2 different things.

- Self Custody is a personal risk adjusted preference.

- Decentralisation is a system level property that deals with the balance of power.

- As money is a network the level of decentralisation is determined by how much of the network you can trade with.

- Large custodians are bad because they capture a lot of people in 1 closed network

- Small self custody is bad from a power PoV as you have no economic weight within the network

- If the individuals only self custody and don't work together you have a coordination problem to act with others.

- if the two options are large self custody (you literally can't stop this) and individual custody then the majority of daily trade and MoE will flow into the custodial system

- trade volumes from self custody will each be insignificant (even from large holders) in where trade occurs.

- the correct answer in my view is custody at a meaningful level with local custodians aggregating funds, tx volumes, trade etc at an economically relevant level for the network (think the amount of funds you might transact as a town vs. one person - even a rich one)

- limits growth of large custodians as there are smaller competitors

- forces larger custodians to remain on open networks and standards as majority of customers are in the network no tin their node.

- balance with excessive self custody also of long term SoV and savings.