Custody ≠ Ownership

Custody and ownership are often treated as interchangeable. They are not.

Ownership defines who bears economic risk and benefit.
Custody defines who controls the asset operationally.

When these two diverge, failure modes emerge.

In traditional financial systems, custody is deliberately layered.
Legal ownership, beneficial ownership, and operational control are separated across institutions.
This separation introduces friction, but it also concentrates risk in specific points of failure.

Blockchain collapses some of these layers, but not all of them.

Self-custody restores alignment between ownership and control.
Custodial structures reintroduce intermediaries: exchanges, custodians, wrappers, and vehicles.
Each intermediary alters where control resides and how risk is distributed.

Custody determines:
– who can freeze assets
– who can rehypothecate them
– who controls access during stress
– who bears operational failure

Ownership alone does not answer these questions.

Many market participants evaluate assets purely through ownership claims.
They overlook the custody layer until it fails.

This is why custody failures often appear sudden.
They are not sudden.
They are structural.

Understanding custody is not about ideology or preference.
It is about identifying where control lives when systems are stressed.

Ownership determines outcomes.
Custody determines survivability.

This framework is designed to remain valid across market cycles.

This analysis prioritizes structure over narrative.