Why "self custody"

In crypto, self-custody means holding your own keys instead of leaving your assets on an exchange: "not your keys, not your coins." If the exchange freezes withdrawals, gets hacked, or goes bankrupt, custody was the difference between an inconvenience and a loss.

That principle does not stop at coins. Your messages, your code, your DNS queries, your photos, your identity — most of it sits in someone else's custody, governed by their terms of service, their jurisdiction, and their business model. The same question applies: if this third party locked you out tomorrow, what would you lose?

This site uses "self custody" in that broader sense: removing third-party trust dependencies from your digital life where it is practical to do so. Crypto key management is in scope — it is the canonical example of the principle — but it is one topic among many, alongside running your own VPN, hosting your own messaging, and moving your code off centralised platforms.

"Practical" is doing real work in that sentence. Self-hosting everything is a full-time job, and some third parties earn the trust placed in them. The guides here document where the tradeoff was worth it — for one specific setup, honestly, including the costs.