Sovereignty Audit — Cryptobourgeoisie

Custody 01

Who can move your funds without your consent?

No one. I hold the keys, and no third party has the technical ability to transfer or freeze the balance.

A counterparty could freeze part of it. I hold some directly and leave the rest where an institution has discretion over it.

An institution holds the position on my behalf. I hold a claim against them rather than the asset itself.

Custody 02

Have you personally moved funds between addresses you control, without assistance?

Routinely. I have constructed, signed, and broadcast transactions myself and understand what each step does.

Once or twice, following a guide. It worked, though I could not reconstruct the reasoning unaided.

Never. Someone else set it up, or the position has only ever existed inside an account.

Key Discipline 03

How were your keys generated, and who else has seen the material?

Generated offline on hardware I control, with backups I created myself, and no one else has ever held the seed.

Generated on a device I control, but the backup process involved a third party, a cloud service, or a photograph.

Generated by a provider, or I do not know how or where they were generated.

Key Discipline 04

Have you tested recovery, restoring from backup to prove the funds are actually retrievable?

Yes, deliberately and more than once, including after moving house or changing hardware.

Once, at setup. I have not repeated it since, and conditions have changed.

Never. The backup exists and I assume it works.

Verification 05

When you check your balance or confirm a payment, what is actually doing the verifying?

A validating node I run, which enforces the rules independently and would reject an invalid chain.

A wallet querying someone else's node, or a block explorer. I am reading a report I cannot check.

An account balance displayed by the institution that holds the funds.

Verification 06

Of the cryptographic guarantees you rely on, how many have you checked rather than accepted on authority?

I have read the relevant code or specification and can state what the guarantee does and does not cover.

I understand the guarantees in outline and could follow an audit, but I have not performed one.

I rely on the consensus of people who say they have checked.

Risk Assumed Knowingly 07

Self-custody replaces institutional risk with operational risk. How have you handled that trade?

Deliberately. I have named the failure modes, sized the position so that my own error is survivable, and accepted the rest.

Partially. I am aware of the risks and have addressed some, but the arrangement has gaps I have not closed.

Not really. I either avoid self-custody because of the risk, or hold without having thought about the failure modes.

Risk Assumed Knowingly 08

If you died this week, what happens to the position?

There is a documented procedure someone trusted can execute, and it has been tested against a real recovery.

Someone knows it exists and roughly where to look, but has never rehearsed retrieving it.

It is lost, or it passes to an institution because the institution holds it.

The Difficult Part 09

When you last hit something you did not understand in this domain, what did you do?

Worked at it until it gave way, accepting that it took longer than asking would have.

Attempted it, then asked, or had a machine produce the answer once the effort became tedious.

Asked immediately, or delegated it. The answer was available and there was no reason to struggle.

The Difficult Part 10

Is there a domain in which you still do the difficult part yourself, knowing a tool could do it faster?

Yes, deliberately, and I accept that it costs me time in exchange for a capacity I would otherwise lose.

In principle, though in practice I reach for the tool when the deadline is close.

No. If something can be done faster by a tool, I let it.

The Difficult Part 11

In your own work, can you still judge the quality of output you did not produce yourself?

Yes, and I could produce equivalent work unaided if I had to. The judgement rests on capacity I still hold.

Mostly. I can spot obvious errors, though I could no longer do the work from scratch at the same standard.

I approve outputs I could not have produced and cannot independently check.

Jurisdictional Exposure 12

If your primary jurisdiction restricted the instrument tomorrow, what would change for you?

The legal position would change; my access would not. Custody and verification do not depend on that permission.

Access would become awkward but recoverable, with some holdings exposed and others not.

My access runs through regulated intermediaries and would end with their compliance.

Jurisdictional Exposure 13

How much of your holdings can be inferred by someone who knows your legal identity?

Little. Identity and holdings are compartmentalised deliberately, and the linkage is not trivially recoverable.

Some. I have taken partial measures, but exchange history or public activity would reveal the outline.

All of it. Everything is registered under my legal identity by design.

Intellectual Honesty 14

What would have to happen for you to conclude you were wrong about this whole thesis?

I can state the specific observation that would count against it, and I have not seen it yet.

I could probably construct one, though I have never made the criterion explicit.

Nothing would. The thesis explains whatever happens.

Intellectual Honesty 15

What does the incumbent monetary system get right?

I can name specific achievements it delivered, and my objection survives conceding them.

I accept it works for most people most of the time, without having examined why.

Nothing worth conceding. It is a fraud and its collapse is a matter of time.

Intellectual Honesty 16

How much of your own understanding here was arrived at rather than absorbed?

I have changed my mind on at least one substantive point through my own examination, against the consensus I started with.

Largely absorbed from sources I trust, though I have tested parts of it against experience.

It is a position I hold because the people I respect hold it.