ChainCatcher, citing The Block, reported that a senior executive at hardware wallet maker Trezor has raised concerns about the market trend of pushing Bitcoin fully toward an ETF-based holding model. Speaking during the BTC Prague event, Trezor Chief Commercial Officer Danny Sanders said this direction creates a long-term risk for one of the core ideas of the crypto industry: users directly controlling their own assets through private keys.
Self-Custody Remains a Small Share of Crypto Users
According to Sanders, the global crypto user base is now around 600 million, but only about 10% of users choose to self-custody their assets. Within that group, the number of users relying on hardware wallets is only about 12 million to 13 million. From Trezor’s perspective as a hardware wallet company, self-custody is a central attribute of the Bitcoin system because it links ownership of the asset to direct control of the private key.
Sanders also acknowledged that self-custody still faces major challenges in user experience and security. Many users continue to access the market through custodial tools such as exchanges or ETFs. As a result, even as crypto adoption grows, the share of users actually holding their own keys and managing assets with hardware wallets remains limited.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs Have Strengthened Institutional Allocation
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have attracted more than $53 billion in cumulative inflows since their launch in 2024, significantly increasing institutional allocation to Bitcoin. Sanders said this trend has expanded Bitcoin’s presence in traditional investment channels, but it also reduces the behavior of users directly holding private keys. If the long-term holding structure becomes dominated by ETFs, he said, it would weaken the underlying logic of Bitcoin as a decentralized asset.
Sanders emphasized that the industry should focus on making self-custody easier to use and safer, rather than simply accepting a path where Bitcoin is placed inside ETFs. He said an ETF-led ownership model would be the “least ideal outcome” for the industry.