Casa announced on November 30 on its social networks that users of its wallet will be able to store Ethereum, in addition to Bitcoin, in 2023. The inclusion of Ethereum will come after changes to the application’s interface that are ment to be made in January.
The addition of Ethereum to the Casa wallet responds to requests that its users have raised for years, the company commented via its Twitter account. However, part of the bitcoin community does not seem to have received this news in the best way.
The announcement thread is full of criticism for the decision the Casa Wallet’s team about adding Ethereum to its platform. Such reactions stem from the company’s change in stance on altcoins.
Jameson Lopp, Casa’s developer and chief technology officer (CTO), has been known for having a pro-Bitcoin stance. However, he could not be considered a maximalist of this currency either. Maximalists are people who exalt Bitcoin to the point where they belittle the usefulness of cryptocurrencies other than the one created by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Despite Lopp not being someone with extreme Bitcoin fanaticism, many of the responses to Casa’s tweet tag Lopp to ask for explanations or to complain about the announced move.
Lopp clarified that his stance on Ethereum has not changed. In fact, in response to some comments, the developer recounted that this was not the first time he has worked on a multi-signature wallet project for Ethereum.
Samson Mow, a manager of several projects related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain, responded to Casa’s tweet by saying that his adoption of Ethereum is “not something to be proud of.”
Giacomo Zucco, an active and well-known member of the bitcoin community as an educator and consultant, retweeted Casa’s announcement saying that it is “now a shitcoin company,” a derogatory name given to altcoins by some.
It is important to note that Casa is a multi-signature wallet with a particular security method in which the user has three keys. Of these, he only needs two to access his funds. These keys would be one that is stored in the user’s cell phone, one in a cold wallet and one is kept by Casa.
The company explains that its multi-signature method seeks to mitigate its users’ risk of losing access to their bitcoins forever.
Casa’s key management has come under fire from the website WalletScrutiny.com. They argued that the company in question could have control of all the keys to its users’ wallets. In addition, they claimed that their wallet software Casa Keymaster could not be freely verified because it was not open source.
