Banks and payment providers (Visa Mastercard AMX) provide services beyond simply a store of wealth and a mechanism to transfer it.

Actually 2FA, hardware biometrics, behaviour based fraud prevention and personal confirmation of suspicious transactions. If you’re using credit they can refund fraudulent transactions, and there is the chargeback mechanism. This is probably banking system dependent, but in AUS there is a refund mechanism for mistaken/fraudulent traditional bank transactions.

BTC has effectively none of the safety net, and humans are fallible. We need the safety net. It’s the hugest barrier to adoption. Exchanges do a far better job of managing the risks than trusting your wealth to a hardware wallet.

Use a device that’s mass produced enough it can’t be targeted e.g a MacBook, then keep it airgapped and don’t do normal computing on it.

There is none yet.

If there was one, someone would write down the steps necessary and put them on the internet. But I have never seen a sound description of how to self-custody Bitcoin in a safe way.

The hardest part seems to not even be the one that currently creates all those problems - the hardware and software used. The hardest part is storing the key (for example a seed phrase). If anyone says they know a way to safely store Bitcoin, my first question is: How do you store the key?

The existing financial system which provides protection to consumers. Crypto doesn’t solve the problem the general public assumes it does and hype has inflated its value dramatically.

Using the banking system instead of crypto.

get a brand new, cheap laptop or machine (even a raspberry pi works) that you randomly pickup at the store (no delivery order). Install debian 13, install electrum, airgap the device, reboot and generate 1-of-2 your wallet keys.

The wipe the device, use any non-debian other linux (or BSD) to generated the 2-of-2 wallet key.