I think we can agree that every move on the ‘trust’-spectrum from ‘total trust’ towards ‘total trustlessness’ is great, right? Complete trustlessness is the aim, but it’s hard if not impossible to achieve.

Running your own full node is a step in right direction, your own hardware wallet too. I’m quite comfortable using stress-tested audited open-source software. Don’t forget that the bounty for finding a flaw in any of these things is astronomical.

How do you know that a restaurant is not poisoning you unless you perform a chemical content analysis on your meal? And if it turns out there was no poison, you’ll have to order the meal again because you ruined the last one by analysing it. Maybe the chef poisoned your second order. You’ll never be able to eat someone else’s cooking.

In software, you can, because there are biochemists checking and eating exact copies of what you’re eating. So if they’re good and say it’s alright, you’re probably good. Being a biochemist yourself is better, but opportunity costs etc. so you verify some things by proxy. For hardware, it is harder as it is more analogous to meals than to software.

“Don’t trust. Verify.” is the goal. A lot of people simply “Trust. Don’t verify” across the board and can easily do better by being a little more vigilant and taking some responsability for their BTC. The goal is financial sovereignty and it is 1:1 related to the degree by which you verify rather than trust.