What I had meant (but in re-reading what I wrote, I see how i was unclear) was that you can buy from swan and withdraw the btc immediately.  If there is a custodian there holding them for those 90 seconds, or whatever, then I guess yes, a custodian does temporarily hold your btc funds.

I suppose I also didn't consider the USD held, waiting for the deposit payment to clear, as funds held by a custodian, but I presume that in another instance of exposure to a custodian, with Swan, that you cannot avoid.

cryptocoin

bitcoin

Ripple acquires Fortress, used by Swan, run by former Prime Trust CEO

DiracDelta

At the moment, you do need a custodian with Swan. Some people that are coming from the traditional financial space also seem to actually want a custodian because it is more similar to how they do things now. We all know that the best custody is self-custody but for the legacy people that might not work for them. Hopefully we can stack enough sats before those rich people and corporations learn about bitcoin and drive the price up.