To be clear, custodial solutions will always have a place in cryptocurrency. If there's one thing that the entire cryptocurrency space has learned over the past 16 years, from bitcoin to terrible memecoin, it's Cryptocurrencies Do Not Scale. No matter how high you push your block size, how often you claim to have "solved scalability," or how your system’s transactions will always be free, there will be fees, and those fees will dictate how "noncustodial" something is.

If we care about the principles of bitcoin, we must bridge that gap. Mutiny started down a path (before their pivot away from bitcoin wallet software) that seemed compelling. Wallet software should seamlessly transition between the best option at each balance. For the class of bitcoiners with a balance too small to reasonably provide a self-custodial option, store their funds in one of the custodial solutions bitcoiners have spent so much energy building lately. For those with considerably more wealth in bitcoin, where a noncustodial option makes sense, migrate their balance to something non-custodial. Given the options today, Lightning, directly on a bitcoiner's device, is the only viable option here and ultimately must play an important role in any wallet wishing to consider itself a standard-bearer for Bitcoin.