As Viliam Klamarcik, CEO of Vexl, explained in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, “we are an application that helps people to buy and sell Bitcoin directly with each other, without any intermediaries, without KYC. Vexl works without custody, so peer-to-peer, but what’s most important is that it is always within your own community, meaning we are not a global marketplace. We are basically a peer-to-peer notice board where you can connect with your first and second-level connections.”

At its core, Vexl prioritizes privacy, functioning as a high-trust notice board within your personal social network, rather than an exchange. It does not escrow Bitcoin or fiat, it does not hold user funds, nor store balances, messages, or personal data. All communications occur via end-to-end encrypted chats, and trades happen off-app, placing responsibility on users to verify counterparts. This design aligns with Vexl’s mission to support non-KYC Bitcoin acquisition and local economies, as confirmed on the app’s official website, which states, “We do not store any personal information or any of your messages, period.”

User connections in Vexl are built on a web-of-trust model, drawing from imported phone contacts to create a personalized order book. Offers are visible only to first- and second-degree connections—your contacts and their contacts—enhancing liquidity while maintaining high trust through shared social links. This limits exposure to strangers, reducing scam risks, and usernames remain anonymous until users mutually reveal identities. Klamarcik noted, “The biggest difference between Vexel and the other applications is, first of all, its web of trust, which means you don’t trade with users; you trade with people with whom you are connected through real social links.” The app’s privacy measures include hashing contact data and separating components like profiles, chats, offers, and contacts into microservices that converge only on the user’s device, ensuring no centralized database exists.

To enable this system, Vexl requires a phone number for registration, serving as proof of humanity to deter bots and facilitating contact imports. Privacy concerns are addressed through encryption and hashing; as the website affirms, “Your chats always remain encrypted, while the phone numbers are hashed.” Klamarcik acknowledged imperfections but emphasized its necessity: “The phone numbers are a big topic, and we are aware of that. And it’s not perfect, but also it’s probably the best solution that we have out there to build trust upon that.” This mirrors mechanisms in apps like Signal and major social networks, primarily as a spam-prevention and authentication tool.

For users hesitant to import full contacts—particularly in privacy-focused regions like Germany—Vexl offers “clubs,” curated groups managed by local moderators, often meetup organizers. These act as public rooms where members can view offers without broad network sharing, though trust shifts to the moderator. Entry requires a one-time code or QR scan, regenerable for security, providing an onboarding boost for newcomers until they build direct connections.

Vexl is available on both Android and iOS, but iOS users face restrictions.

The app is not officially listed on the App Store, limited to TestFlight beta slots or sideloading in the EU, due to Apple’s claims of “reckless behavior” for encouraging in-person trades (Tinder, however, remains in iOS without restrictions). Android offers seamless access via Google Play or APK downloads, making it the optimal platform for unrestricted use.

Vexl runs under a non-profit foundation model, accepting donations and grants to preserve its privacy and peer-to-peer ethos. On the topic, Klamarcik said, “From the very beginning, Vexl was intended as a gift to the Bitcoin community: an open-source tool built to help people transact peer-to-peer, without custody, surveillance, or extracting value from users. The project operates as a non-profit with an essential goal in its core – to keep bitcoin usable in everyday life and accessible to anyone, anywhere. Funding through donations and grants allows Vexl to stay focused on building simple, resilient tools for freedom. As an open-source project supported by SatoshiLabs, the creators of the Trezor hardware wallet, Vexl follows a long tradition of building infrastructure first.” Vexl is fully open source and is a project by Satoshi Labs, the creators of the Trezor hardware wallet.

The non-profit model has become increasingly popular among privacy-focused projects, as for-profit incentives tend to lead to data collection business models like advertisement, while Bitcoin-specific privacy apps have been actively prosecuted on the basis of monetizing “money laundering”. Samourai Wallet’s founders were accused of money laundering conspiracy, though ultimately were only imprisoned for unlicensed money transmission charges, after facilitating over $2 billion in transactions via a non-custodial Bitcoin wallet. Tornado Cash faced U.S. sanctions in 2022 for billions in volume, under similar charges for a service that profited from giving Ethereum users basic financial privacy. These cases highlight how privacy-focused entities are being targeted by governments.

Looking ahead, Klamarcik signaled expansion: “This year is hopefully going to be the year when we actually go overseas and also focus on markets outside of Europe when it makes sense.”

• Ales Michl published his opinion on Bitcoin amid the LIBRA scandal.
• The head of the CNB believes that central banks should study the technology on which it is based.
• He distinguished Bitcoin from other crypto assets and advised them to carefully weigh all risks when investing.

The head of the Czech National Bank (CNB), Ales Michl, urged not to equate Bitcoin with other crypto assets. His comment came against the backdrop of the scandal surrounding the LIBRA token and the involvement of Argentine President Javier Miley in its promotion.

Recall that Michl made a proposal to invest part of the CNB reserves in the first cryptocurrency. In his opinion, counterparties in the banking sector need to study the technology on which it was created and adapt to new market conditions.

The Board has accepted this proposal. The regulator will analyze the potential benefits of investing part of the central bank's reserves in Bitcoin and then make a final decision.

Michl's initiative, however, was met with criticism, even though he admitted that Bitcoin remains an extremely volatile and risky asset. In particular, European Central Bank Chairwoman Christine Lagarde said that none of the Eurozone banks would invest in the first cryptocurrency.

In his note, Michl emphasized that the crypto asset market is still in its infancy and will experience ups and downs. However, this does not apply to the first cryptocurrency:

"Bitcoin is a completely different story. It should not be equated with other crypto assets. We as central bankers must study it and research the technology on which it is based. Learning Bitcoin will not harm us – on the contrary, it will strengthen us.”

In the publication, Michl did not specify what ups and downs he was talking about. However, his comment came against the backdrop of a scandal surrounding the memcoin LIBRA, which was launched with the support of Argentine President Javier Miley.

Miley is threatened with impeachment. In addition, information appeared in the press that the creators of the project paid his sister to promote Memcoin. According to media reports, the latter wants to resign.

“It’s the only VPN that you can trust basically. You don’t need to trust it, actually, you can verify”. At shells.com, his personal cloud computing platform, he’s quietly developing an unreleased AI agent system that hands artificial intelligence full control over a virtual machine: installing software, managing emails, and even handling purchases with a planned credit card integration. “What I’m doing with shells is giving AI a whole computer and free rein on the computer”, a brilliant idea, really. AI agents on steroids.

The contrast with his past could not be starker. Fifteen years ago, Karpelès was the reluctant king of Bitcoin’s trading world, running Mt. Gox at a time when the exchange processed the vast majority of global bitcoin trades.

His journey began innocently enough in 2010. Operating a web hosting company called Tibanne under the brand Kalyhost, Karpelès received a request from a French customer based in Peru who was frustrated with international payment hurdles. “He’s the one who discovered Bitcoin, and asked me if he could use Bitcoin to pay for my services … I was probably one of the first companies to implement Bitcoin payments back in 2010”.

Roger Ver, an early evangelist, became a frequent visitor to Karpelès’ office. Unknowingly, his servers also hosted a domain linked to Silk Road—silkroadmarket.org—purchased anonymously with bitcoin. That connection would later fuel investigations: U.S. authorities briefly suspected Karpelès of being Dread Pirate Roberts himself. “That was actually one of the main arguments why I was investigated by U.S. law enforcement as maybe the guy behind the Silk Road… They thought that I was Dread Pirate Roberts”. The association complicated public perception and even surfaced in Ross Ulbricht’s trial, where, according to Karpelès, Ulbricht’s defense efforts briefly tried to cast doubt by linking Karpelès to the marketplace.

In 2011, Karpelès acquired Mt. Gox from Jed McCaleb, who went on to found Ripple and Stellar. The handover was marred from the start. “Between the time I signed the contract and the time I got access to the server, 80,000 bitcoins were stolen… Jed was adamant that we couldn’t tell users about it,” Karpelès alleged to Bitcoin Magazine. McCaleb faced no criminal liability for the Mt. Gox case, though he has been sued civilly and has been part of the public discourse around the case. Nevertheless, as far as Karpelès is concerned, he inherited a platform plagued by poor code and technical issues.

Mt. Gox exploded in popularity, becoming the primary on-ramp for millions entering Bitcoin. Karpelès maintained strict policies, banning users linked to illicit activities like drug purchases on Silk Road. “If you’re going to buy drugs with Bitcoin, in a country where drugs are illegal, you shouldn’t”, Karpelès told Bitcoin Magazine.

The Mt. Gox empire crumbled in 2014 when hacks—later tied to Alexander Vinnik and the BTC-e exchange—drained over 650,000 bitcoins. Vinnik pleaded guilty in the U.S. but was exchanged in a prisoner swap and returned to Russia without a trial, leaving evidence sealed. “It doesn’t feel like justice has been served,” said Karpelès, a moment that makes you wonder about the odd political value of Vinnik to the Russians. The 650,000 bitcoins stolen remain at large.

The fallout was swift. Arrested in August 2015, Karpelès endured eleven and a half months in Japanese custody—a system notorious for its rigidity and psychological pressure. Early detention mixed him with colorful cellmates: Yakuza members, drug dealers, fraudsters. He passed the time teaching English, and inmates quickly dubbed him “Mr. Bitcoin” after spotting blanked-out headlines about him in newspapers given to them by the prison guards. One Yakuza even tried recruiting him, slipping a phone number for post-release contact. “… Of course I’m not going to be calling that,” Karpelès laughed.

The psychological tactics were brutal. Japanese police employed repeated rearrests: after 23 days, detainees were led to believe release was imminent, only to face a new warrant at the door. “They really make you think that you’re free and yeah, no, not you’re not free… That’s actually quite a toll in terms of mental health”.

Transferred to Tokyo Detention Center, conditions worsened: over six months in solitary confinement on a floor shared with death row inmates. “It’s still quite painful to spend more than six months in solitary confinement,” he recalled. Forbidden from letters or visits if claiming innocence, he coped by rereading books and writing stories—”the stuff I wrote is really crappy. I wouldn’t show it to anyone,” he said when asked if he would ever publish his writings. Armed with 20,000 pages of accounting records and a basic calculator purchased for his case, he dismantled embezzlement charges by uncovering $5 million in unreported revenue in the exchange.

Paradoxically, prison improved his health dramatically. Chronic sleep deprivation—often just two hours a night during his workaholic Mt. Gox days—gave way to regular rest. “Sleeping at night helps a lot… when I work I’m used to only sleeping two hours a night, which is a very, very bad habit” (00:22:18). Emerging physically transformed—”shredded,” as observers noted at the time—he surprised the Bitcoin community with fresh photos showing peak condition.

Released on bail after disproving key charges, Karpelès was convicted only on lighter record-falsification counts at the end of the ordeal. The Silk Road links had complicated perceptions, with Ross Ulbricht’s defense briefly attempting to implicate him to create plausible deniability for Ulbricht. Public narratives often painted him as complicit in Bitcoin’s dark side, despite his policies against it.

Emerging in 2016, rumors swirled of vast personal wealth from Mt. Gox’s remaining assets—once estimated at hundreds of millions or even billions due to Bitcoin’s price surge. Yet Karpelès says he receives nothing. The bankruptcy’s pivot to civil rehabilitation allowed creditors to claim in bitcoins, distributing value proportionally. I like to use technology to solve problems, and so I don’t really even do any kind of investment or anything like that because I like to make money by constructing things. To just get a payout for something that’s essentially a failure for me would feel very wrong, and at the same time, I’d want customers to get the money as much as possible.” Creditors, many now receiving far more in dollar terms due to Bitcoin’s rise, continue waiting.

Today, Karpelès collaborates with Roger Ver—the early visitor turned business partner—who recently settled U.S. tax claims for nearly $50 million. “I’m happy for him that he’s finally getting things cleared,” Karpelès said.

Today, Karpelès says he owns no bitcoin personally, though his businesses accept it as a form of payment. Discussing the current state of Bitcoin, he critiqued centralization risks in ETFs and figures like Michael Saylor: “This is a recipe for catastrophe… I like to believe in crypto in mathematics and different things, but I don’t believe in people”. On FTX: “They were running accounting on QuickBooks for a potentially multi-billion dollar company, which is crazy”.

From Bitcoin’s epicenter—hosting Silk Road links, onboarding the world, enduring Japan’s harshest detention—to building verifiable privacy tools, Karpelès’ arc reflects the industry’s maturation. His story marks the first roar of Bitcoin into mainstream culture, a time when his leadership as CEO of Mt. Gox placed him at the center of the storm. Clearest of all, his builder mindset remains a great example of the type of engineer and entrepreneur attracted to Bitcoin in those early days.

Modeled after the Bitcoin and Lightning dev kits — which have become quite popular among wallet developers — and built with the same cryptographic primitives already in Bitcoin core, such that it can be easily integrated into the main Bitcoin implementation, Async Payjoin is designed from the bottom up for mass adoption.

Following in the footsteps of Let’s Encrypt, which in the 2010s led the mass adoption of HTTPS on the web via open source, free software tooling, Async Payjoin looks to solve Bitcoin’s biggest privacy pain points through an open privacy standard. Unlike specific privacy-focused wallets like Samourai Wallet and Wasabi, Async Payjoin is a software library that any bitcoin payments app can integrate, joining an open standard of privacy, similar to HTTPS on the web.

Async Payjoin is also referred to as Payjoin V2 by the Foundation, as it differs from V1, an older implementation that requires both users to be online while they transact for the Payjoin to work. A growing list of Bitcoin wallets support the Payjoin Foundation’s V1 and V2 standards today, including:

• BTCPay server – V1
• Blue Wallet – V1
• Bull Bitcoin Mobile – V2
• Wasabi Wallet – V1
• Cake Wallet – V2
• Bitmask – V1
• JoinMarket – V1
• Sparrow Wallet – V1

Async Payjoin is backwards compatible, such that users with wallets that do not support the standard yet can still send to Payjoin addresses and QR codes without friction to the users. Fans of Bitcoin privacy should ask their favorite wallet providers to integrate this open source standard, which developers can find a technical reference for at Bip 77, alongside their plug-and-play dev kit on GitHub.

The PayJoin Foundation Team

The nonprofit PayJoin Foundation, launched in August 2025 to sustain open-source privacy development, receives funding from OpenSats and Cake Wallet, while Spiral, Human Rights Foundation, Maelstrom, and Btrust have supported many of the open-source developers who contributed to the project. Their GitHub shows 37 contributors just on the Rust implementation of Async Payjoin.

Development of the Async Payjoin protocol, also known as Payjoin V2 via Bip 77, is spearheaded by Dan Gould, executive director of the Payjoin Foundation and lead maintainer of the Payjoin DevKit. Dan has pioneered Bitcoin privacy tools since the TumbleBit era, forked Wasabi Wallet for mobile use, and co-authored BIP 77 with Yuval Kogman, advisory board member and Spiral Bitcoin Wizard with over two decades of programming experience. Kogman has done extensive work in the Bitcoin privacy field, such as developing WabiSabi DoS protections and whistleblowing vulnerabilities in various CoinJoin implementations.

Armin Sabouri has also joined the team as R&D lead with prior roles as CTO at Botanix and engineer at Casa, co-winner of the 2021 MIT Bitcoin Hackathon by getting Bip 78 CoinJoin working on Mac OS via Tor, and is a co-author of BIP 347 (OP_CAT).

Gould told Bitcoin Magazine that they are always fundraising and that “none of this work is possible without the funders.” He also went into detail about why they decided to start a Payjoin foundation rather than a for-profit entity, saying that “Bitcoin privacy — for-profits have basically been killed.”

According to Gould, a nonprofit is more sustainable to solve the problem because it aligns the incentives; “I think the for-profits have an incentive to sell something that doesn’t necessarily guarantee privacy because if they make a sale, they earn profit. And we’ve seen on the internet that it was attempted. Phil Zimmerman started a company that developed PGP. But HTTPS was a decentralized nonprofit effort, as was Tor”. Gould says the Payjoin Foundation has applied for 501 (c) (3) status, which is pending approval. Donors can contact him at donate@payjoin.org.

How does Payjoin work?

Payjoin provides privacy to Bitcoin by breaking a common pattern of normal transactions, where the sender has one input that gets split up into two to make a payment. Of the resulting outputs, one is likely to be the payment and the other the change back to the sender.

Users often have multiple UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs), which are like pockets of coins. If a transaction tries to send more than is in one UTXO, it will pull from another, linking two of these pockets of coins, which up until that point might have had no connection to each other on the chain. This reduces the privacy of users in the eyes of blockchain analysts, who can assume the two UTXO packets belong to the same entity.

Payjoin dissolves the standard input heuristic by facilitating coordination between the sender and the receiver, resulting in transactions that appear to have two inputs and two outputs, where one of the inputs is from the receiver. The receiver gets the same amount he is expecting; both parties simply coordinate on the amounts and co-create the transaction. As a result, what would have been a single-input, two-output transaction now has two inputs and two outputs, confusing on-chain analysts. The more transactions of this type exist, the less reliable the single-input heuristic becomes, resulting in more privacy for all users, as the core assumption of on-chain analysis breaks down.

This process is entirely non custodial, with full control over amounts signed and sent by both parties, it is atomic, if both parties don’t agree, the transaction is not valid.

Gould cautioned about how much information is leaked with normal bitcoin transactions today, referring to organizations like Chain Analysis, which can, in some circumstances, get access to exchange user data to try and identify owners of a given UTXO, “if you snoop on that, you can see who you’ve transferred money to in the past. You can see who someone transfers money to in the future. You can see how much money someone has. You can see how much money someone makes.”

Enhancements to Bitcoin privacy of this sort are crucial to the success of Bitcoin as they enforce the fungibility of the asset, an important quality of sound money. Fungibility means that all coins are considered equal and interchangeable; one is not different from the other based on its history.

Cryptocurrencies that focus on maximizing on-chain privacy, like Zcash or Monero, offer higher default degrees of on-chain privacy by encrypting the amounts transferred among parties. This, however, comes at a high cost; validation of the total supply of coins in these alternative cryptocurrencies is much more complicated. As a result, bugs in the related cryptography could lead to inflation bugs that are undetectable, a risk which undermines scarcity, another critical quality of sound money.

Payjoin in turn provides Bitcoin a higher degree of on-chain privacy without encrypting the amounts transferred between parties, respecting the scarcity of Bitcoin while enhancing fungibility. The main trade-off is that it can not be a protocol-level change; it needs wallet adoption and thus user engagement.

It’s also important to note that fiat-level privacy already protects users from third-party analysis by being a closed private system, or tries to anyway. Government agencies and executives working at banks have much greater visibility into user balances, but organized crime does not. There are also many laws in countries throughout the world defending user financial privacy, which Async Payjoin is looking to elevate Bitcoin to.

Network privacy and the client-server V2 model, the Async part of the protocol.

One of the challenges historically with traditional Payjoin is that it required both parties to be online to coordinate the creation of the transaction. To solve this, Payjoin V2 introduces a blinded directory server to provide asynchronous Payjoin coordination among parties, using the well-known Internet standard, Oblivious HTTP.

Gould told Bitcoin Magazine that “the cool thing is the protocol has the directory server blinded. The directory server is only reachable by oblivious HTTP, which is basically a forced proxy. So the IP addresses (of users) are never leaked to the directory server.” Adding that, “the payload (pre-signed transaction) is actually end-to-end encrypted between the sender and the receiver anyway. So the directory just gets an 8-kilobyte uniform encrypted blob. They don’t see anything.”

In fact, Gould compared the use of OHTTP to Tor, explaining that “The reason we used it is because it’s a web standard. So it’s gone through the rigorous review process. OHTTP is literally supported in the iOS operating system. It’s used in browsers.” adding that “OHTTP it’s kind of like the minimal viable product of Tor where Tor layers encryption and does multiple hops and this is just the most minimal version where you just have one hop. You just have one layer of encryption.” Similar multi-hop network encryption is used in the Lightning network to protect user privacy.

The Payjoin V2 servers provide no financial reward to those who run them, similar to Tor exit nodes, which have sustained these privacy networks on a volunteer basis for decades.

What about compliance?

Regulators and, as a result, exchange operators often have concerns about Bitcoin privacy technologies, as they are perceived to be in conflict with topics of compliance. Gould considers this a misconception, saying that “the reality is that a compliance regime is totally independent from the nature of the chain. If an exchange wants to collect your baby’s name, know the place you live, your phone number, and what source of funds, having privacy by default doesn’t stop them from doing that. Doesn’t stop them from asking for it in order to do business with the user.” Adding that “It just doesn’t give them complete insight into your whole wallet, past, present, and future. So it puts the power to consent to reveal the information about your money in your own hands.”

Spot Bitcoin ETFs have unlocked access to passive investors comfortable with Wall Street’s “trust me, bro” brokerage models, while physical attacks on crypto users have surged to record levels, known as “wrench attacks”. So, is self-custody a thing of the past, a dead meme many of us fell for, or is it transforming as Bitcoin matures?

In a recent interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Casa CEO Nick Neuman provided a candid perspective of these dynamics, positioning his company’s multisig solutions as a bridge between the vision of pure self-sovereignty and practical usability for high-value holders, tailor-made to deal with modern security challenges and even geopolitical risk.

Casa, founded in 2018, targets users securing meaningful Bitcoin amounts—typically five figures or more—where financial freedom is more important than convenience. Neuman described Casa’s north star as “maximizing sovereignty and security in the world” through Bitcoin and private key cryptography. In recent years, this has solidified into “building the Swiss bank for the sovereign individual”—a service for those who view money as integral to personal autonomy.

Bitcoin Magazine has covered the company’s progress extensively throughout the years, including a November 2024 interview with Neuman by Frank Corva and a June 2025 story on its partnership with Swiss platform Relai for multisig security and inheritance planning.

ETFs and the Promise of Convenience

“Not everyone wants to be a sovereign individual right now,” Neuman noted when discussing the challenges self-custody faces in 2026, pointing to an increasingly obvious reality: Bitcoin self-custody demands high personal responsibility and a significant amount of technical competence. These remain true despite best efforts in user interface design. NVK, the founder of the Coldcard Q, has joked publicly that trying to design self-custody products capable of resisting nation-state intrusions, with “grandma” levels of ease of use, might be a pipe dream. At the very least, the personality type and technical competence needed for maximum self-custody remain a limiting factor on the realization of the cypherpunk utopia.

ETFs offer plug-and-play exposure to a new and broad userbase, while self-custody appeals mostly to high-agency users unwilling to accept black-box custodian risks — and that’s the good news, “at scale, you simply can’t afford to trust that Coinbase or anyone else is getting every process right,” he said.

Institutions such as family offices, corporations, custody banks, and investment funds are also starting to understand the risks of outsourcing Bitcoin custody. Neuman revealed that “Increasingly over the last year, Casa is helping large institutions that need to have provable security and provable control to secure their assets,” adding that institutions “are starting to realize that in a lot of ways regulators are requiring them to have actual control over this asset.”

In 2025, for example, the OCC clarified that national banks and federal savings associations have the liberty to custody crypto assets for clients, adding the caveat that “As with any activity, a bank must conduct crypto-asset custody activities, including via a sub-custodian, in a safe and sound manner and in compliance with applicable law”. The GENIUS Act provided further structure by giving the green light to full reserve Stablecoins in U.S. financial markets.

The SEC’s January 2025 rescission of SAB 121 (via SAB 122) removed capital penalties for crypto custody, making it more practical for banks. Some banks publicly known to be developing independent crypto custody platforms for their users include BNY Mellon, State Street, Citi, and JPMorgan. This is in contrast to outsourcing all custody to the most popular custodians like Coinbase, which some worry poses systemic risks to the Bitcoin network and its investors.

Neuman points out that self-custody multi-signature platforms like Casa address the concerns and needs of institutional players. Multisig requires multiple keys to sign a valid transaction, but also enables key rotations for personnel changes, with added auditability. “If someone who controlled a key leaves, you can rotate that key out completely… We make that process straightforward, and for institutions, we’ve added extra guardrails, auditability, and visibility,” said Neuman.

As a result of this growing trend, we might soon start to see a wave of competition in retail facing custodial bank-like services in the U.S., while institutional players might begin to decouple from the plug-and-play custody outsourcing we have seen so far, a step towards custody decentralization of Bitcoin.

Defeating Wrench Attacks

Physical coercion attacks—known as “$5 wrench attacks”—reached unprecedented levels in 2025. Jameson Lopp, Casa’s chief security officer, maintained a decade-long database, documenting approximately 65–70 incidents, the highest on record, with at least four fatalities. Alena Vranova, co-founder of Trezor, now running a wrench attack prevention startup called Glok.me, places the number at 292, breaking down the data into various categories.

France emerged as a hotspot, with at least 10 reported wrench attacks in 2025, often linked to tax reporting, potentially exposing addresses and identities, including a case where a tax official was convicted for selling taxpayer data to criminals. The United States is leading the pack in total numbers of known crypto-related attacks.

However, it is important to weigh data of this sort with a grain of salt. It should be considered on a per capita basis, as countries like the U.S. have close to 400 million residents compared to France with around 70 million. Comparisons to fiat fraud like identity theft and other forms of violent crime are often not included in these type statistics. It is nevertheless an alarming trend and a common talking point, giving crypto users pause when deciding to take self-custody.

Neuman believes, however, that the public is misunderstanding the problem at hand, thinking that giving custody to a third party is actually the solution; it is not. He shared a non-violent case that challenges this “just use a custodian” narrative: A Casa client was drugged and coerced at a bar. Funds in Casa’s multisig stayed secure due to dispersed keys — the user did not have enough keys on him to sign a transaction — but a small Coinbase balance was drained from the client’s phone app. “It just completely flips the prevailing wisdom,” Neuman noted, “Actually, that doesn’t always solve the problem.”

Best practices on this front revolve around not becoming a target in the first place, as in not becoming an influencer flaunting crypto wealth. But it also means not exposing data that reveals you have crypto wealth, a privacy risk legacy finance is particularly vulnerable to, as seen by the incredible rise in financial data hacks and identity theft. Though hardware wallet manufacturers like Ledger have suffered multiple payment infrastructure-related hacks that have resulted in user data being compromised, putting users at risk.

Casa counters physical threats of this sort with multisig key distribution, making it so that users do not have enough access to their Bitcoin to be able to send it all under duress. The app also includes an emergency lockdown feature, and the recovery key Casa holds in these multi-sig accounts won’t co-sign a transaction without proper authentication. Users can configure their Casa service to require video verifications and pre-arranged duress procedures. “If you have used our product correctly and followed our guidance, you can be assured that the attacker at least won’t get your money,” Neuman explained.

Casa’s pseudonymous support—allowing users to avoid sharing names, faces, or locations—draws from Lopp’s own experiences, including being swatted, and is embedded in the company’s privacy-focused DNA.

Geopolitical Hedge

The brokerage model of Bitcoin custody, such as ETFs, further insulates users from organized crime types of wrench attacks, but introduces new risks like rehypothecation – sale of fake shares or under-collateralized paper Bitcoin. Furthermore, Neuman points out that criminals could still come after ETF users, thinking they have self-custody bitcoin as well, “it doesn’t really solve the problem of you getting hurt.” ETFs are also vulnerable to politically motivated persecution.

Casa has observed this specific use case, which it refers to as a geopolitical hedge, where political operatives or influencers protect their wealth from the current political administration in their countries, in times when they find themselves on the back foot. “Right now, we see that Democrats are worried about the Trump administration confiscating their money… But four years ago… we had people who were Republicans doing the exact same thing,” Neuman explained.

Clients of this sort set up Bitcoin wallets that are outside of the immediate reach of the current administration, by, for example, giving a key to a law firm outside of the country, placed in foreign safe deposit boxes, with trustees, or family members, ensuring mobility if domestic assets are frozen. Casa’s recovery key also provides everyday usability without frequent travel, with manual authentication of the user. Bitcoin, in this example, serves as a solution to what you might as well call a nation-state-level wrench attack.

Self-Custody Insurance

A new generation of insurance has also emerged to serve Bitcoin holders who take self-custody. Specifically, companies like AnchorWatch and Bitsurance protect user wealth up to certain limits backed by giants like Lloyd’s of London. If a user does get kidnapped, they can potentially give up their insured coins, minimizing harm to themselves, and then call their insurer, who will have a strong incentive to prevent that from happening.

Neuman acknowledged the innovation but highlighted limitations: “When a lot of people think about insurance with their self-custody, they’re thinking about… affordable insurance… And that just doesn’t exist.” Broad coverage often requires transaction approvals, increasing provider reliance—a compromise many sovereign users reject. Casa, nevertheless, has explored partnerships with this emerging insurance industry.

The Self-Custody Specialist

the client advisory role in bitcoin self-custody, specialized team, story or two? quote. ledger screen story rofl.

Casa has also developed a specialized advisory team, focused on serving its client base with tools the company developed. Advisors complete a six-month training program, shadowing experts who serve clients in emergency situations, as well as answer normal questions and educate their users. “Our advisors bring humanity to Bitcoin, and they bring humanity to helping you be a sovereign individual… that’s really valuable in this world of don’t trust verify,” Neuman said.

Clients praise advisors by name. A recent Bitcoin wallet rescue mission by Casa saved 100 BTC for a pseudonymous client with a Ledger hardware wallet whose screen had died—advisors shipped a replacement Ledger and guided the user to replace the screen themselves. A case study is forthcoming.

Open-Source and Self-Custody

With a lean team of about 35, Casa optimizes for longevity, open-sourcing software products selectively, like their recent YubiKey integration. Their wallet, while not open-source, does not tend to do transaction signing, since its user base primarily signs transactions with hardware wallets that are often already open-source. The Casa app primarily helps users assemble the necessary key material, and according to Neuman, the Casa app’s behaviour can be verified and replicated by using advanced desktop wallets like Sparrow.

Overall, while some recent trends appear to put self-custody on the back foot, the cypherpunk vision continues to move forward, looking to address real-world user needs and threats, one step at a time. Quietly developing a new layer of property rights defense that the highest agency player in the world is now keenly aware of.

What is the Pi Cycle Top Indicator?

The Pi Cycle Top Indicator is a tool designed to identify Bitcoin’s market cycle tops. Created by Philip Swift, Managing Director of Bitcoin Magazine Pro in April 2019, this indicator uses a combination of two moving averages to forecast cycle highs:

1. 111-Day Moving Average (111DMA): Represents the shorter-term price trend.
2. 350-Day Moving Average x 2 (350DMA x 2): A multiple of the 350DMA, which captures longer-term trends.

When the 111DMA rises sharply and crosses above the 350DMA x 2, it historically coincides with Bitcoin’s market cycle peak.

The Mathematics Behind the Name

Interestingly, the ratio of 350 to 111 equals approximately 3.153—remarkably close to Pi (3.142). This mathematical quirk gives the indicator its name and highlights the cyclical nature of Bitcoin’s price action over time.

Why Has It Been So Accurate?

The Pi Cycle Top Indicator has been effective in predicting the peaks of Bitcoin’s three most recent market cycles. Its ability to pinpoint the absolute tops reflects Bitcoin’s historically predictable cycles during its adoption growth phase. The indicator essentially captures the point where the market becomes overheated, as reflected by the steep rise of the 111DMA surpassing the 350DMA x 2.

How Can Investors Use This Indicator?

For investors, the Pi Cycle Top Indicator serves as a warning sign that the market may be approaching unsustainable levels. Historically, when the indicator flashes, it has been advantageous to sell Bitcoin near the top of the market cycle. This makes it a valuable tool for those seeking to maximize gains and minimize losses.

However, as Bitcoin matures and integrates further into the global financial system—bolstered by developments like Bitcoin ETFs and institutional adoption—the effectiveness of this indicator may diminish. It remains most relevant during Bitcoin’s early adoption phase.

A Glimpse Into the Future

The big question now is: will the Pi Cycle Top Indicator remain accurate in this cycle? With Bitcoin entering a new era of adoption and market dynamics, its cyclical patterns may evolve. Yet, this tool has proven its worth repeatedly over Bitcoin’s first 15 years, offering investors a reliable gauge of market tops.

Final Thoughts

The Pi Cycle Top Indicator is a testament to Bitcoin’s cyclical nature and the power of mathematical models in understanding its price behavior. While its past accuracy has been unparalleled, only time will tell if it can once again predict Bitcoin’s next market cycle peak. For now, it remains an indispensable tool for those navigating the thrilling highs and lows of Bitcoin.

President-elect Donald Trump's promises to impose tariffs on trading partners and possible retaliation could destabilize markets such as oil, metals and agriculture as traders also look to stimulus from China to boost consumption, the bank said in its 2025 outlook.

"We expect much of the mix to decline in 2025, with supply and demand conditions relatively comfortable," Warren Patterson and Eva Manthey said in the report. "A possible escalation in trade tensions poses a downside risk as markets wait to see when and how China's support measures will impact commodity markets."

Although Trump is unlikely to affect U.S. oil production, the commodity is expected to come under pressure due to a sharp increase in non-OPEC supply.ING predicts the average Brent price will fall to $71 a barrel next year from around $74 currently. Meanwhile, new U.S. LNG export facilities could boost domestic demand and prices, allowing Europe to more easily offset supplies from Russia, leading to lower natural gas prices in the region in the event of a normal winter.

At the same time, ING predicts that gold will continue to set records due to geopolitical concerns and the average price will be $2,760 per ounce in 2025.

On Thursday, futures for the yellow metal are trading slightly lower, testing the $2,750 an ounce level.The spot price is $2,718 at 10:02 Moscow time.

The bulk of the buying will come from central banks looking to diversify their foreign exchange reserves, and heightened trade and geopolitical tensions could increase gold's safe-haven appeal.

The outlook for industrial metals is bleaker, with trade factors, possible changes in Biden's climate laws and Chinese demand likely to play a role.Copper will average $8,900 a ton in 2025, up from over $9,200 currently. Grains are likely to be a key target in any disputes, while weather concerns continue to weigh on agricultural commodities and cocoa and coffee prices are expected to fluctuate further next year.