FDIC insurance is capped at 250k. The recovery there is also limited and it’s a bad idea to keep large amounts of money in a bank account.

> “Comparing the risk profile of Coinbase to a bank is no different than blindly trusting a big bank not to fail.”

That’s kind of my point? They share a similar risk.

The most interesting thing with crypto is the new capabilities it enables for self custody of wealth.

There’s also the non-government controlled supply and global store of value which are interesting too, but easier self-custody is the prerequisite differentiator imo. It’s also one of its core advantages over gold (the others being easier to transact with, easier to move/store which is related).

But your individual losses are covered when a bank fails, you're not protected when an exchange fails. They're just gonna try their hardest to make you whole. Look at that worked out at Mt Gox.

> The most interesting thing with crypto is the new capabilities it enables for self custody of wealth.

Serious question: what are the new capabilities that this opens up? These tokens are really unstable which makes them poor candidates to use as actual currency, research shows that decentralized networks are no less susceptible to market manipulation than traditional financial markets and there's an unbelievable amount of fraud everywhere in this space.

The whole reason the Federal Reserve was created was to weed out endemic fraudulent activity around the country during the era of "Wildcat Banking"[0], when banks were essentially creating their own currencies. Crypto is largely the digital reincarnation of this philosophy, and isn't really doing anything about shitcoins and other scams. Now, we're starting to see the legitimization of shitcoins through sports team fan tokens that provide no tangible value beyond the purely speculative "hodl" mentality.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking