As long as there is a bitcoin, the autocompody-the ability to transition and retain its wealth without the need for a third party intermediary as a bank or another financial institution-has been central to the offer.
For some, self -custody is a conviction firmly held in the right to “be your bank”. For others, it is a practical step undertaken to safeguard a precious resource that can be-and has been expensive to exchange hacks, bad management or collapse in FTX style. A bit like keeping a safe full of money at home, if there is a race on the “bank”, your coins are immune.
And while the “Come” of Auto -Custia has changed the forms throughout the history of Bitcoin, the standard of the factual industry for the recovery: the seed phrase – often leaves users to a loss (sometimes huge) when things go badly.
A distinction without difference
At the beginning of Bitcoin there was only self -custody. At risk of excessive elimination, self -custody meant managing the private key material, a series of 64 random characters that gave anyone who maintained access to the underlying bitcoin. The tools for the management of private keys were quite limited: memorize or write them and keep them in a safe place. But put only one character out of place and Oops, your key doesn’t work. Even if you do everything well, there is still the real possibility of loss: theft, accident or disaster.
Seeds of seeds destined to make private keys easier to manage. Instead of guaranteeing long strings of random characters, the proposal to improve Bitcoin-39 (BIP-39) lets a handful of simple words will lean essentially for a private key. As long as you have the right sequence of words, you will always get the same private key and you will have access to your funds.
While it is definitely easier to face some common words than a long series of characters, the risk of loss through error, theft or human disaster is essentially the same with a sentence of seeds as never with private keys. For anyone who has lost a backup when he really needs it, it is a distinction without a difference. When it disappeared, it disappeared and cannot be resumed.
Go beyond the safety of the stone age for the spatial age resources
Somewhere along the way, the idea of self -awareness has become synonymous with seed phrases in the minds of many people. But self -custody is not an object; It is a capacity. And seeds are much more responsibility than capacity are.
Of course, a seed phrase allows you to regenerate the keys or easily move your funds to another wallet, but allow anyone who also briefly see it. It is a nuclear option, one that guarantees anyone who holds him access to his entire useful load. That’s why most of the people who use them are forced to rely on graceful archaic security measures to protect them: bury them, use books, distribute copies and bury those, to leave them on leagues increasingly resistant to heat and so on.
But the idea that the height of safety for digital cash could be anything close to the burial of a can of coffee in the borders of the courtyard on the absurd. This is the safety of the stone age for a spatial age resource. And the idea that the only tool for recovering most people is something that they themselves can easily lose asks: if you can lose it easily, is it also a recovery tool?
Managing a seed phrase could be better than facing the private key material, but it is not yet good, not for safety or safety, not for the user’s experience and, ultimately, for the growth of Bitcoin and the widespread adoption.
The future of money should work as the future of money
Bitcoin himself began as, and is destined to be in electronic cash. In the end it is the software, designed to be used. For too many people, ensuring it has become a source of great anxiety and practical difficulties. There is a better way.
The future of money should seem and function as and in the end be insured as the future of money, not the past of money. It should open new features, inspire confidence, be intuitive and even pleasant to use and you should not lose access to your coins just because you make a clapping error or lose a slip slip.
Hardcore and self-monitoring bitcoiners will also admit: seed phrases are pain. They are a clumsy collapse and have never been designed to be the final game for an apparently digital currency. We should stop treating them as if they were the distinctive feature of self -custody.
This is a post for Max Guise’s guests. The opinions expressed are entirely proper and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.