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As the dust settles from the latest wave of phishing attacks, breaches and increasing regulatory pressure, one thing is becoming abundantly clear – the era of centralized custody in crypto is reaching an inflection point.
Coinbase may still stand tall as the poster child of exchange-driven adoption, but its growing vulnerabilities expose a systemic flaw.
Users are still being asked to trust a third party with their assets, privacy and safety. In a post-Coinbase world, this trust model is no longer sustainable.
The next chapter of crypto centers around non-custodial infrastructure – models that return control to the user without sacrificing security, usability or speed.
The ‘not your keys, not your coins’ ethos is evolving from a rallying cry into an architectural blueprint for the next generation of crypto platforms.
The trust crisis and its ripple effects
Recent events, like the estimated $300 million in phishing-related losses on Coinbase as highlighted by investigators like ZachXBT, means centralized platforms are being pushed to serve as banks, tech firms and compliance officers all at once.
But in doing so, they inherit the worst vulnerabilities of each model.
The trust users place in these intermediaries becomes a single point of failure, exploited not just by hackers but by misaligned incentives and opaque systems.
We are now seeing users, especially the next wave of adopters, demanding platforms that work like Coinbase but without the custody.
They want seamless on/off ramps, intuitive UI and fast swaps – but without giving up sovereignty over their funds.
What a post-Coinbase model looks like
Most so-called ‘non-custodial’ platforms still expect users to jump through hoops just to do the basics.
Meanwhile, centralized giants like Coinbase built empires by prioritizing ease of use over core crypto principles. That tradeoff is no longer acceptable.
The real opportunity now is to build platforms that don’t ask users to choose between control and convenience.
Crypto should be as simple as swapping tokens in seconds. No logins, no account creation, no handing over your identity to a black box.
Most fiat on-ramps still funnel users through third parties that operate like banks in disguise. The future is wallet-native – not broker-driven.
We need KYC (know your customer) and payments infrastructure that supports sovereignty not platforms that treat users like liabilities to be monetized.
And let’s kill the fantasy that users are going to ‘bridge’ and ‘wrap’ and ‘unwrap’ every time they move across chains. No one has time for that.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos – they should all work from one interface. No jargon, no jumping through tabs. If your product still requires a tutorial, it’s not ready for mass adoption.
Lastly, security can’t mean telling people ‘don’t forget your seed phrase’ and calling it a day. That’s lazy.
Non-custodial platforms must bake in real protection – recovery options, phishing defense, smart defaults – without turning every user into their own IT department.
We cannot afford to be rebranding the old playbook anymore.
The real shift is happening – in tools that feel as seamless as Coinbase but don’t ask you to hand over your keys, your data or your trust.
Pauline Shangett serves as the CSO at ChangeNOW, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange platform seeing $1 billion volumes per month. Since joining the crypto space in early 2018, Pauline has been instrumental in driving ChangeNOW’s strategy and fostering its growth within the blockchain community.
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