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Hold your own money: Bitcoin, Monero and self-custody

Coins nobody can freeze, keys only you hold, and the tools to do it carefully.

Money nobody can freeze

USDC, the dollar token used for payments here, is issued by a company that can freeze it at any address. Bitcoin (BTC) and Monero (XMR) have no issuer: no company runs them, and nobody can freeze coins sitting at an address. Held in a wallet only you control, they are the strongest answer there is to money that can't be seized.

That protection is only as good as your habits. Whoever has your recovery words (your seed phrase) has your coins, and there is no help desk to undo a mistake. The rest of this page is about doing it carefully.

Bitcoin and Monero are not the same

Bitcoin is the most widely held and accepted of the two. Its ledger is public, like Base: every amount and every address is visible to anyone, forever, and whole companies exist to trace who is behind them. Treat any Bitcoin address you have used as something that could one day be linked to you.

Monero is built for privacy. It hides the sender, the receiver and the amount of every transaction by default, so your balance and your history stay off a public ledger. If privacy is what you need, Monero is the strongest tool there is.

The trade-offs: fewer exchanges list Monero and some countries restrict it, so it can be harder to buy and sell. And no coin hides what you tell others: an exchange that knows your name still knows what you bought there and where you withdrew it.

Not your keys, not your coins

A balance on an exchange is a promise, not coins you own. The exchange holds the keys. It can freeze your account, it can be hacked, and it can go bust, and when an exchange fails its customers wait in line with everyone else it owes money to.

Use exchanges to buy and sell, then withdraw to a wallet whose keys only you hold. Don't keep savings there.

OnlyTokens is built the same way: your wallet's key lives on your device, and every payment goes straight from one person's wallet to another's. We never hold anyone's money, so a failure on our side can't trap yours.

Store your seed phrase properly

Write it on paper, or stamp it into a metal plate made for the job, which survives fire and water. Keep it somewhere private and safe.

Never keep it digitally: no photos, no screenshots, no unencrypted cloud notes, no email to yourself, no phone or computer backups, and not in your password manager either. Anything that syncs can leak.

Keep a second copy in a different safe place, so one fire, flood or burglary can't take both. If you want no single place to hold the whole phrase, use a method built for that, such as multisig or a hardware wallet's multi-share backup, rather than cutting your words in half: half a phrase is weaker, and losing one half loses everything.

Test before you trust. Before putting real money on a new wallet or device, restore it from your written words on a spare wallet and check that it shows the same addresses. Then start with a small amount.

Some wallets offer an optional passphrase: an extra word you choose that turns the same seed phrase into a separate wallet. It protects you if someone finds your words, but forget the passphrase and that money is gone. Back it up too, never in the same place as the seed phrase.

Hardware wallets

A hardware wallet is a small device that keeps your keys offline and signs payments itself, so the keys never touch your phone or computer.

Buy only from the maker's own website, never second-hand or from a marketplace reseller. Check the packaging is sealed, set the device up yourself and write down the words it shows you. If a device arrives with words already written down or a PIN already set, don't use it.

Update it only through the maker's own app, and check every address and amount on the device's own screen before you approve.

  • Trezor

    Hardware wallets with open-source firmware, from the company that made the first one.

  • Foundation Passport

    Air-gapped, open-source hardware wallet with a full-transparency screen.

  • Keystone

    Hardware wallets that can work fully air-gapped, signing by QR code.

Cupcake: an old phone as a hardware wallet

Cupcake is a free, open-source app from Cake Labs, the team behind Cake Wallet. It turns a spare phone into an offline signing device for Bitcoin, Monero and Litecoin. The keys stay on the Cupcake phone, which the app never lets online. Cake Wallet on your everyday phone shows your balance and prepares payments, and the two phones pass them back and forth as QR codes.

It is only as strong as the phone it runs on. Cake recommends a phone that still gets security updates, and an iPhone or a Google Pixel for the strongest built-in key storage.

Doing it properly: use a dedicated old phone with no SIM card. Factory-reset it, then install Cupcake and nothing else. Add no accounts beyond the one the app store needs to install it. Keep airplane mode on as a habit, and use the phone only to sign and send, never to browse or message.

Setting up, from Cake's own guide: in Cupcake, choose your coin, select Create new wallet, set a strong PIN or password, then write down your seed phrase and verify it when asked.

Pairing with Cake Wallet: in Cupcake, open the menu and select Link to Cake Wallet to show a QR code. In Cake Wallet, tap Wallets, then Restore Wallet, then Cupcake App. Scan the code, name the wallet and tap Restore.

Updates: Cake's advice is to keep the phone offline except while updating the phone's system or Cupcake itself. On Android you can also update with no connection at all by copying the app file over.

Monero wallets

Wallets where you hold the keys. Write down the seed phrase each one shows you, as above. If a wallet offers cloud backup, leave it off.

Everyday privacy tools

Holding your own money also means keeping your accounts safe. These tools are open source and encrypt your data so the company running them can't read it.

Turn on two-step sign-in with an authenticator app wherever you can, rather than text-message codes, which a SIM swap can steal.