Demand for Ethereum self-custody solutions is growing, according to Jameson Lopp, co-founder and CTO of Bitcoin Casa wallet provider. In a conversation with Cointelegraph at Bitcoin 2023, Lopp stated that Casa found it necessary to provide support for Ethereum due to the increase in the number of Ethereum users seeking the service.
Incidents like the FTX crash in 2022 have raised awareness of the need for a secure way to store Ethereum and Ethereum tokens as stablecoins, Lopp said:
“In fact, I have spoken with Casa clients who suffered losses as a result of some of the cave-ins last year. Those who kept their Bitcoin at Home did well, but some of them ended up losing other things, even stablecoins for example, because they had no way to put them in a distributed cold storage setup.”
To respond to this problem, Casa Announced in December that it would add Ethereum support. This decision was “controversial to some,” Lopp said, referring to criticism from Bitcoin (BTC) enthusiasts on social media. However, the company went ahead with the plan anyway because its customers demanded it.
Big coins! pic.twitter.com/csoiNaUYup
—Jameson Lopp (@lopp) May 18, 2023
According to Lopp, users still perceive self-monitoring as having a daunting “learning curve.” While setting up a wallet and sending crypto to it is easy, practicing proper security habits can be complex, making customers feel self-custody is difficult.
“It certainly can be intimidating if you start by looking at all the literature on how to do security,” he said. But “we’re embedding all of those best practices into the product itself so that it follows the instructions of our software and puts you in a position where (…) you can be human, you can make a mistake, and it won’t result in a catastrophic loss.” ”.
Lopp described the Casa service itself as an “extremely secure cold storage setup with distributed keys.” It originally focused on “mega-whales” willing to spend $10,000 a year on escrow, but has expanded its offerings to the point of even offering a free version with limited features today.
Related: How to use a crypto hardware wallet
The concept of cryptographic self-custody began with the first Bitcoin wallet, BitcoinQT, developed by Satoshi himself. However, as the crypto user base has grown, many new users have preferred to keep their crypto under the control of centralized exchanges, despite many experts arguing that this practice is risky. Some wallet providers are trying to solve this problem through new technologies that they say will make self-custody easier and attract more users to take control of their crypto assets.
Parts of this story were based on an interview with Jameson Lopp conducted by Sam Bourgi at Bitcoin 2023.
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