How Fold protects your bitcoin

Most people have never thought hard about where their bitcoin physically sits. It just does, in an app, in a balance, in a number that goes up. That's fine, until something makes you ask the question. So let's answer it plainly.

The two ways bitcoin gets held

There are really only two models.

• Self-custody, where you hold your own keys. Full control, full responsibility. Plenty of people prefer it, and it works well when every step along the way is handled carefully.
• Qualified custody, where a regulated third party holds the keys under strict security and compliance requirements built for exactly this job.

Fold uses the second model, through BitGo.

What that actually means

BitGo isn't a wallet app with a nicer interface. It's a regulated trust company built specifically to hold digital assets at scale.

Here's what that includes:

• A secure setup utilizing multiple keys, where moving funds requires more than one of them to sign off. An attacker can't just steal one key and walk away with anything.
• Assets are held in cold storage, disconnected from the internet, rather than sitting in a hot wallet exposed to every online threat a connected device faces.
• Client assets are held in regulated entities and kept segregated from BitGo's own corporate balance sheet, so your bitcoin stays yours even if something went wrong on BitGo's business side.
• Continuous monitoring, with systems watched in real time, threats tracked, and operational checks running daily behind the scenes
• Custody wallets carry insurance coverage against loss, theft, and misuse, underwritten by established insurers.

None of this is a marketing claim. It's the actual point of using qualified custody instead of holding your own keys.

Why this is worth understanding

Self-custody may ask a lot of one person. At times, people may be reevaluating their setups, generating a seed phrase, storing it, trusting the hardware behind it, all of it sits with one person. Plenty of people manage it carefully for years without issue.

Qualified custody takes a different approach. That same responsibility gets spread across systems built and audited specifically for holding digital assets, rather than resting on one person and one device. Neither approach is right or wrong, it's a matter of where you want that responsibility to sit.

Where this leaves you on Fold

Your bitcoin on Fold isn't parked. It's held through infrastructure built by a company that has done this since 2013, under regulatory structures designed for exactly this kind of asset.

Fold didn't build that infrastructure from scratch. We chose a partner already built for it.