Custody is the safekeeping of assets on someone's behalf. When your crypto sits on an exchange, the exchange is the custodian: it controls the keys, and your balance is its record of what it owes you. When you hold your own keys, you are the custodian.
Neither is automatically safer. A custodian offers recovery, support and a security team, but you depend on it staying solvent and honest. Self-custody removes that dependency and hands you the whole job - backups, device security, never losing the seed phrase. Many people end up using both, split by purpose: trading funds where they trade, long-term holdings where they hold the keys.
💬 How do you split your coins between an exchange and your own wallet?
Binance Academy covers this in more depth: https://www.binance.com/en/academy/glossary/custody
Next lesson: Trustless doesn't mean careless
Trading crypto from Dubai since 2019.
#Custody #SelfCustody #CryptoSafety