Matthew Jones’s crypto wallet is all about what the industry champions as “self custody”.
Haven’s app is similar to those of Metamask and Trustwallet. Other companies like Trezor and Ledger offer physical devices like USB memory sticks but the idea is the same: you can be your own bank.
But with that added freedom comes added risk as you don’t have any protections at all.
If your coins are stolen from your own self custody wallet, you can’t even go to a crypto exchange to complain.
Asked if the freedom of “being your own bank” outweighs the increasing risks, Jones insists it does.
“Banks aren’t truly answerable to their customers and they hold the power to freeze or close your account based on broad, often vague reasons,” he argues.
He also says he objected to being asked by traditional financial institutions things like why he was moving money out of an account.
Helen and Richard lost all their coins after choosing to be their own bank. The factor that made it particularly painful was the fact that much of the money came from the sale of Richard’s mother’s house, after her death.
“My mother’s money has gone,” Richard says. “All that grafting she had done for my future and it was stolen. We’ve had to sell musical instruments and our car, and we were briefly homeless.”
Yet they aren’t entirely giving up on cryptocurrency. If they get their lost money back, or accumulate enough in savings, they plan to get straight back into crypto investing.
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