It should be noted that there are other important issues on the Bitcoin network. For example, in the first half of the month, representatives of the Bitcoin Core development team voiced dissatisfaction with the high fees situation, which arose due to the popularity of NFTs based on the Ordinals protocol and the BRC20-token hype.

However, they didn’t want to bother with a blockchain scaling solution. Instead, the developers suggested simply blocking transactions associated with such activity, without asking the opinion of users interested in NFT. Naturally, the danger of high-level censorship within the blockchain is far more dangerous than some obscure wallet interface.

When Bitcoin becomes popular

Lopp shared his thoughts in an interview with Cointelegraph journalists. Jameson himself has a wealth of experience in developing various solutions for the industry, with a recent focus on individual cryptocurrency wallets. According to him, such wallets are the key to the success of Bitcoin adoption.

Unfortunately, novice cryptocurrency users most often resort to centralised coin storage solutions. That is, they are not responsible for their own assets themselves, but only shift responsibility to companies like exchanges, which essentially contradicts the ideals of decentralisation. Here is a relevant expert’s rejoinder to that.

For most people, the default route to Bitcoin is through centralised exchanges that keep an eye on their customers, because more often than not they are legally obliged to do so.

So an investor who buys BTC for the first time in his life does so predominantly on large exchanges like Binance or Kraken. Alas, that’s where he ends up leaving his coins. Still, in their first weeks of interaction with cryptocurrencies, many users are not even aware that there are wallets for individual storage of digital assets that are not dependent on any centralized platform.

Moreover, even people familiar with such solutions are afraid to store crypto “on their own”. They prefer to shrug it off as the concept of personal non-custodial cryptocurrencies still looks too complicated for the novice user.

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As a reminder, storing cryptocurrency on an exchange may seem like a convenient option for the customer, but it actually comes with a lot of risks. Even large trading platforms are not immune to a collapse, which can happen literally overnight. A prime example of this is the story of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which went bankrupt in November 2022.

FTX had left behind billions of dollars in debt to customers, investors and creditors. Its former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is in the dock – a trial into the causes of the incident revealed that FTX management had been negligent in its business and had used user funds secretly, which led to the disaster.


More recent examples include the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which twice blocked bitcoin withdrawals in the first half of the month due to blockchain overload. Of course, this does not mean users lose coins, but they were essentially frozen for several hours. Which, of course, is unfortunate.


According to Lopp, the reason centralised solutions are so popular is the low entry threshold. For example, the user interface of Binance is understandable for the average person, but it is possible to register, confirm the identity in the KYC procedure and buy crypto there in a matter of minutes. At the same time user can make transaction directly from his bank card without any headaches in the form of long cryptocurrency wallet addresses in strange format, waiting for confirmation of transactions etc.

To make individual wallets as attractive an option for newcomers, Lopp advises a number of reforms. Here’s his point of view.

We simultaneously need to simplify the process of buying cryptocurrency and make it so that people feel comfortable, as well as confident that they can pull it off without making mistakes and, consequently, losing coins.

As an example, the developer cited social platform Nostr, which has integrated a second-tier Lightning Network solution for users to quickly buy BTC. Lopp continues.

People can register there by generating a public key and creating a Lightning wallet. They can immediately start receiving and sending digital assets without the need for identity verification.


As a reminder, Lightning is a second-tier network that operates on top of the main Bitcoin blockchain, and features low fees and high transaction speeds. However, it is important to understand here that the Lightning network does not solve the problem of blockchain congestion and does not relieve users of high fees. Still, to withdraw BTC from Lightning to the regular Bitcoin network, the owner of the coins needs to make a regular transaction, which will be validated along with other transfers. Accordingly, if the blockchain is overloaded, users will also have to pay a considerable amount in fees.

Well, the ecosystem within Lightning is clearly not enough to work solely within it yet.


There is one pitfall in developing custom solutions for cryptocurrency fans – you need teams of experienced developers to implement large-scale reforms. Unfortunately, not every startup can afford their work, but centralised exchanges have a huge staff of those who work on the user interface and its usability. In other words, the process needs a large stream of investment from an interested party to rebalance it.

That said, the Bitcoin network is really in demand right now. In particular, in the last 24 hours, more than $8 million worth of transactions have been made with NFT on this blockchain. And that is more than 50 per cent of the corresponding figure for Etherium, which traditionally appears to be the leader in this ranking.


We think that Jameson Lopp's comments are really relevant. At times, novice cryptocurrency users cannot cope with wallet interfaces, the concept of private keys and other components of the digital asset world. And instead of figuring it all out, they either leave the coins on exchanges or become disillusioned with crypto and forget about it. Ideally, this kind of situation shouldn't happen, so it's up to the developers to change things.


What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our ex-wealthy cryptochat. There we are waiting for the new bullrun to arrive.