People won't run their own mail exchange, because it's too much work and too complicated.
People won't run their own blog, because it's too much work and too complicated.
The downside to doing either of these things poorly is that you can't send email / become a spam email relay / get hacked and lose your blog content.
Now tell those people that they can take on all the downside risk of losing all their money and the only thing they have to do to make sure that doesn't happen is practice perfect operational security, perfect transaction discipline, stay up to date on all known exploits and patches, constantly be on guard for irreversible scams and exploits, and the big benefit is, "you don't have to trust the bank."
Some huge percent of those people are going to look at you like you are crazy. Do all this work, take on this massive risk, and for what, a problem that most people in the western world have never faced. Most people have not faced any issue with transacting with the traditional finance system, definitely not enough to take on all the labor and risk of being their own bank.
If people won't run their own email, they aren't going to run their own financial institution.
I would go much farther than this. It's not since the internet that the answer is no. It's since civilization that people collectively choose not to try to do everything themselves.
No one thinks it's a good idea to be your own bank.
No one thinks they need to make their own
shoes
cars
food
computers
hand tools
...
the list is an enumeration of all the artifacts of civilization.
crypto is an anti-social fantasy at best, it flies in the face of reality.
Self-custody is simple - just download a wallet app and preserve your seed words.
However, it's intimidating and requires a lot of personal responsibility.
I don't get the point of password managers. What's so hard to remember a password? Just use the first name of your eldest child, add your house number, and you're golden. If you're really that dumb, post-it notes exist for a reason.
I've made their passwords incredibly easy to remember. They're just not able to for whatever reason. They're both practicing doctors who I generally believe to be competent but for whatever reason passwords elude them. Maybe crypto just won't work until all the people who grew up pre-internet die.
I'll agree that crypto self-custody isn't really something the vast majority of folks can safely do. That said, self custody of crypto is different than self custody of fiat currencies.
With fiat currency, you have to physically store the cash in 1 location. With crypto I can store multiple keys to my crypto on physical devices that require a pin to unlock (and reset after a few failed attempts). I can store my key across multiple locations in such a way that n of m copies of the key are required to move funds. I can require a waiting period before moving funds. I can require another person to approve the transactions in certain scenarios (ex: moving large amounts of funds).
If you can write down 12 or 24 words on a piece of paper thats all you need for a backup. Hardware wallets make this easier but I agree it needs to be simplified for the masses.
I can barely convince my relatives that a 16 character minimum password and a password manager for their accounts protected by multi-factor authentication will make their life easier by only needing to memorize the 1 long password, that they could also write the password down and keep somewhere safe.
People won't run their own mail exchange, because it's too much work and too complicated.
People won't run their own blog, because it's too much work and too complicated.
The downside to doing either of these things poorly is that you can't send email / become a spam email relay / get hacked and lose your blog content.
Now tell those people that they can take on all the downside risk of losing all their money and the only thing they have to do to make sure that doesn't happen is practice perfect operational security, perfect transaction discipline, stay up to date on all known exploits and patches, constantly be on guard for irreversible scams and exploits, and the big benefit is, "you don't have to trust the bank."
Some huge percent of those people are going to look at you like you are crazy. Do all this work, take on this massive risk, and for what, a problem that most people in the western world have never faced. Most people have not faced any issue with transacting with the traditional finance system, definitely not enough to take on all the labor and risk of being their own bank.
If people won't run their own email, they aren't going to run their own financial institution.