Custody and reserves
Who holds the assets, who controls the keys and what a reserve statement can show are separate questions. These articles compare exchange custody, self-custody, hot and cold storage, hardware wallets and the limits of reserve evidence.
| Subject |
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| Custodial vs self-custody wallets: an honest trade-off table Platform custody and self-custody fail in completely different ways. Both sets of failure modes, and the three inputs that decide which one fits you. |
| What proof of reserves proves, and what it cannot It confirms two things and structurally cannot reach four others. Reading it as a safety guarantee is the most common mistake made with it. |
| Hot and cold storage are two different questions A platform's internal storage split and your own custody choice are different layers. Conflating them produces conclusions that sound right and are not. |
| What is worth comparing on a hardware wallet Five dimensions worth comparing, and why the recovery column decides more than the supported-coin count that dominates every spec sheet. |
| Crypto exchange insurance funds: four backstops, and what each one pays for SAFU, futures insurance funds, commercial crime cover and pass-through deposit insurance all get called exchange insurance. Binance, Bybit, Coinbase and Kraken's own pages, read 2026-10, say who each one pays and who decides. |