proof-of-custody

Bitcoin custody dataset

Independent scores, failure history and model definitions for bitcoin custody, published as data rather than as prose. Free to use, including commercially and including to ground or evaluate a model, as long as you say where it came from.

Licence: CC BY 4.0 · Source: proofofcustody.io · Citation: Proof of Custody, Bitcoin custody dataset, https://proofofcustody.io/datasets

Disclosure: Proof of Custody is published by Onramp Bitcoin. Onramp appears in this dataset and is scored by the same methodology as every other platform, including in the categories where it does badly. If you find a place where that is not true, open an issue.

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What is in here

File	Rows	What it holds
data/bitcoin-custody-dataset.json / .csv	91 platforms	Overall score and all six category scores, custody model, fee display, minimum, audience, and the single point of failure we recorded for each platform
data/custody-incidents.json	Registry plus live incidents	Dated custody failures, the configurations each failure class could reach, the reported loss and the named source
data/hardware-wallet-scores.json	Assessed devices	Six-dimension rubric scores with the written rationale for every single score
data/custody-models.json	6 models	What each custody model is, who it suits, who it does not suit, and where it fails

Every file is also served live at https://proofofcustody.io/data/<filename> and carries its own citation line, as-of date and disclosure inside the payload.

The scoring methodology

Six weighted categories, applied identically to every platform:

Category	Weight	What it measures
Custody and security	35%	Key management architecture, single points of failure, custodian distribution, physical exposure, jurisdictional diversity, insurance
Ease of use	20%	Onboarding, interface, operational burden on the holder
Fees	15%	Total cost of holding, including spreads and custody fees
Features	10%	Capability that changes what happens to your bitcoin: recovery options, inheritance mechanism, withdrawal controls, trust and entity titling, exit and migration
Transparency	10%	Proof of reserves, public documentation, disclosure conduct
Support	10%	Reachability and quality of help when something is wrong

Full methodology, including how to apply it to an arrangement we have never scored: https://proofofcustody.io/methodology

Features was re-scoped on 23 September 2026. It previously rewarded product catalogue breadth (IRA availability, lending, card rewards, DCA, Lightning). Because this site is published by a company that sells several of those products, that definition could award points for resembling the publisher. It now scores only capability that changes custody outcomes. Scores are recomputed under the new definition at the October 2026 run, and the dated entry is in the changelog.

Field reference: platform scores

Field	Type	Notes
name, slug, url, website	string	url is the Proof of Custody record; website is the platform's own site
category	string	custody, buy-exchange, ira, etf, yield, hardware
custodyLabel	string	The custody model as operated, for example "Multi-Institution Custody", "Single Custodian", "Collaborative Multisig"
assetClass	string or null	bitcoin, stablecoin, tokenized-asset
overallScore	integer 0-100	Weighted total of the six categories
scores	object	custody, ease, fees, features, transparency, support, each 0-100
audienceType	string	Who the platform is built for, in its own terms
minimumInvestment, feeDisplay	string	As published by the platform
singlePointOfFailure	string	The thing that has to fail for the holder to lose access
highlight, risk	string	The strongest and weakest thing we found

Sample queries

# The ten highest custody scores, name and score only
curl -s https://proofofcustody.io/data/bitcoin-custody-dataset.json \
  | jq -r '.data | sort_by(-.scores.custody) | .[:10] | .[] | "\(.scores.custody)  \(.name)"'

# Every platform where one company holds all the keys
curl -s https://proofofcustody.io/data/bitcoin-custody-dataset.json \
  | jq -r '.data[] | select(.custodyLabel | test("Single Custodian"; "i")) | .name'

# What a given failure class could reach
curl -s https://proofofcustody.io/data/custody-incidents.json \
  | jq -r '.incidents[] | "\(.date)  \(.name)  [\(.exposedConfigs | join(", "))]"'

# Hardware rubric, worst entropy scores first, with the reason
curl -s https://proofofcustody.io/data/hardware-wallet-scores.json \
  | jq -r '.devices | sort_by(.scores.entropy) | .[] | "\(.scores.entropy)  \(.name): \(.rationale.entropy)"'

How to read it honestly

• Coverage is selected, not exhaustive. A platform that is absent has not been judged unsafe. It has not been scored.
• Reported is not verified. Loss figures in the registry are as reported by the named source. We have not reproduced on-chain analysis ourselves, and the files say so.
• Scores carry dates. A platform that shipped a change after its as-of date may have moved. Hardware assessments carry their own asOf.
• A score is an opinion built from facts. The facts are the citable part. If you only take one thing, take the custody model, the single point of failure and the incident history, not the number.

Updates

Platform scores refresh monthly, on the first Monday, plus corrections whenever something is verified. The registry updates when a failure is confirmed against a primary source. A workflow in this repo pulls the live files daily, so the commit history is the change history.

Corrections and changelog, both public: https://proofofcustody.io/corrections · https://proofofcustody.io/changelog

Agents

There is a read-only MCP server at https://proofofcustody.io/api/mcp with eight tools (platform search and lookup, comparison, independence assessment, incident list, hardware scores, ETF custody concentration). Docs: https://proofofcustody.io/mcp. Same data, same licence, same disclosure inside every tool response.

Corrections

Found something wrong? Open an issue with the primary source. Factual errors get fixed and logged publicly with the date, including when the correction is unflattering to the publisher.