Danny Saunders, a senior government at {hardware} pockets maker Trezor, stated the rising behavior of holding Bitcoin in ETFs may pose long-term dangers to the elemental tenets of the crypto sector.
Talking on the BTC Prague occasion, Trezor enterprise director Saunders stated there are roughly 600 million crypto customers worldwide, however solely about 10% of them maintain their belongings utilizing proprietary custody strategies. Based on Sanders, the variety of individuals utilizing {hardware} wallets is barely between 12 million and 13 million.
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Institutional investor curiosity in Bitcoin has elevated considerably attributable to the truth that the US Spot Bitcoin ETF has attracted over $53 billion in inflows since its inception in 2024. However Sanders warned that this pattern may dampen customers' need to have direct management over their non-public keys.
Sanders argued that whereas private management is a basic characteristic of the Bitcoin system, there are nonetheless main challenges on the subject of person expertise and safety. Subsequently, many buyers choose to take part out there by middleman options resembling exchanges, custodial companies, and ETFs.
As a substitute of accepting a construction that utterly pushes Bitcoin into ETFs, Trezor executives stated the trade ought to deal with making private storage simpler and safer. The shift to long-term Bitcoin holdings, dominated by ETFs, weakens the thought of a decentralized asset and could possibly be a “worst-case situation” for the trade, Sanders stated.
*This isn’t funding recommendation.
