Self custody is practical for nonexperts

Self-custody is a practical default for ordinary holders, not just for technical users: the tools and practices available are adequate for someone without specialist knowledge to hold their own keys safely.

For (strongest version as argued): The security model is different in kind, not merely in degree, and the difference favours the user. A centralized custodian depends on access control and on vetting to keep bad actors out, which means its customers inherit every failure of that vetting. Bitcoin's security rests on proof-of-work rather than on access control, so the network can be open and the traffic needs no encryption. A transaction authorises a specific value to a specific recipient and cannot be forged or modified — unlike a card payment, which carries the user's private identifier and therefore forces the whole payment network to be defended end-to-end against eavesdroppers and intermediaries. The holder also gets a definite root of trust: a correctly validated blockchain starts from the genesis block and builds a chain of trust up to the current block, so correctness is something the user can verify rather than something they must be told.

Against (strongest version as argued): The same chapter concludes against the claim. Its closing position is that bitcoin is a new, unprecedented and complex technology and that the ecosystem needs security tools and practices that are easier for nonexperts to use — which is a statement that the present ones are not. The structural argument establishes that self-custody is sound in principle; it does not establish that a nonexpert can execute it. The chapter's practical guidance is a list of open problems, not solved ones: physical storage, hardware wallets, balancing risk, diversifying risk, multisig governance, survivability. Each is a decision the custodian used to make. Pushing responsibility and control to the user is a transfer of risk, and calling that transfer an improvement is a separate claim requiring evidence about how users actually fare — which this source does not offer.

Nuance: The proposition splits into a design question and an operational one, and they have different answers here. Is the trust model better? The source argues yes, structurally. Can a nonexpert operate it safely with what exists? The source's own conclusion says not yet. Debaters routinely prove the first and treat the second as settled. Note also what this corpus cannot currently supply for either side: it holds no entries on custodial failure history, proof-of-reserves, or rehypothecation, so the comparative case against institutional custody cannot be adjudicated here at all — the gap is recorded rather than papered over. This entry rests on one owner-research file with no external corroboration and has not been cross-checked against a primary source — it caps at CONTESTED for that reason (corpus/INGEST_PLAYBOOK.md).

Common misstatements: "Not your keys, not your coins — so self-custody is obviously correct for everyone" (the slogan states a property-rights fact and is silent on operational capacity, which is the actual dispute). "The technology is mature enough now" (an empirical claim; the source cited here concludes the opposite, and nothing in this corpus currently settles it either way). "Custodians are strictly more dangerous" (this corpus holds no entries on custodial failures, so that comparison is not supported here — see the nuance above).