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329 sats \ 8 replies \ @Scoresby OP 20h \ parent \ on: How do you hedge self-custody? bitcoin
I'm skeptical of places like Unchained and Casa because I worry that they're honeypots. I'm pretty sure in both cases you have to give them your xpub or your descriptor.
If you rely on them for "collaborative custody" I worry that you give them more power over your stack than you realize. In the case where you share one key with them and one with a "third party," there's really not much control over collusion. In the case where they only have one key and you have two, I think you might be better off just giving the one key to a friend. Sharing custody is just really difficult.
Why not roll your own multisig? there's a number of good options for doing it these days (Liana, Nunchuk, Keeper, Bitcoin Safe, Bitcoin Core, Sparrow...)
I don't want to reveal too much about my setup, but I already rolled my own multisig with Sparrow+TailsOS.
I just want them to hold another backup without any xpubs. Since I always need two keys anyway, I designated one key as the backup key with many copies, and none of these copies have xpubs. This way, I can give these copies to family and friends, and they can't look up my balance with them. They also can't collude against me, because they all have the same key.
I'm pretty sure in both cases you have to give them your xpub or your descriptor.
So yeah, that would be a deal breaker for me
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ah...the situation that you lose one of your keys, but still have the other and your xpub...so you could rely on a third-party held backup key that doesn't have a descriptor with it.
I wonder if Unchained would offer this service? I don't think at the moment they do (I've done no research to back this claim up). If they don't offer this service, it might be cool if someone did.
Backing up descriptors becomes pretty important in this scenario though, because without a descriptor, the extra key is useless. In the scenario where you lose one of your main keys and all you have left is your 2nd main key (and descriptor) and your backup key at the third party, your wallet is more or less a 1 of 1, though isn't it? Unless there are also a number of descriptor backups in alternate locations.
This is the kind of stuff that makes my mind fuzzy. It's very easy to paint yourself into a corner without realizing it.
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Unless there are also a number of descriptor backups in alternate locations.
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But in any case, if I don't have two keys, my descriptors are also useless, and one key is guaranteed to have the descriptors
This is the kind of stuff that makes my mind fuzzy. It's very easy to paint yourself into a corner without realizing it.
Yeah, but I'm actually quite happy with my current setup. It's my second iteration. In my first iteration, I had one of the three keys in my brain, but then I started to wonder what if I memorized it so hard I start saying it in my sleep? lol
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Very very early in my bitcoin experience, I experimented with memorized elements. I quickly abandoned this. There's just no good reason do memorize things (unless you're fleeing across an international border...that might make sense).
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I use Casa for collaborative custody because I don't trust myself
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So much for p2p payments protocol revolution then - It is now just a speculative commodity plaything custodied by rentseeking third parties.
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