Bitcoin exchange inflows have declined to a yearly low, while withdrawals continue to climb. This is the new era of self-custody.

Usually we say that every bit of experience we make, especially the painful experience, has the most important lessons for us. Same goes for the whole year of 2022, many exchanges like FTX collapsed and ended up costing billions of dollars in the money of customers. Indeed very painful as many got their whole life ruined, but it will forever commemorate one of the most important messages.

This message is of self-custody, of actually owning your Crypto as Satoshi had intended for you and not just giving them away to some shady centralized exchanges that essentially are the very thing Crypto was not supposed to be.

Thankfully it seems like many did actually listen to this message:

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Bitcoin exchange inflows (green) vs outflows (red), chart by James V. Straten

Not only is the rate of exchange deposits continuing to hit yearly lows for 2023, but also the exchange withdrawals have increased even further and outpaced exchange deposits for over three months now. Which had also been contributed to by the recent boring state of the market. Which is pretty normal too for pre bull market phases.

But we can still not forget how all of the events from last year basically converged into this great new movement for Crypto investors, at least those who stayed, to finally actually own their own Crypto. I believe in the next bull market they will be looking back to this as one of their best decisions and we all will hopefully be ready to teach the new class of Crypto investors the importance of self-custody in the first place, let's actually make a difference.