Don't know how many times I'm going to keep sharing this kind of story. I imagine many. Each time will likely be more important than the last.

If you don't own the keys you don't own the asset

This is the latest story of boy meets bank. Boy banks at bank. Bank is dishonest. Bank run happens. Bank losses are nationalized... this time. Other times bank losses are eaten by the depositors. How could that happen? BECAUSE YOU DON'T OWN YOUR MONEY IN THE BANK.

What?

You don't own your money in the bank.

if you don't own the keys. You just have the password then you're granted access. The true owner is the bank. They can remove money from your account whenever they want. What stops them is that it's bad for business. But if business conditions are bad anyway, then why the fuck not. Bend over... they will take your money.

No matter how much you love the state. No matter how much you think fiat is the best. There's going to be cases, and I'd argue it's going to increase, that the banks are insolvent and literally steal money from you. Look at what happened in Cyprus. Anyone with over 100k in the bank had a "haircut" of 40%.

How is that possible? You don't own it. You gave it to the bank. If you owned the keys and the bank did not that would be different, but they have access to your account whenever they want or need it.

Passwords vs Keys

Passwords are easy to memorize, quick to recover, but requires trust in a 3rd party.

Keys are hard to memorize, impossible to recover, and requires you to be responsible for them. The primary benefit though is that YOU actually own the asset. You're not temporarily granted access. You're the only one that can access it.

Hard times

let's just assume there's problems in your area. There are demonstrations everywhere, a fire, a flood, militants, or just shitty bankers. There's a good chance things will go wrong. If you don't have any backup plan that's bad. You should have some crypto on hand, a bug out bag, and a plan if shit hits the fan.

one last time

If you don't own the keys. You don't own the asset. Sorry if that's inconvenient, but it's better to be mildly inconvenienced than completely borked cause the failing bank or company stole yo' shit.