According to Prague-based hardware wallet provider Trezor, there are currently 420 million global exchange users but only eight million self-custody hardware wallet users — that’s around 2% of the total.
This would imply a huge potential market for Trezor, but there have been recent disturbances in the Force, not least the recent approval of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the potential for Ethereum ETFs.
These financial products allow investors exposure to crypto without the need to hold the asset itself. It’s the opposite of self-custody and potentially not good news for hard wallet providers.
Trezor CEO Matej Zak says that for existing Bitcoiners and aspiring Bitcoiners, the ETFs should not be the first port of call.
“The ultimate aim for everyone holding Bitcoin should be to self-custody the asset in a hardware wallet where it is safe, private and protected.”
Coinbase is Bitcoin honeypot… put your crypto in a hardware wallet
And he issues a stern warning about the dominance of Coinbase, which is where eight of those 10 ETFs reside. When so many assets are corralled in one place, there is always the threat of hacking and, worse, state intervention.
“With the current major inflow of capital into spot ETFs, Coinbase is likely to become the largest Bitcoin honeypot, attracting hackers, social engineers and other attackers in volumes never seen before,” he says.
“Yet these bad actors may not be the highest risk in this case. The major threat here comes from governments that may be tempted to confiscate bitcoin stored at Coinbase in whole or in part, such as. through specific taxes or simply just by legislating and confiscating.”
If this sounds like the CEO of a self-custody company sounding a false alarm, it’s not — because it’s happened before, in 1933, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102.
Trezor CEO Matej Zak on stage at Bitcoin Prague.
The state confiscated citizens’ gold because federal debt was out of…
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