Self-custody — Self-custody is the practice of holding cryptocurrency in a wallet whose private keys are controlled exclusively by the user (typically a non-custodial wallet), as opposed to custodial storage at an exchange or bank.
Self-custody eliminates counterparty risk: there is no provider that can fail (FTX), freeze your account, or be hacked at scale.
The trade-off is operational responsibility: lose the seed phrase and the funds are unrecoverable.
Kronos's wallet is fully self-custodial. Seeds are generated on-device via BIP-39, derivation is BIP-32, signing happens locally. KronosPay LLC has no copy of the keys and cannot move user crypto.
It eliminates exchange-failure risk but introduces user-side loss risk. Best practice: self-custody anything you would not be willing to lose if your exchange went down.