Keeping Coins Safe: Custody & Key Management

In normal markets your broker holds your assets and a regulator backstops the broker. In crypto, you can hold your own assets directly — and that freedom is also the largest, least-discussed risk you carry. The maxim is "not your keys, not your coins." The corollary matters more for an active trader: your keys, your single point of failure. You can have a flawless edge and still lose everything to one lost backup, one phishing signature, or one collapsed exchange. Custody — how your coins are held and how the keys that control them are protected — is the risk almost nobody trains for.

A private key is the asset