Custodial or Non-Custodial Wallets: Which is Better?

The Revenue Avenue
3 min readMar 15, 2022

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Bitcoin’s purpose is to give each user complete ownership over their funds. In other words, if a user’s funds are used legitimately, they cannot be taken away by a third party such as a government or financial institution.

If you’ve been around or are interested in crypto and bitcoin, you’ve almost certainly heard the expression “Not your keys, Not your bitcoin.” Is it important to know what that means?

If you’ve ever purchased cryptocurrency, you’ve most likely used a custodial wallet. Any Bitcoin trade is referred to as “custodial.” Those third-party cryptocurrency exchanges offer to protect your crypto assets for you, but you relinquish total ownership of your crypto holdings in the process.

Users must grasp the distinctions between custodial and non-custodial wallets to fully benefit from bitcoin technology.

Pros and Cons of a Custodial Wallet

A Custodial wallet is one in which a third party manages the private keys. That is, the third party has entire control over your funds, and all you have to do is authorize payments to be made and received.

A third-party authority manages all of the funds in a custodial wallet, and users are unable to execute any transactions without their involvement. A transaction fee is not charged by a custodial wallet, unlike other wallets. Customers can conduct transactions for free within the ecosystem. Even if a user forgets his memorization pass or his encryption key, regaining access to the wallet and the money placed is simple.

When employing custodial cryptocurrency services, users lose control of their bitcoin wallets. A third party, a custodian, is in charge of managing financial transfers and associated processes, including freezing the stored amount, which is a disadvantage of custodial banking.
While not targeted by hackers, there are still security concerns while utilizing a custodial wallet. They are frequently exposed to numerous security breaches.

Pros and Cons of Non-Custodial Wallet

Non-custodial options should be used by advanced users. You can have complete control over a blockchain address with these. The majority of these will provide you a recovery key or phrase that you can use to access your wallet on other devices.

Simply defined, a non-custodial wallet is a type of blockchain-based cryptocurrency wallet that allows users to act as their own banks. It provides users complete control over their funds and the private key associated with them.

This wallet offers 2 types of keys for performing the transactions:

The mnemonic seed is a word with a value of 12–24 that is used to encapsulate genuine private keys. The key allows a user to access numerous accounts at once.

The Raw private key is the other sort of key. It is a real private key that is a mix of alphabetic and numeric characters that is also saved on the user’s computer.

The fact that non-custodial wallets allow users to access their assets on an individual basis is the main reason for their appeal. Users do not need to entrust their funds or do any necessary actions to a third party. In terms of security breaches and data protection, there is perfect safety. Following this there is another option that is being provided by this wallet is that a user can get instant transactions without any approval.

Conclusion

Custodial wallets are becoming increasingly popular in the mainstream. Their high UI and user needs for control over their crypto assets are the reasons for this. Non-custodial wallets, on the other hand, have had remarkable success, and their services are being expanded and improved.

Despite the fact that bitcoin is becoming more well-known, just a small fraction of users are well-versed in the technology and its risks. It’s vital to think about the technology and business strategy used while choosing a service. It could be as basic as adjusting expectations and making a tiny effort to grasp the technology that makes the difference between a great encounter and a horrible one.

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The Revenue Avenue

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