Trust Wallet: The Rise of Bitcoin Custody

A number of non-custodial wallets for Bitcoin, most notably Trust Wallet, are enjoying a lot of success in recent days. 

It all stems from the suspension of withdrawals on FTX, and its subsequent failure. 

Centralized exchanges like FTX act as custodians of the funds deposited by their customers. That is, the crypto wallets of centralized exchanges are custodial, because the seed and private keys are not held by the users, but by the exchange itself. 

This means that even the tokens stored in them are in fact owned by the exchange, and not by the users. 

Very famous in the crypto industry is the motto “not your keys, not your coins,” which refers to the fact that if you do not own the private keys (or seed) of a wallet then in fact you do not really own the tokens stored in it either. In such a case the so-called custodian is none other than whoever owns the private keys, and in the case of centralized exchange wallets they themselves are the custodians of their users’ funds. 

Non-custodial wallets for Bitcoin: Trust Wallet is among the best

Those who do not want to entrust the custody of their tokens to third parties can move and store them themselves in so-called non-custodial wallets. 

These are trivially wallets of which only the user himself holds the private keys or seed. It is worth mentioning that the important thing is to possess the private keys, but since these can be derived from the seed, it is sufficient to possess the seed of twelve, eighteen or twenty-four words. 

There are basically two types of non-custodial wallets: physical ones and software ones. 

Physical wallets are also called hardware wallets, and they have the special feature of guarding keys offline, when not connected to the Internet. 

Software wallets, such as apps, are much more convenient to use, but they are practically always connected to the Internet, thus potentially less secure. 

If physical wallets are more suitable for storing large amounts offline for long periods, software wallets are much more convenient when used to store limited amounts for shorter periods, particularly if they need to be moved often. 

Trust Wallet: Bitcoin custody and multi-chain support

One of the absolute most widely used non-custodial software wallets is Trust Wallet. 

It is an app that installs on smartphones and tablets and allows managing a multi-currency wallet that supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, Tron, and other blockchains. 

It has several features, although it is best known for being owned by Binance. In other words, although it is a non-custodial wallet, its development is the responsibility of Binance, so it is no accident that they explicitly promote it. 

Indeed, in the past two days on two occasions the co-founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng CZ Zhao, has explicitly suggested the use of Trust Wallet on his Twitter profile. 

.@TrustWallet allows you to store your crypto yourself, if you want. Your keys, your coins.

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) November 13, 2022

It is precisely because of this publicity in recent days that the value of TWT, or the Trust Wallet token, has taken off. 

The TWT token

Until Saturday, 12 November, its market price was $1.1, while the next day it touched $2.2. In other words, its market value doubled in just over 24 hours. The next day it registered a new all-time high at $2.3.  

The current price is still above $2, which is close to yesterday’s highs, and is curious because it is a token that has been in existence since May 2020. 

It debuted at a price of $0.008, and during last year’s bull run it barely managed to get above $1.5. 

To be fair, after the drop in late 2021, it had already recovered well during early 2022, returning to $1.3 in March. 

In other words, in the last seven days, it has registered an incredible +75%, which rises to +11% when considering the last 30 days. 

Compared to the price before the trigger of the last big bull run, namely $0.1 in December 2021, the current price is 1,900% higher. This growth has occurred in less than two years. 

Conclusions

TWT is not the only non-custodial wallet token to grow strongly in recent days, but it is the growth of Trust Wallet that is in some ways unique. 

Even before this latest crisis, it was already proving to be by far one of the most widely used non-custodial software wallets. Thanks to publicity from CZ, who has more than seven and a half million followers on Twitter, its use has expanded even further. 

The more people become accustomed to not leaving their funds in the hands of third parties, the more widespread the use of non-custodial wallets will become. Hardware wallets and software wallets will benefit the most.