Rate My Bitcoin Custody Setup

External Evaluation of a Self-Custody Arrangement

This memo is published by CustodyStress, an independent Bitcoin custody stress test that produces reference documents for individuals, families, and professionals.

What the Rating Request Reveals

A bitcoin holder describes their custody arrangement and asks for a rating. "Rate my bitcoin custody setup" is a request for external judgment. The holder has made choices. Now they want someone else to evaluate those choices. The request reflects uncertainty about whether internal judgment is sufficient.

This memo examines the dynamics of seeking external rating for custody arrangements. The desire for rating is understandable—custody decisions carry significant stakes, and second opinions can surface blind spots. But rating encounters limits on what external evaluation can provide without extensive context that descriptions rarely include.

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What the Rating Request Reveals

The request for rating reveals that the holder has doubts. If they felt confident in their setup, they would not seek external judgment. The request emerges from uncertainty—perhaps about specific choices, perhaps about the whole approach, perhaps about their own competence to judge.

This doubt is informative. It suggests the holder recognizes limits in their own evaluation. They know they might be missing something. They know they might have blind spots. They turn to others hoping those others can see what they cannot.

The request also reveals a desire for validation. Most holders asking for ratings hope to hear their setup is good. The rating request seeks reassurance packaged as evaluation. This desire shapes how the holder presents their setup and how they receive feedback.

Doubt and desire for validation often coexist in tension. The holder wants honest feedback but also wants that feedback to be positive. They want to know if something is wrong but hope nothing is. This mixed motivation affects the entire rating dynamic.

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What Descriptions Omit

When holders describe their setups for rating, the descriptions necessarily omit information. Some omissions are deliberate—security concerns limit what should be shared publicly. Other omissions are accidental—the holder does not know what details matter or forgets to include them.

The rater works with incomplete information. They learn that a hardware wallet is used but not which one, or which one but not which firmware version. They learn that a seed phrase is backed up but not where, or where but not how securely that location is protected. Each gap limits what can be said.

More fundamental context is also missing. The rater does not know the holder's life circumstances. They do not know who the heirs are or what their capabilities might be. They do not know the holder's health situation, geographic location, or relationship dynamics. These factors affect what custody arrangement is appropriate, but they are rarely included in descriptions.

The rater cannot observe what they are not told. The holder's description represents one perspective on the setup—the holder's own perspective. What the holder considers important shapes what they share. What they overlook remains invisible. A rater can only evaluate what has been presented, not what exists.

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Criteria Dependency

Rating requires criteria. Different criteria produce different ratings. A setup that scores well on theft resistance might score poorly on inheritance accessibility. A setup that handles single-point-of-failure concerns might create new vulnerabilities through its complexity. The rating depends entirely on which criteria are applied.

The holder asking for a rating typically does not specify criteria. They present their setup and wait for judgment. The rater must invent or assume criteria. These assumed criteria may not match what the holder actually cares about. The rating that results may answer a question the holder was not asking.

Even agreed-upon criteria face weighting problems. How much does theft resistance matter compared to ease of use? How much does inheritance planning matter compared to operational simplicity? Different weightings produce different conclusions about the same setup. The holder's priorities determine correct weighting, but holders rarely articulate their priorities clearly.

Criteria also conflict with each other. Increasing security often decreases convenience. Adding redundancy often adds complexity. Optimizing for one scenario often degrades another. A rating that recognizes these trade-offs differs from a rating that ignores them. Which rating is useful depends on the holder's situation.

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The Limits of General Advice

Ratings often slide into general advice. "Your setup looks okay, but you might want to add geographic redundancy." This kind of response sounds helpful but carries assumptions about what matters. Geographic redundancy is relevant if regional disaster is a concern the holder shares. It is less relevant if other concerns dominate.

General advice fails to account for individual circumstances. What applies to most people may not apply to this person. What seems like an obvious improvement may conflict with constraints the holder has not mentioned. The advice is general precisely because the rater lacks the specific information needed to make it personal.

The holder receiving general advice faces a translation problem. They must decide whether the advice applies to their situation. They lack the expertise to make this judgment confidently—if they had that expertise, they might not have asked for a rating. The advice creates new uncertainty rather than resolving existing uncertainty.

General advice also tends toward caution. Raters fear missing something and causing harm. They suggest additions and improvements that make setups more complex. Complexity itself becomes a failure mode. The advice intended to help may push toward arrangements the holder cannot maintain.

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Expertise and Its Limits

Raters vary in expertise. Some have deep technical knowledge. Some have practical experience with custody failures. Some have neither but are willing to offer opinions. The holder seeking a rating may not be able to distinguish among these sources.

Even genuine expertise has limits. An expert knows their own area deeply. Bitcoin custody intersects multiple domains: cryptography, security practices, estate law, family dynamics, personal finance. Few raters have expertise across all relevant domains. Each tends to emphasize what they know.

Expertise also brings biases. An expert who has seen certain failures repeatedly may overweight those failures when evaluating new setups. An expert who prefers certain tools may rate setups using those tools more favorably. Expertise does not eliminate perspective—it shapes it.

The holder cannot easily evaluate the evaluator. Credentials may not exist or may not transfer to this domain. Reputation may reflect marketing more than competence. The same setup might receive very different ratings from different evaluators, each confident in their assessment.

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Public and Private Information

Requests for rating often appear in public forums. The holder posts their setup description for community review. This creates tension between getting useful feedback and protecting sensitive information.

Security considerations limit what should be shared. Revealing specific custody details in public forums could create targeting risks. An attacker learns what security model to defeat. The holder either shares enough for meaningful evaluation and increases risk, or withholds information and receives superficial feedback.

Public ratings also attract attention from people with mixed motives. Some respond helpfully. Others promote their preferred solutions regardless of fit. Some may be seeking information for malicious purposes. The holder cannot easily distinguish among these responses.

The format encourages brief responses. Forum comments and social media replies favor quick takes over thorough analysis. The rating that arrives may reflect the first reaction rather than careful consideration. Confident responses feel authoritative but may not reflect deeper thought.

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What Ratings Cannot Provide

Ratings cannot provide certainty. No evaluation can guarantee a setup will survive all possible scenarios. The rater cannot foresee every failure mode. The holder seeking certainty from a rating will not find it. At most, they will find opinions about probability.

Ratings cannot substitute for the holder's own judgment. The holder lives in their circumstances. They know details no rater knows. They bear the consequences of failure. Ultimately, they must decide what to do, and that decision cannot be delegated to a rating.

Ratings also cannot replace testing. A setup that looks good on paper may fail in practice. The only way to know if recovery works is to perform recovery. The only way to know if heirs can access bitcoin is to have them try. Rating evaluates descriptions; testing evaluates reality.

The limitations of ratings mean they serve a narrow function. They can surface considerations the holder had not thought about. They can identify obvious problems. They cannot provide the comprehensive evaluation the holder may be seeking. The gap between what ratings offer and what holders want remains.

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Scenarios of Rating Failure

A holder receives positive ratings for their multisig setup from several community members. The setup involves three devices. Two devices are stored in the same building—a detail the holder did not mention because they did not think it mattered. A fire destroys both. The ratings failed to catch a geographic concentration problem because the description did not reveal it.

A holder receives criticism for using a single hardware wallet without multisig. They switch to a more complex arrangement to satisfy the critics. The complexity exceeds their ability to maintain it. Years later, they cannot remember all the required steps. The rating pushed toward a solution inappropriate for the holder's actual capabilities.

A holder describes their setup and receives conflicting ratings. One rater says the passphrase approach is essential. Another says passphrases create unnecessary complexity. The holder must choose between contradictory advice from equally confident sources. The ratings produce confusion rather than clarity.

A holder receives a favorable rating and stops thinking about their custody. The setup was adequate when rated but degrades over time. Components fail. Circumstances change. The rating created false confidence that persisted past its expiration date.

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Summary

The request to rate a bitcoin custody setup reflects uncertainty about internal judgment and a desire for external validation. Rating requires criteria that depend on context the rater rarely knows fully. Descriptions omit information—sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally—that affects what conclusions are possible.

Ratings face structural limits. They cannot account for circumstances not shared. They cannot apply weightings not specified. They cannot provide certainty about future performance. General advice slides in where specific evaluation cannot go, creating translation problems for the holder.

The gap between what ratings can provide and what holders seek persists. Ratings can surface considerations and identify obvious problems. They cannot substitute for the holder's own judgment about their own situation. The holder who asks for a rating still bears responsibility for deciding what to do with the response they receive.

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System Context

Examining Bitcoin Custody Under Stress

Is My Bitcoin Custody Actually Safe

Is My Bitcoin Setup Good Enough

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