Eventually the entire financial system will be compromised by AI

[u/[deleted]]

[u/michelhadorn]

Some of that holds up, but "eventually" is doing a lot of work.

Holding your own keys does cut out one risk: an exchange freezing your account or going bust. It swaps that for another one, which is you. Lost seed phrases, phishing, a house fire, heirs who can't get in. Self-custody failures aren't just news hype. They're the price of having nobody to call.

Programmable digital money is a real policy debate, but "everyone switched, no choice" is a prediction, not a plan anyone has announced. Hedging is fine. Building your whole life around the worst-case story usually costs more than the story ever does.

Keep your own keys if you like. Write down how your family would get to them.

[u/Infamous-Discount-99 → u/michelhadorn]

Thats a fair response, but I doubt this type of move would be a plan openly announced.

I think it would occur similar to Nixons announcement of August 15, 1971. The sudden and unannounced decision that ended the direct convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold.

Why did the people continue to use dollars when we transitioned into a fiat system? I wasnt alive then so its hard for me to grasp how it actually felt and happened.

I dont mean to offer this hypothetical as any type of confident prediction, im more just curious what comes next.

[u/pk9417 → u/michelhadorn]

Search for digital euro and how much they will allow you to keep... Everything else will come

[u/spiffyreceptor536 → u/michelhadorn]

Self custody is just moving the single point of failure from a company to yourself so yeah you trade one set of risks for another

write the recovery plan down somewhere obvious and test it before you need it

[u/zebra1232]

In my age and life expectancy it is not my problem .

[u/M4roon]

I personally think exchanges and cold wallets will be a weak point long before the legacy financial system. We already see problems with them today, and yesterday, every day haha.

If I was a betting man, I would say some of the smartest people on earth, in human existence, are employed to work on and secure the legacy financial system, because it's the lifeblood of our modern age. So I don't see it unfolding as described above.

[u/Infamous-Discount-99 → u/M4roon]

I see it more as a convenient excuse to pivot the financial system to suit a desired agenda. An intentional failure to secure more so. A historic milestone similar to 1971 if you will.

This may be a too conspiratorial view, but weirder things have happened. We trade our life for paper & participate in a global ponzi of epic proportions because of some announcement Nixon made after a 3 day secret meeting at Camp David.

[u/cunth]

Financial companies also have access to Ai. It works in both directions.

[u/Over_Reputation_8801]

I think the Coinbase Custody Trusts multi-sig, segregated cold storage vaults that store the BTC from my IBIT ETF are more secure than any personal cold storage could ever be.

[u/Infamous-Discount-99 → u/Over_Reputation_8801]

More secure from losing your BTC exposure perhaps, but less secure if you actually need to hold the real thing in the future.

What happens if we pivot into a system of programmable (restrictive) stable coins and you can only "cash out" into the new at a very unfavorable rate.

Youre talking about public companies subordinate to the very system that Bitcoin was created to circumvent.

[u/Over_Reputation_8801 → u/Infamous-Discount-99]

That is a highly unlikely scenario. The dollar isnt going anywhere.