“Czechs have learned to distrust authority,” Žák told me. “It’s in our DNA. If you don’t hold it yourself, it isn’t yours. That’s why self-custody isn’t just technical here — it’s cultural.”

He noted that this distrust still feels relevant. “In this century alone, more than 700 banks have gone bankrupt. People keep losing their savings — not because they took too much risk, but because someone else did. Freedom is a choice, and it’s yours to decide whether to take it.”

That legacy helps explain why so many Bitcoin pioneers emerged from Prague. Founded in 2013, Trezor built the world’s first hardware wallet — a device that lets users hold their own cryptographic keys securely, offline. Eleven years later, it remains privately held and proudly independent in an industry dominated by venture-backed custodians and centralized exchanges.

Freedom, Engineered

Unveiled in Prague this week, Trezor’s new Safe 7 wallet advances the company’s mission to make self-custody simple. Wireless, open-source, and built for long-term resilience, it features a transparent security chip developed with Czech firm Tropic Square — a counterpoint to the industry’s opaque “black-box” designs.

When I asked CEO Matěj Žák why users should trust Trezor, he smiled.
“You shouldn’t — that’s the point,” he said. “Everything we build is open source so you — and anyone in the world — can inspect how it works. The same applies to your digital assets. Don’t trust anyone else with them. Rely on self-custody. Keep your private keys to yourself; we don’t want them. We want you to be independent.”

CTO Tomáš Sušanka said the team is preparing for threats still over the horizon. “For years I thought quantum computing was science fiction,” he told the audience. “But within the next decade, Bitcoin and other blockchains will move to post-quantum algorithms. Safe 7 is ready for that — it’s about protecting digital freedom for decades to come.”

Chief Commercial Officer Danny Sanders put it more simply: “Independence and freedom shouldn’t feel like a penalty. Our goal is to make security effortless — to make self-custody the easy choice for freedom, not the hard one.”

Žák knows, though, that the pull of convenience is strong. “At a time when convenience is drawing users toward custodians and ETFs, we believe it’s more important than ever to reinforce what self-custody really means — full control, without compromise,” he told me. “The safest option should also be the most intuitive — transparency, usability, and trust that doesn’t ask for permission.”

The Return of the Middleman

Seventeen years after Bitcoin’s whitepaper set out to remove financial intermediaries, the ecosystem has split in two. Millions still hold their own keys, but a growing wave of institutional products is bringing custody back under centralized control.

Glassnode data cited by Cointelegraph show that over 72% of all Bitcoin — around 14.3 million BTC — is now illiquid, suggesting most long-term holders still keep their coins off exchanges. Yet Fidelity estimates that ETFs, corporations, and custodians could collectively hold more than six million BTC by 2025 — close to a quarter of all Bitcoin that will ever exist. Their combined holdings grew 30% this year alone, signaling accelerating consolidation at the top.

The irony is clear: as Bitcoin goes mainstream, it risks mirroring the system it was meant to disrupt.

“Bitcoin was never meant to make banks rich again,” said Trezor CEO Matěj Žák. “It was created so people could exchange value directly — without asking permission. Every time someone chooses convenience over control, that original freedom shrinks a little.”

Freedom, Made Simple

Žák knows that most people won’t embrace self-custody for ideology alone — it has to work in everyday life. “Freedom has to be easy,” he told me. “If self-custody feels complicated, people will give up. They’ll trade independence for convenience. So we design for simplicity — because that’s how freedom survives.”

That philosophy runs through Trezor’s design choices: high-resolution touchscreens instead of buttons, wireless connectivity instead of cables, and open-source code instead of NDAs. It’s an attempt to make self-custody not just safer, but smoother — a modern form of usability engineering aimed at preserving autonomy.

As I left Prague, Žák’s words stayed with me: “Our grandparents had no choice. We do.”

Financial freedom isn’t granted by institutions that profit from dependence. It’s a conscious act — and often an effort. But freedom isn’t given — it’s chosen. The choice is ours.