Self-custody advice online is usually either "not your keys, not your coins" shouted at you, or a 40-minute video that assumes you already know what a passphrase is. The practical middle ground rarely gets discussed.
The real trade-offs I see:
**Exchange:** convenient, recoverable if you lose access, but you're trusting a company. Every cycle has produced at least one exchange that people assumed was safe.
**Hardware wallet:** you control the keys, but you also control the failure modes. Lost seed phrase, damaged device, a house fire, or a family member who has no idea what to do if something happens to you.
**Multisig:** stronger, but the setup complexity means most people configure it wrong or abandon it.
What I've settled on is a split — a smaller amount somewhere liquid, the rest in cold storage with the seed backed up in two physical locations. Not elegant, but it survives the mistakes I'm most likely to make.
**Questions:**
- What's your actual setup, and what made you choose it?
- How do you back up a seed phrase in a way that survives fire, water, and time?
- For those using multisig: was it worth the complexity?
- What's your plan for inheritance — does anyone else know how to access it?
Practical answers help more than ideology here.