Bitcoin: Ownership and Custody - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2024

good afternoon how's everyone in Dubai anyone stuck at the airport okay so I'm very happy to be here to talk about ownership and custody this is a topic that's very near and dear to my heart uh I've been in coin and crypto for 13 years now uh from the very very beginning in the early days I've always cared about ownership and how to store it safely and in fact I I blame this I blame my strong attention to ownership and custody for not buying Bitcoin in the very early years because for a first year or two I couldn't figure out how to store Bitcoin safely and I delayed my purchase and this cost me dearly that's why I still have to come here and give speeches otherwise I'll be retired On My Own Private Island somewhere okay let's get started so we're going to press it oh sorry we're going to go back okay here we go so who owns Bitcoin who owns Bitcoin here all of you all yeah a lot of people more than half more than three quarters um the question is do you truly own your Bitcoin and the importance here is you only truly own your Bitcoin if you have customer over it right if you have an account at some custodial exchange then you may not truly own your Bitcoin you just have an account relationship with them okay so what is ownership ownership is actually very important and this topic is actually often missed or often overlooked money started with physical ownership what I mean by that is think of the money today and think of the money in the old days coin and paper notes it's all about physical tangible ownership in the very early days value is in physical Goods okay whether it's a Commodities whether it's gold whether it's a Furniture you own right or whether it's the herds of animals and livestocks it's always physical good that's what true value is okay however today money is no longer physically tied but rather what we call tital ownership ship meaning you are rich you have assets because those assets are in your name they're titled to you and this is a very important distinction okay Fiat money the money we have in our bank accounts the money we have on our ATM cards it's actually title ownership because money is tied to Identity that's why the concept of kyc is so important because Banks and institutions want to verify your identity well what are the problems and risks with identity-based title ownership it turns out there's a lot of problems okay first of all when you relinquish control of your money to Banks the big question we've always asked ourselves for the last 10 years and more is does the bank really have your money I remember when I got into Bitcoin in 2011 and 2013 there was a banking crisis in Cypress this is like 12 years ago okay and people running into the ATMs and sure enough 12 years later the same thing happened again last year with Silicon Valley Bank Signature Bank in New York credit sweet banking crisis because banks no no longer have the money as much as they owe their customers okay and of course uh the other issue is can you get your money out in time will there be a run on the bank there were very WR lines in front of the banks last year when they had the Silicon Valley banking crisis uh and this is not trust me this is not the last time it may not happen in the next few years but certainly In Our Lifetime this is not the last time we'll have these banking crisis okay when identity is involved well think about it think about why oops think about why you had to go to the ATM to get your money it's because you don't have control over it so it turns out you have to prove you who you are are by these debit cards ID cards identity okay so when identity is involved whenever you have to give your name when your account is in your name whether it's a driver license passport or national identity card whether it's bank money or whether it's your stocks in a stock brokerage account or even your house is titled to your name even your cars and motorcycles are titled through your name when someone when identity is involved it turns out someone else is always always in control because someone is the judge of who you are whether you are who you are and that's why there's a concept of identity theft okay so what about cash cash is a solution people love cash people live in a cash Society some of us um we we want to spend cash and hold cash because cash preserves anonymity it also gives us physical control of our money and how we can spend it no one can stop us from spending cash however the flaw with cash cash is not the control of the physical pieces of paper but rather the control over the value with cash you don't control the value of the money that's a huge problem right these are four examples of real world currencies in populist countries where the money has value has gone to nothing right whether it's the early deut Mark before World War II whether it's Argentina Bolivar whether it's a Zimbabwe money from the last two decades in fact Zimbabwe now issued a new Zimbabwe dollar that's gold back you guys heard about this this is just in the last last few weeks they issued a new Zimbabwe dollar supposed we go back they're supposed to control the amount of inflation in the printing we will see if they can succeed so whenever you put the power of the money printing in the hands of the central government in the hands of the Central Bank you are trusting that they will not overprint and historically speaking all Fiat money value has gone to zero and of course India they also recent you know this is like 5 years ago 10 years ago they changed and banned uh the 500 and the 1,000 rupee note right so they can always recall the old money so that's the issue you don't control the value now for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency do you control it that's a real question and the better you control your digital cryptocurrency the better it is for you okay and this is the most important part so I've dedicated I started this new company called ballet uh this is my second startup and I've dedicated to to this okay so exchange platform so the alternative is to leave your money on exchanges I know there are a lot of exchanges out here how many of you work for an exchange or custodial platform yes a few of you the rest of you busy keeping other people's money okay so the rest of the exchange folks are all out there trying to get more people to put money on their platforms right now exchange platforms can get hacked okay um not only can the platform get hacked also your account can get hacked this is the scariest thing okay even with very reputable exchanges with very tight security the reality is your individual login account can get hacked and your account can be drained to zero and there's nothing you can do about it they will exchange will not pay you back okay so so think about this so you when you put your money on Exchange you're taking two risks risk number one is the platform can get hacked it can go bankrupt like we've seen with FTX and so on or your account get can get hacked and there's many many people thousands and millions of people out there where your account got hacked okay and number three is the platform itself can due to bad business it can go it become insolvent this is a third risk okay mismanagement of funds right making poor investment decisions the platform can go bankrupt and we've seen a lot of that right uh do I need to mention examples probably not there's too many examples okay so critical lesson self- custody your Bitcoin self- custody your crypto I think it's good for everyone and the question is do you all know how to self- custody so that's traditionally that's been the hardest thing right there's so many ways to store your Bitcoins we're talking about exchanges uh fental platform versus self- custody we're talk about hot wallets versus cold cold storage and this is a very very typical cold storage device how many of you recognize this how many of you use this device very clean very simple plug it in punch some keys right it works we know the phrase complexity is the evil of safety so the question is is your solution simple enough and safe enough to use right it seems pretty simple and safe but in reality this is only part of the picture if you zoom out and look at the full picture a typical person's Hardware wallet setup looks something like this it's a complete mess people have recovery seed words you have to write it down by pencil and ink right you have to you have to update your firmware for the card right you you have to figure out where to store your recovery seed phrases there are people I know who store the recovery cards right in the same box as where they store their Hardware wallet and that that's true story a lot of people do that then what's the point right so there's so much in terms of knowledge that's needed to do operational security properly okay so too complex and this is a complete failure what's the solution safe and easy Cold Storage so for the last five years I've been I've launched a company called ballet we provide a very safe and easy to use cold storage card it's a metal card completely non- electronic it is is ready to use out of the box there's no setup okay if you want to learn the technical details come to our Bruth on the corner over there I think it's Bruth number M25 very very easy multiple currency supports Bitcoin ethereum Litecoin Dogecoin zcash you know a thousand different coins all the erc20 tokens a thousand different coins and nfts Bitcoin ordinal supports everything okay this is the first product of its kind uh I'm really proud that we have this okay recently down across a milestone over $600 million stored on these cards worldwide okay in all currencies okay the second thing we have uh which we cannot sell here unfortunately in Dubai is this physical Bitcoin so this one uh we you've heard of cassa Bitcoin some of you have heard of that uh they stopped making them you know over 10 years ago but for the first time in a long time ballet has now launched a line of physical Bitcoins this is 1 M Bitcoin 0.1 BTC so today it would have about $65 us value of Bitcoin in here you buy these from us directly and then it's got Bitcoin you can you can collect them you can store it huddle it put in your safe give it to your children give it to your grandchildren it's a lot of fun okay and then use our app ballet crypto app to uh manage all your cards and so on the most important thing is our ecosystem um is really safe and easy for everyone self- custody okay we don't want to custody your coins we really do not want to do that it is too much of a responsibility we want you to hold your own coins this is our philosophy the other thing is because we recognize that ballet as a company may not be here forever I've built in redundancy from the get-go this is an open standard it's called bip38 open standard which means that even without my company even without our app you will always have access to your coins because the bip 38 open industry standard the standard has been around for more than 10 years well tested uh it's very secure never never been hacked and uh that's why I'm really proud of this line of product okay so basically what you don't want to do is for most people okay if you are if you are the Geeks and the Nerds how many Geeks and nerds in the audience like myself we have a few okay so the G for the old who raise your hand this is that this solution is for you okay I I don't mind admitting I I use a device like this myself and um hopefully it's not as complicated and messy as this but if you use a traditional cold storage device it's it's a mess it looks like this okay but for the rest of the 99% I highly recommend for you to look into a more simple cold storage device where you can self custody your coins without having to resort to leaving your coins on an exchange on a custodial platform okay so only a four few seconds left want true safety keep it simple keep in it safe self- custody physical bear asset durable longlasting no electronics no firmware upgrades no cables um and then you prevent user mistakes okay I have a few seconds left so Bitcoin is the future of money okay with this future of money it's about self- custody it's about not having to always always rely on custodial uh storage okay all right so I'm also the author of this book promise of Bitcoin you can buy this on Amazon in both hard cover and also an audiobook format okay thank you very much for your time today