things better.
I'm not going to be as good a baker as some French guy who's been doing it for generations. I can't make good beer, either. But the closer things get to your person, the more I feel I should try to exert control over them.
Medical stuff sure makes consistency difficult here, but I do also believe that patients should be way, way more involved in their treatment than the US medical system currently allows.
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If you know about self-custody but you make an informed decision in which you deem yourself not competent enough then that's fine - this is a personal decision. I think that we shouldn't aim for everyone to self-custody, or even "mass adoption", as that sounds like something totalitarian. Bitcoin has always been a choice and as Justin said in another branch of this discussion, an incentive. So I think that only bad things can come from a self-custody standard because it's a tradeoff and it's not a one-size-fits-all. What's important is that you can make the tradeoff if you want to, when it helps you.
However, the benefit of holding Bitcoin has thus far also had an NgU element, and it likely will continue until saturation, whatever that may look like. Don't ask me because I honestly don't know so I just ignore it and "we'll see". I don't think however that it will be El Salvador style legal tender everywhere and forced acceptance. I think that would also not be beneficial so read that as hope more than prophecy, but either way, we have the NgU for now, and with that come parasites, because the yield hustle is real.
That doesn't make treasury companies ok. I expect these to just implode and then everyone gets rekt and we get another chance to buy cheap sats. The point is that between us, we can make Bitcoin work. Even if something as ugly as Lopp's BIP goes through and half of our friends are on a different fork than we find ourselves, we can still make it work (though everyone will probably lose some net worth, but whatevs.) Because bottom line, Bitcoin worked before ETFs and Saylor, and it will work after too.
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But this gets at the conversation I was having with @kepford (#1050253) and @justin_shocknet (#1050277) the other day.
If I understood Justin correctly, he sees free banks as the peers that make up the p2p bitcoin network and the trust model largely remains the same (because remains censorship resistant by transcending geography).
Whereas I think kepford sees a needed cultural change to where people do see custody of assets as an exception to the rule.
(hopefully, I've done justice to their respective viewpoints)
How does the trust model for Bitcoin change if the masses don't self-custody?
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I agree with @ek. I'm describing the world as I see it. Not as I want it to be. Most people are lazy and not motivated to care about custody. Tech can't solve that. But their custodians can exchange with peer banks. In that way it is peer to peer. The system is still more secure and open than what we have now. I call that a win, not to mention the supply cap.
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Thanks for the refocus on net-postives. I agree that a world of many independent custodians is better than what we have now.
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This is the reality check I think I often need.
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Yep basically, though it might even be more secure this way than if everyone self-custodied.
A little meat left on the bone aligns the incumbant 5th column against the legacy system.
Bitcoin is an incentive operation first and foremost, the technology is just a means to that end.
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