Investors have poured more than $53 billion into spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds since launching in the U.S. in early 2024.
But despite ETFs being a major driver of bitcoin's price in the years since, one of the crypto industry's oldest hardware wallet makers warns that they pose a risk to a core bitcoin principle: self-custody.
Speaking with The Block at BTC Prague last week, Trezor Chief Commercial Officer Danny Sanders argued that more bitcoin investors relying on ETFs instead of holding their own private keys would be detrimental to the industry.
Sanders made the comments while talking about some of the challenges of onboarding new users to self-custody, which allows users to be the sole controller of their bitcoin instead of entrusting their assets to exchanges or custodians.
This comes with a downside, however, in that there is no backstop or recourse for someone to get their crypto back if they lose or misprint their seed phrase, or get tricked into sharing their private keys with a scammer.
