{"id":1892,"date":"2024-11-19T15:19:48","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T15:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/19\/bitcoin-multisig-company-casa-makes-self-sovereignty-easy\/"},"modified":"2024-11-19T15:19:48","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T15:19:48","slug":"bitcoin-multisig-company-casa-makes-self-sovereignty-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/19\/bitcoin-multisig-company-casa-makes-self-sovereignty-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin Multisig Company Casa Makes Self-Sovereignty Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Company Name:<\/strong> Casa<\/p>\n

Founders:<\/strong> Nick Neuman, Jameson Lopp and others<\/p>\n

Date Founded:<\/strong> Late 2017<\/p>\n

Location of Headquarters:<\/strong> Remote<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong> https:\/\/casa.io\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Public or Private?<\/strong> Private<\/p>\n

Being self-sovereign isn\u2019t easy \u2014 especially if you aren\u2019t technically-minded.<\/p>\n

The team at Casa<\/a> gets this and this is why, for over six years, the company has been helping customers secure their bitcoin in multisig wallets (also referred to as multi-key vaults).<\/p>\n

The company was the first to offer an easy-to-use version of such a product that also came with customer support. It was Casa\u2019s plan from the onset to be there for their customers, as this type of support was lacking in the broader crypto industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe service element was what was missing from a lot of solutions out there,\u201d Casa co-founder and CEO Nick Neuman told Bitcoin Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople need help doing this stuff, especially for large amounts of money. It was always the plan to support customers, because it was impossible to get support from exchanges or hardware wallets,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we just took a very support-heavy and user experience focused approach to everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Casa\u2019s approach has paid off, as the company has become a household name in the Bitcoin and crypto space, and has come a long way since Neuman first had the idea for a company like Casa seven years ago.<\/p>\n

How Casa Started<\/h2>\n

It was toward the latter part of the 2017 bitcoin bull run when Neuman had grown tired of his previous work in finance and tech, and found himself down the proverbial Bitcoin (and crypto) rabbit hole. By February 2018, he had an idea for a company and entered himself into a hackathon to attempt to bring the idea to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI participated in the first ETHDenver hackathon,\u201d said Neuman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went in with an idea that I called key split, which was basically taking a private key using Shamir secret sharing and creating a social recovery mechanism,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI recruited a couple of people at the hackathon to build it with me, and we ended up winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neuman quit his job and set out to start a company around this technology he and his team had created. But word had gotten out about his victory at ETHDenver, and the previous CEO of Casa, who was the head of the company before it pivoted to offering multisig wallets, reached out to Neuman, asking him to come on board.<\/p>\n

It was after learning that Casa had just recruited Jameson Lopp<\/a>, self-described \u201cprofessional cypherpunk\u201d and now Chief Security Officer at Casa, that Neuman decided to join the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Well, Jameson’s going to be an unfair advantage,\u2019\u201d recalled Neuman with a chuckle. \u201cInstead of starting my own company, I’m going to join.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after Neuman came on board, Casa retired its then flagship product, the Casa Node<\/a>, and the company shifted its focus to user-friendly multi-key vaults, a much needed product at the time. Before Casa, multisig software was so complicated that even Neuman himself struggled to use it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was the Armory multisig wallet and the Glacier protocol,\u201d recounted Neuman. <\/p>\n

\u201cGlacier wasn’t even software. It was like a giant GitHub repo that you had to follow in order to set up your cold storage. Armory was super janky, too. I remember trying to use it once, and I couldn’t figure it out,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the first to create multisig that was usable.\u201d<\/p>\n

How Casa Works<\/h2>\n

Casa offers users two main set ups. The first is a five-key vault, which includes three keys on three different hardware wallets, one on the user\u2019s phone (which is backed up securely in the cloud) and one that Casa holds.<\/p>\n

This was Casa\u2019s first multisig product, which it rolled out while the company primarily focused on serving customers with a high net worth in bitcoin. Casa learned an important lesson while serving these clients, which was that even if developers create easy-to-use software, people still want an expert there supporting them as they use it \u2014 especially if they\u2019re securing a lot of value.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you’re dealing with millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, you really want to have an expert there who helps make sure that you don’t make a mistake,\u201d said Neuman.<\/p>\n

Casa\u2019s other main product is for those who might not be sitting on bitcoin whale-type wealth, but who still hold enough bitcoin where a less-than-ideal security setup has the potential to keep them awake at night.<\/p>\n

This product is Casa\u2019s three-key vault, which the company brought to market in early 2019. It includes a key on a hardware wallet, a key on the user\u2019s phone (which can be swapped out for another key on a second hardware wallet if the user prefers) and a key that Casa holds.<\/p>\n

Casa began offering this setup because it \u201calways wanted to be able to offer great security and usability to as many people as possible,\u201d according to Neuman.<\/p>\n

New Casa Services And Features<\/h2>\n

In the past year, Casa has further broadened the services it offers.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, it announced its Enterprise Plan<\/a>, which enables companies to more easily secure their bitcoin treasuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve had businesses using Casa for self-custody for years, but they were always using our retail plans and just making it work,\u201d explained Neuman.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe changed that, though, because I think corporate treasuries holding bitcoin has been popularized by MicroStrategy<\/a>. We actually see that as a growing trend that’s worth taking advantage of, and we’re hearing from more Bitcoin companies that are storing bitcoin on their balance sheet that they need help with security,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

This summer, Casa also began enabling users to replace hardware wallets used in their vaults with YubiKeys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see people struggle with hardware wallets all the time, and so we were thought \u2018How can we make this simpler?\u2019\u201d said Neuman. \u201cWe pieced together a couple of new pieces of technology that have passkey and and YubiKey key capabilities and were able to build something that hadn’t been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

And in March, Casa launched Casa Inheritance<\/a>, a service that makes it easier for the loved ones of Casa users to access the bitcoin secured in the vaults in the event of a user\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Inheritance, we heard from our customers all the time \u2018Okay, I feel good about my Casa setup, but I’m worried about what happens if I die,\u2019\u201d explained Neuman. \u201cSo, we built that feature to make it super easy for their family to recover the bitcoin in case the main account holder dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Normalizing Multisig<\/h2>\n

Despite all of the work Casa has done in the last six years, some still have an emotional block when it comes to switching to a multisig setup. Whether it\u2019s because this type of wallet format was more difficult to enable years ago or because it\u2019s understandably anxiety-provoking to make changes to one\u2019s bitcoin security, people seem to drag their feet when it comes to using a multisig setup \u2014 even if they really want to \u2014 according to Neuman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey hear the word \u2018multisig\u2019 and they’re like, \u2018That’s too hard,\u2019\u201d explained Neuman. \u201cWhat they don’t realize is that to get started with multisig with Casa, you can use your same hardware wallet, and it is literally the same amount of effort as using a hardware wallet, but you significantly improve your security by doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neuman thinks that more people will come around and that multisig will become more widely adopted, especially during a bull market.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes the price of bitcoin going up where people suddenly have more value to secure,\u201d said Neuman. \u201cAnd it takes people hearing from their friends \u2018Yeah, I’m doing multisig and it’s not as hard as it sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those that do get the urge to try Casa, the company is allowing people to try the service at no charge<\/a> for a month.<\/p>\n

Neuman feels that as more users come on board, it will not only benefit them, but potentially the industry at large as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can make it out of this bull market without another massive blow up like FTX because we’ve helped more people self-custody in a way that they feel good about, that feels like a real win to me.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Company Name: Casa Founders: Nick Neuman, Jameson Lopp and others Date Founded: Late 2017 Location of Headquarters: Remote Website: https:\/\/casa.io\/ Public or Private? Private Being self-sovereign isn\u2019t easy \u2014 especially if you aren\u2019t technically-minded. The team at Casa gets this and this is why, for over six years, the company has been helping customers secure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digkrypton.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}