TLDR
Casa’s Jameson Lopp urged Bitcoin holders to keep self custody in an October 22 open letter.
He said Bitcoin ETFs and custodians do not remove risk, but shift it to other parties.
Recent exploits hit Coldcard, Ledger devices sold by a reseller, and Qubic wallets.
Lopp recommends multisig wallets with keys spread across locations and hardware suppliers.
He also urged holders to plan for inheritance and loss of access.
Casa chief security officer Jameson Lopp has urged Bitcoin holders to keep control of their own coins. He made the call in an October 22 open letter to Casa clients and the wider Bitcoin community.
The letter follows a string of wallet security incidents. These include hackers using AI to find flaws, tampered hardware wallets, drained cold wallets and more advanced scams.
Lopp said the attacks raise real concerns about managing private keys. But he argued they do not justify giving up direct control of Bitcoin.
He noted that many of these attacks were already known to security experts. Seeing them in real incidents has made the risks harder for ordinary holders to ignore.
An open letter to the Bitcoin ecosystem: pic.twitter.com/nTt9iZBFrN
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) October 22, 2026
Lopp Says Bitcoin ETFs Do Not Remove Custody Risk
Lopp pushed back on the idea that Bitcoin exchange traded funds offer a simple fix. He said handing private keys to another party only shifts the responsibility.
According to Lopp, ETFs give investors price exposure without control of the coins. Investors must rely on the fund, its custodian and others to keep the assets safe.
He warned that holders could have little say over their Bitcoin, including freezes or seizures by authorities. He said Bitcoin’s core traits are its fixed supply, public rules and access without permission from a middleman.
Some holders have already moved assets to centralized platforms. In August, crypto.news reported record inflows at OKX after the Coldcard hardware wallet exploit.
Recent Wallet Exploits Raise Security Questions
The Coldcard case involved a firmware setup error dating back to March 2021. Affected devices created recovery seeds using a weaker source of randomness.
An August 3 report linked the flaw to suspected Bitcoin thefts worth nearly $90 million at the time. Attackers could rebuild private keys without touching the devices.
Kraken chief security officer Nick Percoco called for independent testing of wallet seed generation. Coldcard released fixed firmware, but users with affected seeds had to create new wallets and move their funds.
On October 13, an investigation detailed compromised Ledger wallets sold through Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis. Ledger confirmed an unauthorized hardware implant in one device, but the probe did not find its own systems or direct sales channels were compromised.
On October 18, Qubic disclosed that about 2.94 trillion QU tokens worth $1.4 million were stolen from 1,404 wallets. Developers traced it to weak randomness in some recovery seeds and fixed the software.
Lopp said the answer to failed security is better wallet protection, not giving up self custody. Drawing on more than 15 years of industry incidents, he said custody plans must allow for human error.
He favors multisignature wallets, which require more than one private key to approve a transaction. This means one stolen key cannot unlock all the funds.
Lopp said multisig is not a complete solution on its own. He urged holders to spread keys across different locations and hardware suppliers.
The letter also covered inheritance planning, including what happens if an owner can no longer manage their Bitcoin. Casa offers assisted self custody and does not hold customers’ private keys.
Lopp closed the letter with a warning. He said both criminals and well meaning middlemen could end up controlling someone else’s Bitcoin, leaving holders to decide how much control to give up.
The post Casa’s Jameson Lopp Warns Bitcoin Holders Not to Give Up Self Custody appeared first on Blockonomi .
