Self-custody of Bitcoin is fraught with complexities and risks that ordinary people find difficult to cope with. The author calls for the development of more intuitive and secure solutions to achieve true decentralization. This article is sourced from a piece written by Bitcoin Magazine and compiled and translated by BlockTempo. (Background: CryptoQuant analyst: Bitcoin returns to the $115,000 level, futures cool down! Waiting for the Federal Reserve's speech on Friday.) (Context: U.S. policy nuclear proposal: Suggests Trump increase Bitcoin holdings with tariffs from other countries to ensure America is great.) Just write down 12 words, anyone can do it. This may be the most frequently heard phrase when discussing the practice of self-custody in Bitcoin. Just storing a few words is very simple, anyone can do it, right? All the criticisms and reasons people give for not self-custodying are just fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). All this FUD can be dispelled with that one sentence, right? Withdraw your tokens from Coinbase now! Wrong. This erroneous framework and argumentative style is no different from saying, "Shooting is just aiming and pulling the trigger; anyone can do it." Safely shooting is far more than just aiming and pulling the trigger. First, you need to truly understand what a gun is and the consequences that using it can bring. Those irreversible consequences. A gun is not a toy; it is a tool that can kill. Without truly realizing this, people may become careless when handling firearms, and once harm is caused to others due to negligence, there is no recovery button. Time cannot be reversed, and the dead cannot be resurrected. Just like Bitcoin transactions cannot be undone. Writing down 12 words does not solve all problems. First, users must truly "understand" what those 12 words are. They must deeply realize that those 12 words "are their money." To protect their Bitcoin, these words "must" be kept secret and safe. Simply writing down these 12 words does not equate to having that awareness. Next, they need to physically protect that backup of 12 words, ensuring its confidentiality. The prerequisites before self-custodying Bitcoin. Can they really store the mnemonic phrase safely anywhere? Do they have a safe? Do they live with others? Do they need to consider their spouse or children? Does living with them mean that others will enter their residence? Are they trustworthy? What about scammers, hackers, and social engineers? Are users vigilant enough to discern if they are interacting with these individuals? Do they understand where malicious actors might try to obtain their private keys? Do they know how to verify software downloaded from outside the App Store? Do they even have enough insight to notice signs of fraud and malice in the software within the App Store? What about long-term compatibility? Is there any non-standard design in a specific device or software? Odd derivation paths? Customized backup solutions? Do users understand these issues and can they cope with them, or will this ultimately force them to trust third parties, who might defraud them, to handle their wallets or backups in ten years due to incompatibility with modern solutions? Not to mention hardware devices. Can an ordinary person verify the integrity of a device? No, let’s step back; can most people even evaluate the architecture of a hardware device and the reputation of the producing company? I say this not to scare people away from self-custody, nor out of a defeatist mentality. This is a realistic reminder: "In the long run, Bitcoin needs people to self-custody their funds and use them directly to maintain decentralization." If this is a frightening, dangerous, and unfamiliar experience, people will not do it. The reasoning is simple. Constantly telling people not to mess up will not magically make them stop messing up. Constantly telling people not to be afraid and anxious will not magically make them stop being afraid and anxious. Pretending that those technical traps that are trivial for you and me do not exist will not make them disappear for ordinary people. Bitcoin Multisignature We have many tools to address these issues. Multisignature solutions allow for key rotation and may provide assistance in correcting mistakes. Schnorr multisignature schemes further optimize this by reducing additional complexity for users. Both types of multisignature scripts can benefit from other improvements to create privacy. Further reading: How to use a Bitcoin multisignature wallet? Here are 10 tips for beginners. The design of the user interface can play a significant role in combating scammers. The architecture used by different wallets or devices can completely eliminate the attack surface or, if attacks are limited to a single device or software, make them irrelevant. Even today, more than ten years after I first used a Bitcoin multisignature wallet, using multiple independent software to create a multisignature wallet is still unintuitive, troublesome, and sometimes even impossible. If we want people to self-custody on a large scale (which is necessary for Bitcoin itself to maintain true decentralization), these issues need to be resolved. Things need to become truly intuitive. Things need to be truly cross-vendor and software compatible. Users actually need assistance similar to what they are accustomed to with fiat currency services. If these things do not change, if they are not established and refined, if compatibility does not improve, then people will not self-custody their funds. These things need to be experimented with, tested, and refined, ultimately catering to the real needs of ordinary people so that they feel safe not only in self-custody but can truly be safe. If they feel unsafe, people will not do it.

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