Here is a sentence that appears, in some form, in almost every self-directed IRA custodial agreement in America.
We do not provide investment advice, evaluate investments, or verify the accuracy of any information provided regarding an investment.
Read it twice, because it is the most important sentence in this entire industry and almost nobody reads it once.
When you see a coin listed on your custodian's statement, it feels like validation. Someone official looked at this and recorded it. There is a trust company's name on the letterhead.
Nobody looked at anything. That statement is bookkeeping.
The custodian is genuinely important and genuinely necessary. They are simply doing a different job than the one people assume, and understanding which job that is determines whether you get a fair deal or an expensive one.
So let's go through what they actually do, what they never do, and the six questions that separate a good one from a mediocre one.