Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet claims that Bitcoin users should not rush to adopt multisig wallets as a knee-jerk response to the recent Coldcard incident.
According to Guillemet, making the setup more sophisticated could actually introduce additional risks.
Instead, he argues that Bitcoin users who rely on self-custody should opt for the “miniscript” solution that can deliver advanced security without making things way too complicated.
Making wallet recovery more difficult
In a post on X, Guillemet stressed that multisig makes wallet recovery and management more difficult.
He said many users end up creating configurations that are actually cumbersome to recover safely.
As an alternative, Guillemet floated the idea of using Bitcoin Miniscript, which makes it possible for users to define sophisticated spending conditions such as inheritance rules, time-locked recovery keys and 2-of-3 authorization policies. According to him, Ledger’s implementation enables “clear signing” for every spending path, allowing users to verify exactly what they are approving on their hardware wallet.
For developers, Miniscript makes it easier to build custom wallet software, Guillemet said.
He claimed he recently created a functional Bitcoin wallet supporting advanced spending policies in just a few hours with the help of AI assistant Claude. He had added that Ledger’s clear-signing approach made him comfortable testing the wallet on Bitcoin mainnet.
He also pointed to MuSig2, a cryptographic alternative to traditional script-based multisig.
Guillemet said Ledger hardware wallets are, to his knowledge, the only devices currently supporting MuSig2.
An individual threat model
Despite outlining these alternatives, Guillemet emphasized that multisig remains appropriate for some users.
However, he argued security decisions should be based on an individual’s threat model rather than reactions to recent headlines.
For most people, as he has noted, a properly backed-up single-signature hardware wallet remains the most practical choice.
