According to ChainCatcher, citing The Block, an executive from hardware wallet maker Trezor has warned that the market’s push to move Bitcoin fully into an ETF-style holding model presents a long-term risk to some of the crypto industry’s core principles. Speaking during BTC Prague, Trezor Chief Commercial Officer Danny Sanders focused on one central issue: whether users continue to directly control their private keys, or whether Bitcoin ownership increasingly becomes mediated through custodial financial products.
Self-custody remains a minority choice among crypto users
Sanders said the global crypto user base currently stands at about 600 million people, but only around 10% of those users choose to self-custody their assets. Within that smaller group, the number of users relying on hardware wallets is only about 12 million to 13 million. For Trezor, a company built around hardware wallet products, that gap reflects a major divide between broad crypto adoption and direct ownership of private keys.
Self-custody has long been treated as one of Bitcoin’s defining features because it allows users to control access to their own assets without depending on a third-party custodian. Sanders said, however, that self-custody still faces substantial barriers in user experience and security. Many users continue to access the market through exchanges, ETF products or other custodial tools because those routes are simpler and do not require them to manage private keys directly.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have accelerated institutional allocation
Since U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in 2024, the products have attracted more than $53 billion in cumulative inflows. Sanders acknowledged that these funds have significantly increased institutional allocation to Bitcoin. At the same time, he said the same trend can weaken the habit of directly holding private keys. In an ETF structure, investors gain exposure to Bitcoin as a financial product, but they do not directly control the underlying on-chain asset.
Sanders argued that the industry should focus on improving the usability and security of self-custody rather than simply accepting the path of “putting Bitcoin into an ETF.” He said that if Bitcoin ownership evolves over the long term into a structure dominated by ETFs, it would weaken the basic logic of Bitcoin as a decentralized asset. In his words, that would be the industry’s “least ideal outcome.”