An industry-wide debate about crypto institutional adoption and centralized custody risk will trigger an increase in interest in self-custody, OKX President Hong Fang said in a recent interview with CoinDesk.

While institutional adoption and the growing popularity of crypto ETFs is a net positive for the industry, there may be a shift in the industry’s narrative to caution against custodial concentration risk, Fang argued. She predicts that most native crypto users will adopt self-sufficiency this year.

On OKX, assets held in its self-custodial wallets (nearly $50 billion) exceed the assets of its centralized exchange ($30.8 billion).

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“The tension between adoption and concentration risk will come into focus,” said Fang, who will be a speaker at Consensus Hong Kong in February. “On this basis, I expect more industry campaigns to educate why self-care is important and how to use it, and more products to make it easier for the masses to use self-care and mitigate the risks accordingly.”

According to Fang, OKX DEX volume has increased 20 times. But she argues that DEXs and centralized exchanges are complementary.

“The crypto-native audience wants to be able to use CEX for reliability and DEX to capture innovations,” she said. “Such supply-demand dynamics will drive further adoption of DEX to enable innovation while supporting the gradual maturity of crypto-law.”

A bitcoin strategic reserve?

A national strategic bitcoin reserve, a policy touted by the new Trump administration, would serve to centralize the leading cryptocurrency. But many in crypto doubt that will actually happen, if players at Polymarket are any guide (as of Jan. 22, they put the odds that Trump would create such a reserve in the first 100 days of his administration at just 30 percent).

Fang agrees with this sentiment.

“I personally find it hard to believe that large sovereign countries like the United States will officially adopt the bitcoin strategic reserve at the federal level at this stage, but it is quite possible that smaller sovereign countries or states could,” she said.

But since this is crypto, anything is possible.

Highly unexpected events — like the failure of the Trump administration to follow through on its crypto promises — could dampen the bull run quickly, she said. But the biggest risk, according to Fang, remains overcentralization.

For that risk there is a vaccine: self-care. Which, according to OKX, the market is quickly taking to heart.