2025 Will Be a Year of Self-Custody

An industry-wide debate over crypto institutional adoption and centralized custody risk will trigger a surge of interest in self-custody, OKX’s President Hong Fang said in a recent interview with CoinDesk.

While institutional adoption and the increasing popularity of crypto ETFs are a net positive for the industry, there may be a shift in industry narrative to caution against custody concentration risk, Fang argued. She predicts that most native crypto users will adopt self-custody this year.

On OKX, assets held in its self-custody wallets (almost $50 billion) exceed assets on its centralized exchange ($30.8 billion).

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“The tension between adoption and concentration risk will come under a spotlight,” said Fang, who will be a speaker at Consensus Hong Kong in February. “Against this backdrop, I anticipate more industry campaigns to educate why self-custody is important and how to use it, and more products to make it easier for the masses to use self-custody and alleviate the risks accordingly.”

According to Fang, OKX DEX volume has increased 20 times. But she argues that DEXs and centralized exchanges are complementary.

“The crypto-native audience will want to be able to use CEX for reliability and DEX for catching innovations,” she said. “Such supply-demand dynamics will drive further adoption of DEX to enable innovation while supporting the gradual maturity of the crypto regulatory framework.”

A bitcoin strategic reserve?

A national bitcoin strategic reserve, a policy touted by the new Trump administration, would serve to centralize the leading cryptocurrency. But many in crypto doubt it will actually happen, if bettors on Polymarket are any guide (as of Jan. 22, they were putting the chances of Trump creating such a reserve in the first 100 days of his administration at just 30 percent.)

Fang agrees with this sentiment.

“I personally find it hard to believe that major sovereign countries like the U.S. will officially adopt bitcoin strategic reserve at the federal level at this stage, but it is very possible that smaller sovereign countries or states could,” she said.

But, this being crypto, anything is possible.

Very unexpected events — like a lack of follow through by the Trump administration on its crypto promises — could dampen the bull run quickly, she said. But the biggest risk according to Fang remains over-centralization.

For that risk there’s a vaccine: self-custody. Which, according to OKX, the market is quickly adopting.