Given the choice between safety and convenience, human nature is likely to lead crypto hodlers, like everyone else, the wrong way, said Jameson Lopp, cypherpunk and co-founder of digital asset self-custody solution Casa.
Crypto owners have options, but there are practical and principled implications that have to be considered.
Security needs to be easy to work
In conversation with Cointelegraph’s Sam Bourgi at the Proof-of-Work Summit in Frankfurt, Germany, Lopp said user-friendliness has become a major focus of Casa in light of the human need for convenience. He said:
“I think a lot of people out there who don’t do self-custody don’t realize how easy it has become.”
The adoption of Yubikey support is part of the Casa’s attempts. “We’re the first to ever store Bitcoin private keys on a Yubikey, and we think that’s an order of magnitude usability improvement over a lot of the hardware wallet devices out there that can cause problems for people,” Lopp said.
Although it has been argued that passkeys are more convenient than two-factor authentication involving a Yubikey device, Yubikey remains the acknowledged “gold standard” of security.
Related: Making Vitalik Buterin’s cypherpunk dream for Ethereum a reality
What would Satoshi do?
With the increasing financialization of Bitcoin (BTC), custody is becoming more diverse. Exchange-traded funds store their crypto with trusted third parties, and shareholders have no exposure to crypto at all.
Source: Jameson Lopp
The risk to users from trusting an institution like Fidelity or Coinbase is probably not on the organizational level, Lopp acknowledged, but individuals risk “doing something that was deemed naughty.” That is the same risk a user faces with a credit card or bank account:
“They see it as a self-preservation thing because they have to deal with the regulators and […] make it sure that they’re in compliance with stuff, and so that means that they don’t care about losing your business or kicking you out.”
Casa’s activities are antithetical to a lot of financialization, Lopp said. “Who am I to say what’s the spirit of Bitcoin? But it seems like self-custody was always one of the pinnacle aspects of it.”
Magazine: ‘Elegant and ass-backward’: Jameson Lopp’s first impression of Bitcoin