A self-custody wallet is software that holds your keys on your own device. There is no account to open and nobody to verify you, which makes it the foundation of everything else on this site: a swap or a P2P trade has to pay out somewhere.
On 24 April 2024 the US Department of Justice announced charges against the two developers of Samourai Wallet, alleging conspiracy to commit money laundering and to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, together with the seizure of the project's web domain and servers. According to later press coverage, the developers pleaded guilty to the unlicensed money transmitting conspiracy and were sentenced in November 2025. Users' coins remained under their own keys.
The wallet does not know who you are, but a public blockchain like Bitcoin records every transaction. Privacy depends on how you acquire coins and how the wallet connects to the network.
Which wallet should I use for Monero?
Any open-source wallet that lets you connect to your own or a trusted node. The Monero wallets page compares them side by side, and the Bitcoin wallets page does the same for Bitcoin.