Cold Wallet Users Are Traders, Not Just Holders, Tangem Research Finds
Tangem, the Swiss hardware wallet company, has published a research report arguing that the cold wallet user profile has been fundamentally misread by the broader market. The report, titled From Storage to Participation: The Rise of Active Self-Custody, was commissioned by Tangem and developed by Protocol Theory, an independent consumer research firm, drawing on data from more than 3,172 U.S.-based crypto users.
The central finding cuts against the conventional image of the cold wallet as a passive vault. Cold wallet users are 1.83x more likely to be active traders than passive holders, and short-term traders represent the single most likely cohort to use a cold wallet at 46%, compared to just 11% of passive owners. Only 9% of cold wallet users qualify as passive holders, versus 25% of centralized exchange users. Cold wallet holders are also 20 percentage points more likely to hold stablecoins than CEX users and 12 percentage points more likely to hold altcoins and other non-core assets — a pattern consistent with active, diversified portfolio management rather than long-term storage.
The report frames this behavioral reality under the concept of Active Self-Custody, defined as user participation across three functions — Store, Grow, and Spend — while retaining direct control over assets without delegating custody to a third party. The argument is that self-custody has matured from a protective posture into an operational layer: the substrate through which assets are secured, deployed into DeFi protocols, and transacted, all without exchange intermediation.
Tangem reports its own financials as corroborating evidence. The company posted $61.3 million in revenue in 2025, up 102% year-over-year, alongside a 50% increase in monthly active users attributed to in-app utility features.
The harder problem the report surfaces is the gap between actual usage patterns and market perception. Sixty-six percent of crypto users say self-custody is important, and 46% express concern about major exchange breaches — yet 88% continue to store assets on centralized exchanges, and only 33% use a cold wallet. The top barriers to cold wallet adoption are not cost (17%) or complexity (19%) but a perceived lack of need (32%) and the belief that cold wallets are only relevant for large holdings or long-term storage. Familiarity tracks with adoption sharply: cold wallet adoption rises 53 percentage points between users with no wallet knowledge and those with expert-level knowledge, while familiarity with cold wallets (67%) trails CEX familiarity (97%) and hot wallets (86%) by a significant margin.
The implication the report draws is that the adoption constraint is not demand but comprehension. The users who understand cold wallets are already using them actively. The users who do not are operating on an outdated mental model of what the product is and does.