According to ChainCatcher, citing The Block, an executive at hardware wallet maker Trezor has warned that the market trend of pushing Bitcoin fully into an ETF-based holding model presents a long-term risk to the core ideas behind the crypto industry. Speaking during BTC Prague, Trezor Chief Commercial Officer Danny Sanders focused on whether users will continue to hold their own private keys as institutional products expand.
Self-custody remains limited among global crypto users
Sanders said the global crypto user base currently stands at around 600 million people, but only about 10% of those users choose to self-custody their assets. Within that group, the number of users who rely on hardware wallets is only around 12 million to 13 million. For Trezor, whose business is centered on hardware wallets, these figures show that self-custody remains a minority practice across the broader crypto market.
He described self-custody as one of the core attributes of the Bitcoin system, while also acknowledging that the model still faces meaningful barriers in user experience and security. Many users continue to access the market through custodial tools such as exchanges or ETFs rather than directly managing private keys. That choice lowers the operational burden for users, but it also moves ownership further away from the self-custody model associated with Bitcoin’s decentralized design.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs are reshaping the ownership path
Since spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in the United States in 2024, the products have attracted more than $53 billion in cumulative inflows. This has significantly increased institutional allocation to Bitcoin. Sanders noted that while the ETF route improves the efficiency of bringing institutional capital into Bitcoin, it also weakens the habit of users directly holding private keys and shifts more ownership activity into custodial structures.
Sanders emphasized that the industry should focus on improving the usability and safety of self-custody rather than simply accepting the path of “putting Bitcoin into ETFs.” He said that if Bitcoin ownership evolves over the long term into a structure dominated by ETFs, it would weaken the foundational logic of Bitcoin as a decentralized asset. In his words, that would be the industry’s “least ideal outcome.”