I found myself with a few unresolved questions though. here's one: the distinction between technically-present non-custody and **effective** non-custody. The piece mentioned that a user's technical competence is _irrelevant_ to the definition of custody. "They can get a friend to help". I mostly agree, but I can imagine a situation where a user who has "technically-present non-custody" is permanently precluded from their unilateral exit because the technical knowledge, hardware required, time investment needed, etc. far outstrips their own resources and their entire social network's ability.
I'm stuck on this because it doesn't break the definition of non-custody in the framework presented here, but it renders the non-custody property effectively moot.
I'm happy to just accept that this is how reality works; some properties may be technically present but effectively out of reach, and that's still a better world than one where the properties don't exist at all. But I have to also acknowledge that every superstructure built to provide access to the technical property is itself a liability on the _effective_ access to the property and there is no way around this in a world of limited resources and lumpy distribution of agency/leverage.
...I thought I was going to keep this short, but I already failed at that and might as well mention another problem I had: "as long as you have all the data you need locally on your device, you have non-custody". Again I technically agree, but it introduces another point of custody: your device's custodian, if one exists. Are you using a mobile OS that has a way to censor what you're able to access on it? If so, the "local data" doesn't have perfect unilateral exit/exfiltrarion.
This is a different flavor of the "superstructure of access" I mentioned above. Its tradeoffs all the way down, since the underlying property in question (UTXOs) is dependent on a complex system of interrelated technologies.
Personally I think the tradeoffs are worth it and that a proper Bitcoin ecosystem will continue to build systems that chase those custodial points down into the smallest possible boxes. But I am aware that when FUDders make the "it's software, it can have bugs, pieces of the system can be censored!" argument, they might have a version of the above in their head. Imagine the extreme case: access to semiconductors falls to 0. In that world, the FUDders probably-poorly-made point about your non-custody being dependent winds up proving true.
...and before long you end up in a discussion about how your allocation between bitcoin, gold, guns, seeds and potable water reflects your priors on what you think the world will look like in the future. And that's really the best you can do, I think.
https://fountain.fm/episode/P7oyiEpOB6QUieDO0eYh
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