Joe Kelly says the biggest security threat is social engineering, not technical vulnerabilities.
Scammers use urgency and personal data to trigger victims into making mistakes, bypassing technical safeguards.
Multi-signature setups, requiring multiple keys to move funds, defend against the single point of failure of a lost seed phrase.
Kelly notes multi-signature allows a third party to help with recovery without gaining unilateral power to steal funds.
Holding your keys proves technical control but often lacks the documentation required for tax and probate court.
Institutions can provide the formal letterhead that bridges cryptographic ownership with the existing legal system.
Larry Lepard argues self-sovereignty exists on a spectrum between total privacy and working within legal protections.
Lepard cites Executive Order 6102, where the US government seized gold directly from bank vaults, as a risk of centralized custody.
While Bitcoin is harder to confiscate than gold if held privately, most users need regulated bridges to the broader economy.