- Binance Labs Found, the venture investment arm of Binance, announced its investment in Grave, a hardware wallet company, with the aim of boosting self-custody of cryptocurrencies.
- NGRAVE is a blockchain and digital asset security provider specializing in maximum security solutions.
In the midst of a liquidity crisis suffered by the main centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, The term “self-custody” has once again gained relevance among the crypto community.
Cryptocurrency custody describes the process that secures assets against theft or loss. The centralized crypto exchanges are custodians, that is, third parties that supervise the private keys of the users, which grants ownership over the assets that are stored.
Instead self-custody implies that the user is solely responsible for managing the private key of the wallet, and therefore, the user is the only one who can prove that he is the owner of the funds, access them and manage them. And precisely from here comes the famous phrase “not your keys, not your crypto”, which refers to the fact that exclusively with self-custody people are 100% owners of their cryptocurrencies.
ThenGiven the liquidity crises that have led to crypto exchanges stopping withdrawals and operations, crypto users are once again talking about self-custody, its benefits and dangers.
Binance seeks to boost self-custody
Driven by this recent crisis, recently Binance issued a release in which he informed that Binance Labs has made a strategic investment and will lead the next round of Series A of NGRAVE.
NGRAVE is a blockchain and digital asset security provider specialized in maximum security solutions but, at the same time, they are easy to use. This company was founded in 2018 and, since then, it has developed three great solutions ZERO, LIQUID and GRAPHENE.
Why is Binance Labs moving in this direction?
According to Yi He, co-founder of Binance and head of Binance Labs, One of the biggest challenges facing the crypto industry today in terms of adoption is security.
As far as security is concerned, In theory, self-custody wallets are one of the most secure methods of storing digital assets.. However, this is in theory because the security of the assets stored in them will depend entirely on the responsibility and knowledge of the risks on the part of the user. Among the self-custody options, hardware wallets are one of the most secure options.
Even so, according to Tyler Z, chief investment officer at Binance Labs, they are pleased to “ccapitalize on the emerging hardware wallet sector and partner with NGRAVE to bring sophisticated wallet products to both retail and institutional users”.
Likewise, Ruben Merre, co-founder and CEO of NGRAVE, assured that the company is focused on helping users to protect their cryptocurrencies to a greater extent.
“For example, when analyzing existing key creation processes, we realized that there were serious security gaps. So we reinvented the way keys are generated and also overcome the limitations of today’s widely used mnemonic wallets.”Merre explained, adding “Our goal has always been simple: we want to make the crypto world a safer place for everyone.”.