Wallets, Self-Custody, and Bitcoin in 2026 👀

Good morning and good afternoon everyone. My name is Jenna and I'm the face behind the Bitcoin Asia handle. And we are so excited to kick off this space today leading up to Bitcoin Asia. We are officially one week out from the conference and we could not be more ready for this. Today we have a wonderful guest joining us. Girl gone crypto. She's marketing manager at Cakewallet and on that note I will kick it off to our moderator, Isaiah. Hey everybody, hope you're having a great Wednesday. Super excited about this space is talking to a fellow marketer today. Super excited to talk about how marketing plays into Bitcoin and other things related to wallet, self-cust, and self-custity as she'll be discussing at our event in Asia coming up next week. It is August 27th through 28th at the Hong Kong exhibition in convention center. So if you don't have your tickets, go ahead and grab them now. Prices are getting ready to increase. So now is your time to lock in these prices. Leah, how are you doing today? Can you hear me? Yes, can hear you. And thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to finally get to make it to Hong Kong and be part of Bitcoin Asia this year. Yeah, that's awesome. Have you ever been to Hong Kong before? No, I haven't. It'll be my first time. I've been to a lot of different places in Asia, but Hong Kong's always been on the list. So I'm glad to finally get to check that one out. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, we're super excited to have you joining us as I kind of alluded to at the beginning. You can catch Leah on the Genesis stage on Friday at 12.30 p.m. And her discussion is going to be called Bitcoin wallets without compromise. So without further ado, Leah, I'd love to get a little bit into your background and how you got into Bitcoin. You know, I know you have a background in corporate marketing. So tell me a little bit about like what was the moment where Bitcoin clicked and you started transitioning what you were doing with your day to day marketing and work into the Bitcoin and crypto ecosystem. Yeah, so one thing that's a little bit interesting about my back stories, I really come from more of the like libertarian like freedom-minded background. And so for those who are in the US, you'll know who Ron Paula is. I was a big supporter back in the day. And so when I came across Bitcoin, it really made a lot of sense to me because the ideas of self-sauverty and less government intervention and not trusting third parties and all of those things were kind of ideas that I already held. And so it was a pretty easy transition to be like, oh wow, this has a lot of value. And one of the things that's funny is I didn't get into Bitcoin really until 2017. I'm a class of 17er. But I actually had a friend who was mining Bitcoin way back in the day. And I would go to his apartment and it would be like covered in mining rigs and it was so hot in there. What are you doing? What is this weird thing called Bitcoin that you're into? And so I've had some exposure to it for quite a while. But I didn't actually personally jump in myself until closer to 17. And that's a whole nother crazy story too. But yeah, I just think it was really the ideals of Bitcoin and kind of breaking away from realizing how broken the monetary system is. The global monetary system really is, but especially in the US, I feel like. And so it's, yeah, that's kind of what my path in looked like. Yeah, yeah, that's super similar to mine actually too. It was reading in the Fed by Ron Paul was when things really started to face for me. Yes, okay, follow Ron Paul. Yeah, there we go. Revolution. It's still not too late. Yes. So I also come from a background in corporate finance as well. There's corporate marketing that is coming into this ecosystem. And it could be a big transition. I'd be curious more personally to hear like what did you, what turned out to be surprisingly useful? And when you were transitioning more to like, you know, making Bitcoin-centered content creation, Girl Gone Crypto, what are some useful things that you learn in the corporate world that translated over to this kind of like crypto ecosystem? Well, what's really interesting, and that's a great question, is I feel like in the corporate world, I almost like forged my own path in a lot of ways in terms of like I actually started more in the sales department and then ended up in marketing because I kept having marketing ideas and the marketing team was eventually like, hey, you should just come work with us. And even just realizing like that you can just do things. Like when I was working in sales, I was like, hey, we're having a huge education gap where we're trying to train these retail representatives on our, because it was a tech product, like on our tech product and they're having a hard time and our sales reps are having a hard time getting there to train them. And there's just an education gap and I think we're leaving a lot on the table. Like, why don't I develop an educational video system that has, it's like a beat-a-beat internal, but it's an archive of information that these people can watch remotely. And so they actually built me out a whole film studio. I never made videos before. I just was like, I just think we need it, you know? And so eventually that kind of rolled into a little bit more of like this kind of hybrid role between sales and marketing. But I think just realizing like, hey, when you see a gap, it's okay to put your hand up and say, hey, I have an idea. And so luckily I worked for a company that didn't have too much red tape and was flexible enough to kind of accommodate those sort of things. But I know in the corporate world is not super common. So I feel lucky that way. But I think that really translated to making Bitcoin-related content as well. Like, you know, I didn't start Grogon CryptoTill 2019. So you know, it's kind of just learning and figuring things out on my own for a while before I started making content. I think that's also what helped me realize. Like, oh wow, there's a lot of like hour-long live streams where they're saying a bunch of words that I don't even know. Like, where's the like two-minute, give me the information that I really need, like TLDR. And so I started making little like short explainer videos and just really trying to fill in those gaps that I saw. And then you know, it had some fun with it along the way. And it just kind of snowballed from there. And you know, it's just one of those things. Once you get bit by the bug here, you're just ended, I think. Yeah, 100%. Kind of taking like a broader question, not to change the subject too dramatically, but I know you had mentioned Ron Paul earlier on in this conversation. You know, so much right now it seems like in Washington is all of this quote unquote crypto digital asset legislation. And obviously the Genius Act going through with stablecoins. You know, in a world where there are so many assets and so many things that people are debating on, you know, what will be the global, the world reserve currency and what will be used for payments? What would you say Bitcoin means to you at this point in time? And where do you think we're ultimately headed based on what you're seeing? Ooh, that is a big question. Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the big topic right now, right? Is especially for those of us who came from more of a self-solvering freedom mindset. And obviously the industry has transitioned to be much more corporatized. We've got Bitcoin treasuries. We've got all of these ETFs and various things. And what does Bitcoin want to be when it grows up, right? Where do we fall? Is there room for both? And I think that's kind of where I end up landing is I don't think that it's necessarily that they need to, that they're ruining each other or that they are not hindering each other in a way. And that there's always going to be such an important huge role for self-custody. And in fact, that's still even with all of the self-custody incidents that we've had recently. I still think it's an ideal that's very, very much worth pursuing. And it's really what, in a lot of ways, gives Bitcoin its value. And if we lose sight of that, then what even is Bitcoin to us anymore? But that being said, I do still think that from a more corporate perspective, the deflationary aspect of it, self-custody or not, is still very attractive and valuable. And so when we're looking at assets that, like, real estate, gold, Bitcoin, that's what I think a lot of these people are looking at is what is a harder form of money that we can kind of hedge on against the inflation that we're having with, you know, with fiat currencies. And I think that that's, I think it's okay to kind of view both as being very valuable things that can coexist. So I don't think it's a net negative for the industry that we've had such an increase in more of like the corporate. If anything, it probably allows the everyday people to feel a little bit more comfortable with jumping into Bitcoin. But it's just my hope that they don't just stop at the more centralized side of things, but eventually they actually do realize that self-custody is not nearly as complicated as you might think. It's not difficult. And especially because there are, there has been so many advancements in self-custodial tech. And we both, you know, it sounds like got into Bitcoin. It was probably a lot harder, right? But the tech has come a long way. And so it be by hope that those ideals still remain the core of kind of what people eventually get to, but I think that if this helps them get into it initially, I don't think that's a bad thing. Yeah, it makes total sense. And also I kind of fall back on the ethos of, you know, Bitcoin is for everybody. If somebody wants to use Bitcoin a certain way, it still doesn't change your ability to use it the way that you want it. So I think it's all good. On the self-custody point, you know, I know that you're always in the news as of I trying to keep up with what's happening on a day-to-day basis and inform. So tell me a little bit like as far as the self-custody, you know, obviously the cold card hack that happened a few weeks ago has kind of the process for how you explain like if someone is coming into the door, new to Bitcoin. Is it still the same recommendation on how to set up, you know, their cold storage Bitcoin, how to self-custody or have you sort of changed your opinion as far as how we should be telling people the safest way to say this to store their Bitcoin? Has anything fundamentally changed? I think the biggest thing that is fundamentally changed is realizing how much more education is really needed around how to choose who you trust when you're generating your seed phrase. And because I think that a lot of people were literally googling the word entropy for the first time and they're like seeing these things about rolling dice and they're like, what does any of this even mean? Like literally mid panic while they're trying to figure out if their funds are safe or not. And no one should have to be in that situation. And so I think that's where I mean in a lot of ways, I think open source is maybe one area that we can kind of lean on like, okay, what are, is this code auditable? Are they really saying they're doing what they're doing? That being said, it's, you know, I think that looking at it holistically of like, okay, how would you know that that was a weak seed phrase? It looks the same. And should we be encouraging now people to actually be setting up past phrases where before it was kind of a, yeah, that's a good thing to do. Now maybe it's something that we want to encourage people to set a 25th word on their seed phrase and you just make sure they store it separately because otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose. It's just a longer seed phrase at that point, which we could get into more. You know, I think that there are a few more security practices that maybe used to be considered slightly more optional feeling, but maybe it's something that we should start bringing a little bit more mainstream in terms of what's recommended. So I think that would be one thing is like, how can you mitigate risk against if you do end up in some sort of vulnerable seed phrase situation, whether it's from a weak seed phrase, you know, bad entropy or whether it's from you literally just expose your seed phrase because your house cleaner found it or something, you know, whatever it is, there's obviously a lot of different potential attack vectors. And so like, how can you set yourself up no matter what it is to be in the best position you can? But also like helping to teach people like maybe, okay, how can you verify some of these security claims that these companies are making for yourself? Like if someone's saying, oh, yeah, we, you know, use the full, was like 512, what are you know, like versus not? Like, how is a non-coder would you even know that? And realizing there are actually a lot of tools, there's a lot of people that do independent research that you can check out. You can utilize AI to help analyze some things, not that it's perfect, but just helping to start that conversation of, you know, we as an industry, obviously, well, this is a little funny because cold card used to this phrase a lot, but don't trust verify or maybe coin can't use it, but you know what I mean? But I think coming back to that mindset, even a little more of like, okay, let's make sure we're really verifying what we're doing. But I will say, it is unfortunately, I think, given self custody a bit of a hit, you know, because there were, I mean, people really thought they were doing things right. And I think that's what was so heartbreaking about this whole situation. And so do I think that, you know, we talk about the mainstream audience feeling comfortable with Bitcoin, you know, I do think that this is a hit for people and how they view self custody. So I think for those of us that are kind of left in the self custody space at this point, really helping to put tools and people's hands not just assure them, oh, don't worry, self custody is fine. You're like, here's how you can double check things for yourself if you want and helping to kind of advance the education a little bit more. Yeah, basically since I agree on all of those points, you know, well, we're discussing here. It's like, I know me and you and probably the majority of people that have chosen to listen in today probably understand these, these topics that we're discussing to a great degree. And I think that down with my dad, he would be like, what are you talking about? But I think you do a really, really good job of breaking down these technical topics in a way that's digestible for people. And I think that's what's led to your a whole lot of your success. So I'd love to hear more about like how do you make things feel approachable and kind of like, you know, even if you don't get it on the first try, like how do you, how do you, how do you present this information in an approachable way where people can actually digest it instead of just being intimidated by the big words that we're using? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. So I think that there's the first thing I do is I always have like a little bit of an avatar. It kind of like you mentioned, try and explain it to your dad. I have this friend.