Hacker News Reader

Perhaps people should get off these me-too-coin casinos and just self-custody their bitcoin if they are serious about saving.

View on HN

The amount of friends I have with non-trivial amounts of bitcoin they are unable to access anymore due to “self custody” says this isn’t always the best idea either.

I don’t know what a good idea is when it comes to storing your bitcoin. But if you’re gonna go with one of the major players, at this time, Coinbase seems relatively safest.

Odds are they lost access because they didn't treat it as something really valuable. A good idea is to learn how to safely store and backup your keys (plural). If you allow others to hold your bitcoin, particularly a large one that could easily be nationalized, you're playing with fire.

I've got a couple thousand bitcoin in self-custody, mined out of curiosity a couple days after Satoshi's initial announcement.

The key is of course lost, but not to worry; I printed it out on a sheet of paper, which I buried in the garden of my dead grandmother's home. It's underneath the chicken coop. Anyone want to go digging?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com