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Today Trezor, the company that produces the well-known hardware wallet, announced that it has experienced a real boom in sales in recent weeks.
According to their official press release, after the U.S. elections, the company’s sales increased by 600% compared to the average of the previous six months.
Summary
The boom of Trezor hardware wallets
This boom is probably due to two factors.
The first is of a purely commercial nature, given that since last week discount campaigns have been underway in anticipation of BlackFriday.
The second, on the other hand, is of a structural nature.
It is worth pausing a bit on this second structural factor.
Starting from the end of October, a phase began during which several BTC are being withdrawn from exchanges almost every day. In reality, this is a trend that started in February, that is, as soon as ETFs began to purchase more Bitcoin than they were selling, but it has accelerated since the end of October.
The fact is that since November 6, the day of the proclamation of Donald Trump’s victory, this process has further accelerated, so much so that it is difficult to think that it is only due to the purchases of ETFs.
The boom in the sale of hardware wallets effectively certifies that behind the withdrawal of significant amounts of cryptocurrencies from exchanges there is also an increasingly widespread desire to store them privately on non-custodial wallets, probably for the medium/long term.
The dichiarazioni di Trezor
Trezor is probably the first company in the world to have marketed crypto hardware wallets.
It was founded back in 2013 and was the pioneer in the development of self-custody of criptovalute.
His sales data, therefore, can represent a litmus test of how the landscape of cryptocurrency custody is evolving, and it can also give an idea of what users’ preferences are.
In particular, they state that the sales boom occurred precisely in the last week, coinciding with the discount campaign for BlackFriday.
The fact is that it was the most successful sales week in its entire decade-long history.
The company states that at the base of this boom is the strong increase in the price of Bitcoin, and the beginning of a new bull market, with a growing interest in cryptocurrencies and especially in the shift from centralized exchanges to self-custody.
The previous high dated back to May, but this time sales were 11 times higher than the daily average of the last six months.
Self-custody
The key to understanding this phenomenon is precisely the so-called self-custody.
When you delegate the custody of your crypto assets to a custodial wallet, like that of centralized exchanges, you always run the risk of losing access to your funds.
The risks are essentially three.
The first is that the funds are stolen and are no longer available to the user. This is a scenario that has occurred several times, but lately, it is happening less and less often.
The second is that the custodial wallet manager goes bankrupt and closes. Unfortunately, events like these have been happening for several years, and it seems unlikely that they will stop occurring. This is also the main reason why self-custody is generally recommended.
The third is that if the custodial wallet were to have technical problems, for example, a temporary disconnection from the network or a hacker attack, you momentarily lose the ability to use your own assets.
Self-custody also involves risks, but if the non-custodial wallet is stored and protected correctly, and the seed is also stored and protected correctly, the risks are objectively fewer.
Trezor confirms that there is a global phenomenon of increasing self-custody, as Bitcoin reserves on exchanges have dropped to the lowest levels in the last six years. Throughout 2024, approximately 427,000 BTC have been withdrawn from centralized exchanges, so far, with a value of 40 billion dollars.
The comment
The Chief Commercial Officer of Trezor, Danny Sanders, commented on this milestone by saying:
“These unprecedented results highlight the growing interest in cryptocurrencies. A crucial moment was when Bitcoin became one of the topics during the United States presidential elections, which acted as a catalyst for further adoption. Moreover, these extraordinary results have been fueled by a long-term increase in awareness among cryptocurrency users about the importance of self-custody. The mantra ‘not your keys, not your coins’ remains highly relevant, as the market continues to recognize the risks of leaving assets on centralized exchanges, a hard lesson learned from the collapse of numerous exchanges in the past. All this supports the success of our expanded product range with the new Safe and Keep series and the onboarding Expert that simplifies the onboarding of new users onto a hardware wallet”.