If I answered this publicly it wouldn't be the best spot anymore :-)
I was serious because I struggle to understand the self-custody approach.
Isn't it just foolish to think that one's wardrobe or one's mom's wardrobe is safer than a regular bank? And I don't mean just safe from burglars, but from "the state". Local authorities can walk into my house as easily as they can walk into a bank, and surely they'll get the seed. Transferring the trust to a third party seems way more secure and efficient than trying to handle any sort of wealth by myself.
What am I missing? I'd love to join the self-custody train, but I don't see any option for how to do it.
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Here's a sample setup without Trezor. Learn your 12 words by heart. Boot a diskless machine from a Tails CD (not USB). Tails has Electrum out of the box but you have to enter your 12 words every time you boot. Power off the machine if anything moves around your door.
This does not have quite the security of Trezor though. Check out Glacier Protocol for ways to crank up paranoia.
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You can protect your Trezor with a PIN and a passphrase. Even if local authorities walk into your house and confiscate the device, they will not be able to confiscate the coins.
And for the backups - if you are not satisfied with a single recovery seed, you can use Shamir Backup where you split the recovery seeds into several pieces that can be hidden in several geographically separated locations. When your device is confiscated, you can recover your funds by going through these locations. (Shamir is m-of-n where you control the value of m and n).
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