Why crypto is not as safe as users think, with Ledger's CXO

Transcript

GM good morning welcome to the milk Road show The Daily crypto show that's as satisfying as unbuttoning your jeans after Thanksgiving dinner I'm your host Jay Hamilton and today we are joined by Ian Rogers cxo that's chief experien officer and board member at Ledger now I'm sure all of you know Ledger but for those who don't know Ledger is one of the global leaders of security for digital assets over 7 million devices sold worldwide and over 20% of the world's crypto is secured on Ledger devices actually we'll get an updated number on that from Ian in this episode uh Ian also has a fantastic career history of building some of the best consumer products in the world he was the chief digital officer at lvmh

working on Louis Vuitton Dior Sephora Hennessy he also spent 20 years building basically creating the digital music industry working first with Winamp and then Yahoo and then beats and then Apple where he was one of the creators of Apple music he also went on tour with the beasty boys we might get a story from that at some point in this episode but today we're going to talk about how this postelection pump has impacted Ledger and the trends they're seeing from behind the scenes in their data what will happen first will our phones have self custody or will everyone in the world have a hardware wall we're going to talk about the way Ian sees the future of Hardware wallets in our hands and then we're also going to talk about Ian's recommended security protocol which is honestly one of the main things

you guys are want to listen to this in this episode because he's going to explain how to keep your money safe on chain and what you guys need to be doing to ensure that you guys smell that that's not that's not Thanksgiving dinner it's the last day of the Black Friday sale here at milk road you can get 50% off our investing master class today only so make sure you guys sign up if you don't already have the course it's an incredible course six hours of content that will make sure that you make smart Investments and make money in this cycle no guarantees of course but this masterclass is going to give you the edge that you need before we jump in we just need a moment to hear from our sponsors meanwhile is the world's first licensed and regulated life insurance

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with the first two times short or two times long ETFs designed specifically for mic M strategy stock position yourself with Precision with T-Rex you gain access to powerful tools for sophisticated investors Ian welcome to the milk Road Show hey thanks so much for having me I'm a longtime subscriber firsttime caller man it's a great line I always want more people to use that line thank you so much for for saying you are a longtime subscriber though very excited to have you on the show uh let's start with the obvious question what a month it's been or three weeks I guess at this point since uh the election postelection pump uh Curious H how this has impacted Ledger and your guys business what are

you seeing behind the scenes are all of a sudden ledgers flying off the shelf and people buying it you seeing more activity on Ledger live what's going on on your end well let me tell you it's it's good to be you know blowing up in revenue on something that isn't a disaster elsewhere you know if you go back to 2022 you know when cel us melted down great day for Ledger in terms of sales when there was a hack on salana in August of that year it was like a you know 6X day over- day for us and FTX was you know was our was we had our biggest sales day followed by our biggest sales day followed by our biggest Black Friday it turned out to be the biggest month in in the history of the of the company and then even svb um you know a few months

later was was a big event for us and I don't know there's something uh a little unsettling realizing that your business is correlated with disaster you know so um we feel great right now because you know we're we're really happy that that we have um you know so much positivity around crypto and that you know we're we're kind of you know out of the the the bad guy corner and you know into the where we've thought we were which is you know building the future so we haven't stopped building the the the whole way through which is I think and and you know you really ask yourself I mean every you know everybody who's working hard in this in this business you know when you're really you know when you're really up against people that seem to want you to fail you

know you you go okay well how how uh how deep do I dig in here but we we took a hard look in the mirror and went harder than ever like this is like to to us this is like the times when people show their true colors like it's the question is do you believe or do you not believe and we're here because we believe Ledger's been around for 10 years it's been around I would say for all the right reasons it's why I joined the company four years ago because it's always been about the same thing security and self- custody how do we make experience better without compromising on security and self- custody it's so fundamental to me it's not like a particular narrative you know it's it's like a very broad um you know kind of utility in the um in the space

we're just a kind of we're a utility in the new Bitcoin Monopoly game so I think that makes that makes perfect sense but we really you know we really said okay we're we're we're gonna just up our game during this this uh bare market so we we worked hard on stack um we we that bringing that to Market was its own story so we also worked on Flex which is which is which was a um just a killer a killer product that we can that we can talk about but so much more in terms of services you know we support more chains than ever we have more options for for buy and sell and Swap and stake to earn yield um we built Ledger recover which is which is important for bringing on the next you know tens of millions of people into

secure self- custody um and now you know now it feels like we're we're we're you know it's now it's like Harvest Time in a way right now you know people woke up and they said oh thank you for building this we really we We Care need this yeah we need this we're glad this exists so business has has uh you know has been incredible um you know we've had you know a the market but also it's just seasonality Black Friday Etc so we've we've had just uh incredible business also the a big difference for us between now and 2021 and 2021 you know our our kind of best product was the Nano X today we have stacks and flex which are like you know touchscreen products so they appeal to more people they don't look like a USB stick they

look more like a a small Kindle so they're more appealing um to to maybe a more novice user um but also there's that whole service business which was kind of a zero for us in 2021 but it's a huge part of our business today and it's a huge part of the usage of Ledger um so having having those really matters a lot and then the third thing is really distribution you know we we were just ledger.com for the most part in 2021 and now we're Best Buy in the US and Bong here in France and virgin Mega in the Middle East and JB HiFi down in in Australia and we have good distributors in India and um you know southeast Asia Etc so like that that is you know there's a lot of we I guess one way I keep saying it is like

we've built a really great ship you know and the sales have been up and now the wind is blowing you know that's you know that's that's the way I put it and and I do want to touch on a little bit later how you guys are selling ledgers in retail because uh I think that a lot of our listeners who do own lger advice myself I own four uh I I I would not buy in retail I would just buy online I understand it but um I think there's a lot of people going into retail stores that are like oh I want to buy Bitcoin and oh what's this thing here and that is an onboarding ramp which is really really exciting yeah and making sure they're safe is important and and and really like the the you know we can talk about the dangers I'm really happy to to

to talk about them but the one thing that that ledger has that other Hardware wallets don't have is a genuine check um and so the that does not solve all supply chain issues I don't want to say it does but if you are a ledger user and you you know open Ledger live and you look at my ledger and it says genuine it's genuine so you could buy from Amazon or best buyer someone else plug it in look at the genuine check and you and you know and you know yeah yeah so so so important uh I want to touch on a little bit around the importance of self- custody because you obviously have strong opinions about this um and a lot of all of our listeners are investors

they all hold they're all here to invest and to speculate in crypto and you know now is a very exciting time everybody is super pumped about the next year ahead uh and the bull market that we seem to be early in right now um and I'm willing to bet that a lot of our listeners have their crypto on centralized exchanges I I even know a few of them do because I've spoken to them and do you hold any of your assets on Central exchange why or why not and how do you think about self- custody yeah so okay let's let's start let's start kind of at the at the fundamentals here like what you know what is what are we dealing with like we have permissionless money and and that's um that's that is the invention you know

if if you look at the Bitcoin white paper The Invention is permissionless money so I think we can agree we're not trying to build another ven venmo or PayPal right we're you know we're not trying to build I mean by the way you know I'm I'm an American who moved to France a few years ago and you realize how many of the kind of parts of the banking system you take for granted I mean it took me like nine months just to get my PayPal account up and running again over here and like what I go through just to sell vinyl on discogs is insane right like they you know they're they they you know I have limits sometimes they extend my limit sometimes they don't they they report taxes I have to pay taxes on like selling vinyl on discogs because you know the French

government is spying on my PayPal account you know like it's it's um you know like let's let's let's talk about the difference between you know a centralized financial industry and and and one that is is decentralized where you know where you where it's you know trustless and users are the stewards of their own things so um you know so that's that's the starting point now okay so there is custody somewhere um meaning you you either have you know if if you don't have the coins then the exchange does right because these are permissionless assets so you know the security of those assets is is important to you and you know as we learned with FTX which was a reputable company who was um on the

cover of every magazine and making Super Bowl ads you know they proved that your money in a situation like that is really just um you know it's just it's not crypto that's that's just numbers in someone's spread sheet and maybe it's crypto if you ask them to send it to an account for you right but but again like you can't think like you know it's just like at the bank when you deposit money in the bank if you put $50 in the bank they don't have $50 with your name on it sitting in a shelf in the back and it's the same in an exchange if you put you know $50 wor a Bitcoin or one Bitcoin into an exchange they don't have a Bitcoin in the back with your name on it right that's not how it works so there there's you know there's only two

options that are that are sane if you have digital assets one would be a trusted custodian like someone you really trust and you have to remember that custodians that were trusted not that many years ago and I'm I'm talking about you know whether it's Celsius or FTX or svb right there are ones that I thought were trusted I mean I used to bank with svb I was shocked really when when when all that I mean that was my startup used to have their their their assets at FTB so svb so okay you need to really trust your custodian so trusted custodians name five I can only really think of two that I wouldn't tell a friend you know like hey man you might want to move that you know um but but

but you know they exist so if you really trust a custodian that's one you need to really really really trust them the other is secure self- custody and and if you're doing self- custody why would you be think anything less than secure so what's off limits then you know untrusted custodian uh no and less secure self- custody let's just talk about a software wallet on your phone absolutely not you know your phone was not designed to protect value it's not what it was designed to do same with your computer you know I have a I have a friend who is in the wallet business he knows this stuff really well but his his wife is a day trader and you know she downloaded

something from Discord it looked legit it was a friend she thought it was a friend it was a something I don't even know what it was they lost 200,000 bucks as a family it was a lot of money to them right and they it's not that they're dumb it's just that they were not being Totally Secure in that area and they're like it's okay because I'm trading you know what I they had a reason and so every cycle people have very rational reasons for why they should compromise on security self- custody or both often times it includes the phrase onboarding the masses well if we don't do it this way will never onboard the masses but I got news for you onboarding the masses and then watching them get wrecked sucks and it's bad on board anybody it's bad for the whole you know like FTX was on boarding

the masses weren't they no guys slow down cool you know cool your cool your jets like we got to be we have to do this safely and securely and so you know making that happen now to answer your question I do think that that the world is heterogeneous though so I have most of my assets on Ledger maybe that's obvious but I do have some Assets in a cracket account right um you know maybe you know maybe sometimes there are you know new assets that are supported on Kraken before they're supported on Ledger and I'll I'll you know buy or trade them there sometimes I'm I'm just putting things there because I need to move things around so you know I trust Kraken I know the Kraken team I know they're good at security I know they take security seriously I know they take

um you know their their kind of assets uh solv secure you know seriously um also I you know I own some of the ETF and you know the reason is I have an I have an IRA in the US um I called my asset manager and was like hey do I have anything left in equities he was like not really well you've got this Ira sitting over here I was like flip that thing to the ETF you know so but that's that's the point it's like it's it's it's a bit heterogeneous so I'm not you know precious about it but I do try to think about it from first principles um and that's why I say like okay only two say options trusted custodian and if I have a friend who tells me look all my money's in you know you know in coinbase I'm I'm not like dude you better look

out you know I mean I think that they're a real company that is doing I have my also have my emails a Gmail you know what I mean I it's like in that same it's in the same category there I think I think Google's going to be around tomorrow and I don't really think apart from making ad Revenue they want to you know go through my personal data I don't think that's that valuable to them on a relative basis um you know I similarly you know if if a friend is in coinbase I'm I'm not like you know I'm telling I'm not telling him to run you know at the same time I do think that this slope is really slippery and the more you learn um you know the more you learn about crypto the more you learn about security the more you know

the more time you spend educated people become Ledger customers um and and so I think that uh you know the way the right way to look at it is trusted custodians or secure self- custody there are I can't name five trusted custodians um and you know Ledger is the most secure self- custody from an architectural perspective so that's that's the only way I would slice it personally anything else any of that stuff in the middle software only wallet un like sketchy custodian some place that like offers you yield that's too good to be true you know us probably is too good to be true probably is so so what so give give us a a few of the numbers here how

many people own crypto worldwide roughly in your estimate and how many are using Hardware devices yeah so the numbers that you hear are north of 500 million people own crypto um you know based on what we see that even that is pretty broad I think that that covers like anyone who bought a little bit of Doge on Robin Hood you know what I mean so when you look at people that are actually serious about crypto and active in crypto you're cutting it down to about 100 million Ledger has sold 7 million wallets um we think like 1.2 wallets per person you know I meet people all the time like you who are like I've got six ledgers you know and and um I always say okay why tell me why what you do the answer is always quite

interesting actually there are lots of that's why with Stacks we made them so that um they actually you know are meant to stack together because you know we realize that that lots of people do have have multiple ledgers for very good reasons um but let's let's just say that you know out of 7 million wallets sold we we were probably 5 million people and we're roughly you know 70% of the market you know so I I would say that we're being generous to say there are 10 million people in Secure self- custody is my guess so if you look at you know and I I think you know there's that that 500 million number will only go up from this point you know um especially after I think next year will be explosive for for the whole industry um and you know but but I think that look if this if you

look at 2021 it was a lot about Defi and nfts which are very self- custody things well if if you know if this cycle is about ETFs and you know financialization you know I think I'm not sure it'll be you know about self- custody in the same way so I think collectively we have you know a lot of work to do to you know to remind people you know not your keys not your coins to really educate people on what it means to be secure because if if people are you know kind of getting into hot wallets because it's easy I was talking to um you know one group that's like made a really nice you know hot wallet it's like a pass key wallet um and they were like it's a

great onboarding thing and the thing that has shocked them and kind of scared them is that people are really putting a lot of value in them because you know they that's not what they intended them for they intended them to be you know kind of like easy on-ramps and then okay if you get like $1,000 in there well now you know go go spend 60 bucks on a ledger and you know what I mean protect yourself you know don't lose your thousand bucks because you were too cheap to spend 60 hello like that's pretty simple math um you know so I and but I think that that's the problem is you know sometimes it's one of those things that you're going to do tomorrow I mean one of my favorite stories I actually post this story online someone told me the story I was like can you

please introduce me to your friend because guy told me um he said oh so I have a colleague and um you know he just started at the job and uh we did we did like our first uh you know first call get to know each other call and I ask him you know what he does and where he keeps his crypto and his he had it with FTX and this is in September of 22 I didn't know what was coming of course the guy said but he was like he's like oh man you got to get your money in a ledger and uh and the guy was like ah I know I've even got a ledger here on my desk I just haven't done it yet and my friend he goes tell you what I'm going to give you 20 minutes back because this call was supposed to be 30 minutes we've

only talked for 10 minutes we're going to hang up right now and you're going to set up your Ledger and the guy did and he moved his he had like I think he's it's a video it's on The Ledger account on YouTube but I think he had like 300,000 bucks in his account he moved it out less than a month later FTX goes goes belly up so his friend just like insisting you're gonna do it right now not even his friend a guy he just met at work you're gonna do it right now saved him you know for him it was his life savings it was like his the money it was saving for his kids um so it's you know so that those are and you got to you got to we the lightning rod for those stories I've heard every one of those

every one of the like you know that just the the crazy mistakes that that that people make um you know so getting all this security and operational security you got to make it a priority um and if you do it'll actually help you because it'll you know it'll protect you from yourself in in some ways you know it'll protect your bag um you know protect you from yourself yeah for sure uh and and to answer your question the reason I have so many ledgers is because some of them are for my business and I have to keep my personal assets separate from my business I do have a a as the chief experiened officer at Ledger I have a ledger live request okay is it really bugs me that when I open Ledger live it

shows all my wallets at once as opposed to only showing there's no way to show just the wallet that I'm looking at right you want to sort you want to sort by I want sort by wallet I really want to be able to sort by request request received I'll send it to Gom who's our head of product right after we hang up okay amazing uh okay let's talk about the future because you are you've always been throughout your career a real Visionary for Consumer Tech and consumer products and how are we going to hold them and how are we going to use them and we're talking about new hardware here that you know seven million now it's a lot but I believe we're just getting started so I think the first question I have here is

what What will what will happen first will our phones offer self- custody or will everyone have a hard wallet wallet you know it's a great question and when I met Pascal back in 2015 it was kind of the first question I asked him as well and I had to get my head around because we're we're definitely like conditioned to be like okay our phone does everything right right but the the the the flip is the right way to think about it which is you know look you have you have a new thing let me give you a little bit of historical perspective um I'll I'll belabor this just a little bit but I promise it's worth it and it gives like a model to to think about what's happening because and this is where like me being an old man you know maybe I can

impart a little a little bit of wisdom but you know I started working on the internet in 1990 and no one cared right so I've seen this movie before like I was the guy in 1995 telling you this internet thing's going to be big right so that's also why when people tell me you know I think crypto is nothing I just say I'll see in 10 years like I don't even want to argue about it like you know because I remember the people who told me in 2002 I'll never have an email address I don't need one right okay call me today dude like let's have that conversation today right because you're gonna eat this Crow um you know so but also we got over excited we also have to recognize that in 1998 99 we thought it was all coming

tomorrow right so in this thing everyone was right the people who said you guys are crazy they were right those of us who said this is inevitable we were right what we all had wrong was the time scale right and so that that first of all that's like the way you you have to have to like think about all this stuff also though you know you can't lump the internet crypto and AI all into one bucket and just go oh it's computer stuff like no no very very different movements the internet was an internet of information the fundamental thing it did is it made that information that used to be locked behind the news stand or the television or the radio it made

it available right now at your fingertips you know no matter what you don't have to get out of your seat to get it right and it's just impossible to overstate how impactful that was and even if in 1999 you kind of got like wow this probably you know you know this probably overturns newspapers which is probably what you were thinking in 1999 you didn't really foresee it you know overturning media in the way that it did you for sure didn't predict Uber you know what I mean like you didn't predict it so much that when Uber finally arrived 10 years later you were like oh nice black car thing for rich people you know what I mean you didn't realize no no no no no this is actually like the new way we assign resources right when

you have suppressed Supply and Suess suppressed demand and you put an information Marketplace in the middle it changes everything right okay so now with crypto we have this new thing which is the internet of value right we have we have we've lived through now a once in a lifetime once in humanity actually digitization of all information and now we are just at the very beginning of a once in humanity digitization of all value so the reason I bring up the historical perspective because it's one thing that's funny is I worked on the internet for 18 years before the iPhone appeared and and it when the iPhone did appear it was almost like oh that's why we're doing this WOW there there wow

look at that we have a device now that was actually designed to do this internet of information thing that we've been talking about for so long um my point is is that that thing was designed for the internet of information it was not designed for the internet of value in any way shape or form just search like you know M1 exploit right the chip that's inside your your iPhone is incredible and it is bad at security right not taking anything away from it is an incredible achievement that chip but it was not designed for security the chips that are inside Ledger phones are these are their St micro Electronics um secure elements and they were designed

for security they've been hardened over tens of years they're the same chip that's in your credit card and your passport um and this is what they were built for and Ledger has the only operating system on top of those chips on the planet so I think in any industrial transformation to answer your original question you always have like what I would call an unbundling you can't really see my phone because of the background you have an unbundling and a rebundling right so we unbundled the compact disc into the 99cent download and then we rebundle it into music Services right and this is this happens in every industrial transformation in some other way so I do think that ultimately your phone would can have one of these chips and The

Ledger operating system running on it but asking your phone to do this is like if I said to you okay I've got a billion in gold bars and I need you to build a building to protect it and um and you're like okay all right let me get to work on that uh all right I've got to like secure this building I'm like oh yeah yeah yeah sorry I forgot to tell you I'm also gonna put a nightclub and a kindergarten and a shopping mall on the ground floor and then I've got an idea for like a zoo of some kind on and then I have a friend who has a just this crazy idea you're not going to believe what but don't worry about it just give him a cubicle and he's gonna bring in you'd be like wait wait God I'm trying to protect these gold bars like can I

just do that and that's why your phone is years away from being able to secure value like you're talking about you know it's it's not even just a hardware change it's an operating system you know difference you can't do you can't play all you can't do everything you want to do with your phone and protect value and that's not what your phone was meant to do your phone was designed for the internet of information Ledger is designed for the internet of value and that's why they're why they're different so you look if we go six7 I don't know how many years down the road iPod came out in 2002 iPhone came out in 2008 maybe that's how long it takes um you know there there are certainly things there but if you want to be secure today

there's there's not a there's not another way so are we all going to walk around with two devices or are we just going to have a device at home that holds our co cold storage and we don't have a device when we need it for because one thing that's really difficult I think for a lot of people to understand is it's it's difficult to understand it's same analogy as the internet and I love the the line that as of in Internet years we're actually in 1998 right now and if you can imagine that's where crypto is right now we're in the year and that's a great great feeling you get from that you're like oh okay like we are early uh but it's hard to understand what blockchain and digital

assets will be longterm because right now it's really just we're all just speculating and we all just own tokens for the tokens for the purpose of an investment we don't really sure maybe a few million of us have nfts but we don't really use them like it's not like we have our tickets to go to an events on chain all of this stuff do you foresee us walking around with two devices or do you foresee it being like by that point we will be rebundle look I think we're already like if you're if you're walking around with um a smartphone a smartwatch um the headphones that you're wearing right there and an aura ring you've already got four devices you know that are that are pretty damn smart and you know full of incredible technology so I I actually think it might be the case that we look

back 10 years from now we go can you believe that we used to keep all the company secrets on the same device that our kids played Candy Crush on the subway on like like I think that's just as as likely that we will have a special purpose device for security um there's a great book that I encourage people to read uh called This Is How They tell me the world ends came out five or so years ago written by Nicole Pearl Roth who's the cyber crime reporter for the New York Times but you know the reality is is that security becomes a bigger problem in our lives every year not a smaller problem and like at a big scale you know the fact that your local Water Treatment Plant runs on Windows 95 should freak you out more than it does you know because technology is is more

intertwined in our lives and most people have bad security hygiene you know like to do it right you're either spending you know some portion of your day in an app like one password and another one like Google Authenticator or you have really poor security those are your only two options also I think you know if you think about the future and you think about Innovation we talk a lot about like agentic AI you know first of all AI drives digital abundance blockchains drive digital scarcity you need both the you're going to need to prove that you are a human that you're and you're not a bot that you are a unique human you know and you're not like 40 handles on on X

that this is actually me you know and this is not an avatar of me that that the audios coming out of my mic is are actually the words I said like this is this gets more important not less important um and then if you think about agentic AI where I'm what am I going to do if I am I going to tell my rabbit R1 to book me a flight to Miami I'm gonna give it my credit card information I'm GNA give it my Delta login like that doesn't work this web that we have I think people like they accept the way that that the the technology we use today is broken passwords broken for everybody right and nobody almost nobody it's the same problem right like think about there's 5.4 billion people with smartphones how many users does one password have you

could do the same thing in terms of like how many people are on exchanges versus how many ledgers are there it's the same sort of a sort of a problem right you have all these internet users and you know and very bad security hygiene also like the the bot problem that we have absolutely everywhere like we just accept that it's real this is so solvable if x tomorrow was just like look you have to you have to log in with your Ledger like the bot problem goes away overnight like it's not like we're waiting for the technology to arrive it's here we just have chosen to live with this nightmare right so I I think yes you're you're going to and that's also you know you know people see a ledger and they're like oh my God it must have five million of Bitcoin on it like no it

might just have your passwords on it you know it it's it's like no I think it'll be totally normal to carry around a security device to as your second Factor you know it's just a way of saying like yeah it's not only I it's not the in other words like you could say oh having a signifies that you hold hold crypto I'd say well yeah maybe in 2020 but you know today having a ledger might just mean like I give a about security and my identity I give a about the security of my identity so I I think that's the the transformation that happens and it won't only be Ledger I think your you know your phone will get better at this I think like what Google and and um Apple are pushing on pass Keys like that's that's important like

we're move we are moving toward a usern nameless environment but we unless we move toward a world where the user also owns their preferences then you can't even do things like agentic AI so I think we I think overall we you know we have to go that direction I also I think your com your com your question about adoption is actually a really important one because you were saying like look right now we're all just speculating on these assets which I I think is true and that that that alone is interesting I wrote something about this a couple of weeks ago where I was thinking like but here's what I remember digital music was always first it was like the first thing to be disrupted so you had um you know you had had if you think about it like digital music in or the music industry

was disrupted by the internet around 1998 99 2000 2000 is when CD sales started to fall because of of fil sharing online but a lot of other Industries weren't really disrupted until more like 2000 so it took like 10 years later and I think that's because music was like the file sizes are small everyone who's studying computer science loves to listen to music while they code it's an easy database problem it's like artist album track genre you know so there was a reason that music was was always kind of the the first Domino to fall but I think that's also why digital art is the first Domino to fall because it's you don't need everyone to adopt it right to make ticketing work like Ticket

Master has to adopt that for every single user so what did they do instead and Ticket Master actually you know has distributed a lot nfts and it's just like a digital collectible after the show it's optional it's not for everybody and art is is an early you know Domino to fall because you don't need everyone to adopt it you only need you know these 5,000 weirdos who like generative art to to like it to you know for there to be a Marketplace you you the adoption set can be much much much smaller um so I I think that um I I think that you will have it in your everyday life it's just again like an internet of value has you know kind of a a higher

boiling point um than an than an internet of information and you know collectively we're building a lot of that scaffolding you know just like all the ideas from 1999 the idea of doing long form video or the idea of doing you know 60-minute delivery was not um was was there in 1999 um it just there was there was no user base there was no there weren't enough people for the network effects to take hold so it took another 12 years so I think you could say the same thing about the ideas of 20121 you know they I think if you fast forward 12 to 15 years all of those like crazy web 3 ideas that we had in 2021 will be true they just came true 10 to

15 years later than we thought they would um so yeah I think that we have to fit into that context not you know merely the the context of the moment which will change from IOS to nfts to meme coins and next cycle there will be something else and that will change but the underlying fundamentals will not change yeah completely agree K last question before we wrap up here Ian uh I'm since you bring up adoption I'm curious to understand because I think that you and your team at Ledger have a view that Hardware devices are a onboarding ramp and that people I mean you mentioned at the beginning of the

episode that you're now selling in Best Buy in thousands of stores Across America are people buying ledgers as a firsttime user like are people walking I have this vision of it's you know it's it's a Black Friday or I'm I'm out shopping for my kids for uh for Christmas and I've never bought crypto before but I see this like you know maybe a Bitcoin stand or something like that around a ledger and I'm like oh cool that's how I can get Bitcoin like is that happening yeah it it is I mean look the generally speaking Ledger's been around so Ledger's been around for 10 years and the way that people come to Ledger is they get some value their value goes up they get more educated they become more interested in self-

custody and security and they and they buy a ledger so if you think about like a lot of what our job is is to shorten that right all the way down to exactly what you described I'm in best bu damn I've been hearing a lot about Bitcoin I don't really know how to start oh look I can start here you know there's a a a Bitcoin Edition you know Ledger flex and you know it looks easy um you know and and that's why we we even have like these little you know stands inside a best inside of uh you know I think about a third of all Best Buy stores have a ledger display and there's a video running and you can scan a QR code and you can learn more and you know so hopefully you know people are taking that journey and you know now you really

can do everything to and from self- custody inside of Ledger you can set up your Ledger you can buy your first Bitcoin in fact you know our Black Friday deal is this device and it comes with $70 of Bitcoin right the idea is we put a link in the show notes everybody uh and I do this because if you don't have a freaking lecture you should buy one if this episode hasn't already convinced you guys thank you and if you don't he'll give you my cell phone number you can call me and we can talk until you buy one um the the uh you know but but you know because we want people to to have sort of their first you know their first their first Bitcoin ideally um by by you know with with their with their Ledger um so it's I think you know

we'll see what this cycle looks like you know what I mean I think we're um we're it's we're just at the very beginning of it um what is true is that the user experience has come a long way you know if you take the the old Ledger devices the Nanos which um which we of course we we do still sell but I think for a new user you know this form factor where you click okay with your two thumbs you know again if you're an early adopter awesome I remember you know all of the You Know MP3 players before the iPod no one else does you know um but I do because I was I was an early adopter and I was there but when you have you know you have this this you know secure touch screen um it's just much easier to use and and and

then you have the services inside of Ledger live you know you have you then can you know with a straight face say to a more novice user yes you you can do this Okay I lied I have one more question final question uh what what would be your recommended security protocol how many ledgers should the ideal should somebody have how should they think about using hot wallets versus Hardware wallets I think it it really depends on your use case right so I I'll give you kind of a generic one and then users can modify it for their personal use case um you know what what I do is I have um I have a kind of a bag wallet which is Cold Storage deep

storage you know don't Vault don't yeah Vault don't touch it I separately have a a vault for my nfts okay um and so because you're a large nft collector like you're you yeah and I just I prefer to keep them separate and it's not even there's not even a like a reason other than I just you know I I prefer having you know I don't don't want to put all of my eggs in one proverbial basket right and so I have that separate and that Vault I never connect to the web ever right so my nft Vault never gets connected to the web for for any reason um and then I have my mint wallet um which you know has a little bit in it I can be more promiscuous with it I can I can you know I I I mint there I move I

move things out and I can you know I can do more defi type of stuff with it and it's it's it's okay I also though have um backups with Nan s pluses so Nan plus is you know right right now with um with with Black Friday it's 59 bucks so it's a it's a pretty cheap little device there's no battery there's no Bluetooth it's really simple from a mechanical perspective um it's got a lot more memory than the Nano s so if you do have an old Nano s i super recommend you upgrade like that thing doesn't have enough memory they're getting old electronics don't last forever you know they're 59 bucks to upgrade to an s+ if you don't want to go all the way to a

flexer a sta um you know so but I have those backups so I'll take three of those and set them up with exactly the same seed phrase and then put them in different physical locations so you know if you put your Stacks or your Flex in the washing machine you know you can easily you know grab one and obviously you have your recovery phrase somewhere I put my recovery phrase on steel we sell cryptotag at at ledger.com and put them in someplace which is not your home right which is you know so that you're you know there's there's operational security is important we don't have time to talk about it you know fully but think about it is what I would say because think about what's what's right for you and um and your family and do do the research and and and read about it

um but one thing that I think is so let me just say this thing that maybe it'll be useful to your to your listeners we have remember your value is not in your Ledger what does a ledger do a ledger protects your private key okay so let's I'm sorry but let's let's just make sure this is important this is want to make sure people understand this really really really clearly your value is safe it's on the blockchain right so what you have in your possession is your proof that it belongs to you you have a private key that says I am actually the owner of that value out there on that blockchain there's some Bitcoin out there there's an nft out there there's some salana out

there and it belongs to me doesn't belong to anyone else and I can prove to you right okay so that's actually what's in your Ledger is your private key so your private key is the whole game protecting your private key is the whole game if someone gets your recovery phrase they've got your private key which is why you should never fall for a scam where someone says oh to fix this problem for you I'm going to need your recovery phrase that person is a thief if you have the opportunity to punch them in the face no one will ever ask you for your recovery phrase because it's like asking for your private key right it's the gnarliest thing you could ever ask for or or give to someone so the way a ledger works it's the only product that has that generates that

private key using a secure element which has entropy and other properties that ensure that private key is is as random as it could be in short when it does a cryptographic operation it stays in there and when you sign you're signing on a secure screen a screen that is actually being controlled by that secure element there your phone doesn't do that that other Hardware wallets don't do that other Hardware wallets what they'll do is they might have a secure element many don't but if they do they are using more of a general purpose Tri chip to create the seed phrase to do the the cryptographic computation and they're using a second chip usually to drive the screen and the magic trick of Ledger is it's using that

same secure chip that's in your credit card and using it to do the whole stack including driving the screen that's the that's that's the magic and so that's that's also why it's important it's not just a handwavy thing because protecting your private key is the whole game um so that when you're thinking about your when you're thinking about it work from that how do I make sure no one has access to my private key and and how do I make sure that I always do that's the trick how is it that I always have access and no one else ever has access that's the trick yeah it's a tough trick to answer so what does happen to to ask the obvious question what does happen if I put my ledger in the washing machine and I fry it then you well if it's

really fried you know I mean I I don't I haven't done that test but my guess is is that sometimes or I lose it or I lose sometimes my guess is sometimes it would make it through the washing machine sometimes you wouldn't it's not a waterproof device um but uh then you have your recovery phrase and you punch your recovery phrase in and it works again I mean you this is also I mean it's really I encourage I what I what I one of the ways that is a great way for someone to learn is like buy a flex or a Stax also buy a Nanos plus set one of them up with a new a new seed now take that same recovery phrase and punch it into the other device and like you can do that as many times as you want and now also you're starting to understand

the brilliant of cryptography and blockchains like the what you know I'd always say to to friends I'm like look you could take your life savings you can put it in one of these devices you can take those 24 words you can use them as a bookmark you can take the device throw it the fire now cross a border punch these 24 words into a new device and you've got all your value back now you understand that this is freedom technology now you understand when I go into the US and they're like are you carrying more than $10,000 in currency I'm like will anyone ever be carrying more than 10,000 I'm like I have 24 words in my head does that count uh you know uh you know like yeah what what is it really at this point you know this is

this is the kind of the you know Magic The Magic of this way of storing value that is extraordinary um so read yeah read broken money read this is how they tell me the world ends like do the research yeah yeah yeah and and take take take ownership for your your life and your assets and right now it's just your assets but in the future it's going to be a lot more things it's going to be your digital identity it's going to be all your data online it's going to be uh your ticket it's going to be your passport I mean the the list is going to be long I think we all believe and I think we will get there as you said we just need to be patient and by the way like my ledger is already my second Factor on Twitter login.gov exchange we

we have we have a tofa you know it it is that Ubbi key functionality right tofa pass Keys um so you're we're already there today it's just starting you know we'll add resident keys to that early next year which is which will be a big one for a lot of things but you will you you will probably have a second Ledger or a ledger like device to be logging in securely to things you know a year from now if not already today yeah Ian thank you so much for your time it's been a fantastic conversation thank you for having me so thank you so jealous you're I'm thinking about how many ski days you're going to get in this year versus me and I'm jealous quite quite a few I hope we got a good start to the season out here uh everybody listening in uh as

I said I'm going to put a link to the show in the show notes to buy uh they've got a great Black Friday deal on right now this is not me trying to make you guys buy Ledger or promoting it in any way this is not sponsored this notsponsored episode I just genuinely believe I mean I have four of them for good reason uh and I think you guys should too if you don't already H and if you want help setting it up uh give me a shout Post in the comments that you guys need help and we'll make sure we make another video to give you guys the help that you need thank you so much for listening and Ian thank you for joining us today have a wicked awesome day everybody as always if you liked to today's episode please hit subscribe and

make sure you follow us you don't miss out on the next one there's also a link in the description to our free five minute daily newsletter where we simplify crypto for you while making you laugh and if you're willing to step up your crypto investing game we're going to also leave a link for milk Road Pro you get access to our portfolio where you can see exactly what we are buying this is your number one resource to help you invest successfully in crypto one final note this show is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice investing in crypto or any asset is risky and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose thanks so much for listening in my friends have a wicked awesome day