Oddbean

I think there's a lot at play here with the saylor dynamic. on one hand bitcoiner love to cheer on a champion for the cause. on the other, this same champion doesn't do the one thing that everyone recommends doing. Self custody your coins. And now he's actively doubting that too. people say this time is different, ETFs are regulated! blackrock is regulated! MSTR is regulated! coinbase is regulated! And yet, all the same things were said of FTX. The lesson of FTX, QuadrigaCX, Celsius, MTGOX and others is that Bitcoin is allergic to trusted third parties. Indeed, it was designed to remove them. It may not happen tomorrow, but a rug pull of these centralized third party honey pots could happen at anytime. And they have happened. Just because the honeypots are now larger and more "institutional" doesn't reduce that risk, or the risk of rehypothecation, which is dilutive to the Bitcoin float ie inflationary ie price suppressing. OK. so the above dynamic sucks. Saylor besmirching self custody while simultaneously promoting MSTR tokens sucks. "bitcoin" Influencers like adam back, samson mow and others promoting MSTR sucks. Self custody is THE mechanism that drives Bitcoin's price discovery mechanism. It's a glacial slow moving bank-walk, one sat at a time, away from third party custodians. Who inevitably create derivative bitcoin tokens that inflate the supply of Bitcoin mechanically, but not technically. This dilutes Bitcoin's price discovery mechanism. Which is why it's important to self custody. Not just for verifying you actually own Bitcoin, but to call out the Keynesians in this space trying to play central banker. The saylor worship needs to stop, the "oh but my 401K" and "but in some situations" coping needs to stop. Saylor doesn't even know if MSTR has Bitcoin. he thinks they do, but they can't verify it without taking custody, which they don't (they give their Bitcoin to coinbase & fidelity who owns it for them.) "oh but ALLCAPS! MSTR can't self custody because they're a corporation!" then how the hell is coinbase doing it? they're a corporation too. "oh, but ALLCAPS! MSTR has a fiduciary duty to it's share holders!" That's what I'm saying! the rug pull risk is far greater with a third party custodian, evidently and historically. MSTR can reduce that risk by self custodying MSTR coins among it's board members, CTO & CFO in a collaborative multisig. And as for you shareholders of MSTR token, I ask you, if saylor can't even verify that they own their coins, how can you? On another note, do you really think you have any say in how those coins are handled, given saylor is the majority shareholder? He could dilute you shares tomorrow and rug pull you legally and you'd have no recourse.