Thread

I wouldn't call losing your key a cost; I'd call that a risk, and taking it to be a matter of responsibility. The idea that the risk isn't there when you don't control your own keys is sticking your head in the sand, as we've seen over (MtGox) and over (FTX) and over (etc etc etc) again. As for the costs of managing your utxo's, sure, they're there. Banks used to charge for checking accounts too, but these days you pay through inflation rather than overt fees for their services. Meanwhile, if you're actually going to spend your funds from an exchange, you're going to have those fees in the first place, unless maybe the exchange allows you to send to an internal customer without them (or use lightning). If you hold your own physical fiat cash, you have costs too -- wallets aren't free, nor are locks on your door, and if you want to spend physical cash you need to physically move it to where it is being accepted. Meanwhile, if you put it in the banking system, you're giving them more access to funds to extend loans off of -- not all inflation takes place at the central bank level; arguably most of it happens at the smaller regional bank level where loans are originated, and they absolutely do rely on deposits in order to make those loans. Admittedly that cost of inflation gets pooled so it's easy enough to ignore, but it's still there. As for the significance of the costs of handling your own UTXO's; given that the on chain fees are based on weight, I think I'd point out that if it's costing you that much, you're probably using on chain payments for smaller things than might make sense. That's what lightning is for. Spin up LND, and if you really want to offset things, make it a routing node. Or make markets with Joinmarket, and collect fees that way (though admittedly as the price goes higher this is getting harder and harder for most people to do).