As Bitcoin enters 2026 with sustained institutional adoption and value stability following the 2024-2025 bull run, self-custody stays a cornerstone of the asset’s sovereignty promise. But the panorama has advanced considerably. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have unlocked entry to passive traders snug with Wall Avenue’s “belief me, bro” brokerage fashions, whereas bodily assaults on crypto customers have surged to document ranges, referred to as “wrench assaults”. So, is self-custody a factor of the previous, a useless meme many people fell for, or is it reworking as Bitcoin matures?
In a latest interview with Bitcoin Journal, Casa CEO Nick Neuman supplied a candid perspective of those dynamics, positioning his firm’s multisig options as a bridge between the imaginative and prescient of pure self-sovereignty and sensible usability for high-value holders, tailored to take care of trendy safety challenges and even geopolitical threat.
Casa, based in 2018, targets customers securing significant Bitcoin quantities—usually 5 figures or extra—the place monetary freedom is extra vital than comfort. Neuman described Casa’s north star as “maximizing sovereignty and safety on the earth” by means of Bitcoin and personal key cryptography. Lately, this has solidified into “constructing the Swiss financial institution for the sovereign particular person”—a service for many who view cash as integral to non-public autonomy.
Bitcoin Journal has coated the corporate’s progress extensively all through the years, together with a November 2024 interview with Neuman by Frank Corva and a June 2025 story on its partnership with Swiss platform Relai for multisig safety and inheritance planning.
ETFs and the Promise of Comfort
“Not everybody needs to be a sovereign particular person proper now,” Neuman famous when discussing the challenges self-custody faces in 2026, pointing to an more and more apparent actuality: Bitcoin self-custody calls for excessive private accountability and a major quantity of technical competence. These stay true regardless of greatest efforts in person interface design. NVK, the founding father of the Coldcard Q, has joked publicly that attempting to design self-custody merchandise able to resisting nation-state intrusions, with “grandma” ranges of ease of use, is perhaps a pipe dream. On the very least, the persona sort and technical competence wanted for optimum self-custody stay a limiting issue on the conclusion of the cypherpunk utopia.
ETFs supply plug-and-play publicity to a brand new and broad userbase, whereas self-custody appeals principally to high-agency customers unwilling to simply accept black-box custodian dangers — and that’s the excellent news, “at scale, you merely can’t afford to belief that Coinbase or anybody else is getting each course of proper,” he mentioned.
Establishments corresponding to household places of work, companies, custody banks, and funding funds are additionally beginning to perceive the dangers of outsourcing Bitcoin custody. Neuman revealed that “More and more over the past yr, Casa helps giant establishments that must have provable safety and provable management to safe their belongings,” including that establishments “are beginning to notice that in a variety of methods regulators are requiring them to have precise management over this asset.”
In 2025, for instance, the OCC clarified that nationwide banks and federal financial savings associations have the freedom to custody crypto belongings for purchasers, including the caveat that “As with every exercise, a financial institution should conduct crypto-asset custody actions, together with through a sub-custodian, in a secure and sound method and in compliance with relevant regulation”. The GENIUS Act supplied additional construction by giving the inexperienced mild to full reserve Stablecoins in U.S. monetary markets.
The SEC’s January 2025 rescission of SAB 121 (through SAB 122) eliminated capital penalties for crypto custody, making it extra sensible for banks. Some banks publicly recognized to be growing impartial crypto custody platforms for his or her customers embody BNY Mellon, State Avenue, Citi, and JPMorgan. That is in distinction to outsourcing all custody to the most well-liked custodians like Coinbase, which some fear poses systemic dangers to the Bitcoin community and its traders.
Neuman factors out that self-custody multi-signature platforms like Casa deal with the issues and desires of institutional gamers. Multisig requires a number of keys to signal a legitimate transaction, but additionally permits key rotations for personnel adjustments, with added auditability. “If somebody who managed a key leaves, you possibly can rotate that key out utterly… We make that course of easy, and for establishments, we’ve added further guardrails, auditability, and visibility,” mentioned Neuman.
On account of this rising development, we would quickly begin to see a wave of competitors in retail going through custodial bank-like providers within the U.S., whereas institutional gamers would possibly start to decouple from the plug-and-play custody outsourcing we have now seen to this point, a step in direction of custody decentralization of Bitcoin.
Defeating Wrench Assaults
Bodily coercion assaults—referred to as “$5 wrench assaults”—reached unprecedented ranges in 2025. Jameson Lopp, Casa’s chief safety officer, maintained a decade-long database, documenting roughly 65–70 incidents, the best on document, with at the very least 4 fatalities. Alena Vranova, co-founder of Trezor, now operating a wrench attack prevention startup known as Glok.me, locations the quantity at 292, breaking down the information into numerous classes.
France emerged as a hotspot, with at the very least 10 reported wrench assaults in 2025, usually linked to tax reporting, doubtlessly exposing addresses and identities, together with a case the place a tax official was convicted for promoting taxpayer information to criminals. The US is main the pack in complete numbers of recognized crypto-related assaults.
Nonetheless, you will need to weigh information of this kind with a grain of salt. It needs to be thought-about on a per capita foundation, as nations just like the U.S. have near 400 million residents in comparison with France with round 70 million. Comparisons to fiat fraud like id theft and different types of violent crime are sometimes not included in these sort statistics. It’s however an alarming development and a standard speaking level, giving crypto customers pause when deciding to take self-custody.
Neuman believes, nevertheless, that the general public is misunderstanding the issue at hand, pondering that giving custody to a 3rd occasion is definitely the answer; it isn’t. He shared a non-violent case that challenges this “simply use a custodian” narrative: A Casa consumer was drugged and coerced at a bar. Funds in Casa’s multisig stayed safe because of dispersed keys — the person didn’t have sufficient keys on him to signal a transaction — however a small Coinbase stability was drained from the consumer’s cellphone app. “It simply utterly flips the prevailing knowledge,” Neuman famous, “Really, that doesn’t at all times clear up the issue.”
Finest practices on this entrance revolve round not turning into a goal within the first place, as in not turning into an influencer flaunting crypto wealth. But it surely additionally means not exposing information that reveals you’ve gotten crypto wealth, a privateness threat legacy finance is especially weak to, as seen by the unimaginable rise in monetary information hacks and identity theft. Although {hardware} pockets producers like Ledger have suffered a number of fee infrastructure-related hacks which have resulted in person information being compromised, placing customers in danger.
Casa counters bodily threats of this kind with multisig key distribution, making it in order that customers shouldn’t have sufficient entry to their Bitcoin to have the ability to ship all of it underneath duress. The app additionally consists of an emergency lockdown characteristic, and the restoration key Casa holds in these multi-sig accounts gained’t co-sign a transaction with out correct authentication. Customers can configure their Casa service to require video verifications and pre-arranged duress procedures. “If in case you have used our product accurately and adopted our steerage, you could be assured that the attacker at the very least gained’t get your cash,” Neuman defined.
Casa’s pseudonymous help—permitting customers to keep away from sharing names, faces, or places—attracts from Lopp’s personal experiences, together with being swatted, and is embedded within the firm’s privacy-focused DNA.
Geopolitical Hedge
The brokerage mannequin of Bitcoin custody, corresponding to ETFs, additional insulates customers from organized crime varieties of wrench assaults, however introduces new dangers like rehypothecation – sale of pretend shares or under-collateralized paper Bitcoin. Moreover, Neuman factors out that criminals may nonetheless come after ETF customers, pondering they’ve self-custody bitcoin as nicely, “it doesn’t actually clear up the issue of you getting harm.” ETFs are additionally weak to politically motivated persecution.
Casa has noticed this particular use case, which it refers to as a geopolitical hedge, the place political operatives or influencers defend their wealth from the present political administration of their nations, in instances after they discover themselves on the again foot. “Proper now, we see that Democrats are anxious in regards to the Trump administration confiscating their cash… However 4 years in the past… we had individuals who had been Republicans doing the very same factor,” Neuman defined.
Shoppers of this kind arrange Bitcoin wallets which might be outdoors of the speedy attain of the present administration, by, for instance, giving a key to a regulation agency outdoors of the nation, positioned in international secure deposit packing containers, with trustees, or members of the family, guaranteeing mobility if home belongings are frozen. Casa’s restoration key additionally offers on a regular basis usability with out frequent journey, with handbook authentication of the person. Bitcoin, on this instance, serves as an answer to what you would possibly as nicely name a nation-state-level wrench assault.
Self-Custody Insurance coverage
A brand new technology of insurance coverage has additionally emerged to serve Bitcoin holders who take self-custody. Particularly, firms like AnchorWatch and Bitsurance defend person wealth as much as sure limits backed by giants like Lloyd’s of London. If a person does get kidnapped, they’ll doubtlessly hand over their insured cash, minimizing hurt to themselves, after which name their insurer, who can have a robust incentive to stop that from taking place.
Neuman acknowledged the innovation however highlighted limitations: “When lots of people take into consideration insurance coverage with their self-custody, they’re excited about… inexpensive insurance coverage… And that simply doesn’t exist.” Broad protection usually requires transaction approvals, growing supplier reliance—a compromise many sovereign customers reject. Casa, however, has explored partnerships with this rising insurance coverage business.
The Self-Custody Specialist
the consumer advisory function in bitcoin self-custody, specialised group, story or two? quote. ledger display story rofl.
Casa has additionally developed a specialised advisory group, centered on serving its consumer base with instruments the corporate developed. Advisors full a six-month coaching program, shadowing specialists who serve purchasers in emergency conditions, in addition to reply regular questions and educate their customers. “Our advisors convey humanity to Bitcoin, they usually convey humanity to serving to you be a sovereign particular person… that’s actually useful on this world of don’t belief confirm,” Neuman mentioned.
Shoppers reward advisors by title. A latest Bitcoin pockets rescue mission by Casa saved 100 BTC for a pseudonymous consumer with a Ledger {hardware} pockets whose display had died—advisors shipped a alternative Ledger and guided the person to switch the display themselves. A case research is forthcoming.
Open-Supply and Self-Custody
With a lean group of about 35, Casa optimizes for longevity, open-sourcing software program merchandise selectively, like their latest YubiKey integration. Their pockets, whereas not open-source, doesn’t are inclined to do transaction signing, since its person base primarily indicators transactions with {hardware} wallets which might be usually already open-source. The Casa app primarily helps customers assemble the mandatory key materials, and in line with Neuman, the Casa app’s behaviour could be verified and replicated through the use of superior desktop wallets like Sparrow.
General, whereas some latest tendencies seem to place self-custody on the again foot, the cypherpunk imaginative and prescient continues to maneuver ahead, seeking to deal with real-world person wants and threats, one step at a time. Quietly growing a brand new layer of property rights protection that the best company participant on the earth is now keenly conscious of.
