Why Self-Custody Still Matters | Pascal & Ian

Transcript

Ledger is about digital ownership at a very base level felt a bit like 2002 where I knew the internet was a big part of the lives of future humans but the cell phone that I had in my hand was fundamentally bad at the internet and I feel the same way about about Ledger I know that digital ownership is a huge part of the lives of future humans yet my cell phone as amazing as it is is fundamentally bad at digital ownership and so in every industrial translation transition you have an unbundling a rebundling and so you know Ledger will lead both the unbundling and the rebundling this episode is brought to you by SE se's V2 upgrade introduces the first high performance parallelized evm

already live on public devet M net comes later in Q2 you can follow along with the say Journey on X say Network say is spelled s eii go follow say onx say Network hey everyone Santi and I have been talking about salana a lot and we're excited to have a salana sponsor of Empire marinade marinade is a staking protocol on salana and the only stake pool that delivers Auto rebalancing me rewards and automatic downside protection with their new protected staking rewards optimize your sole stake with marinade by hitting the link in the show notes big thanks to marinade we'll talk more about them later in the show this episode is brought to you by

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would highly encourage folks to check out the mantle Rewards program at mantle. XYZ rewards hyphen [Music] station all right Pascal good Ian good all good sweet all right everyone welcome back to Empire I'm going solo no Santi today we've got Ian Rogers uh I I Ian I think it's fair to call you one of the most interesting people in crypto Beasty Boys extraordinaire sold some companies to uh I think I'll get these right AOL Yahoo Apple owner of a pretty great nft collection that I'm an enjoyer of uh I think X I might get this title wrong

Chief digital officer of lvmh or really helped push lvmh's Port codes into the kind of digital e-commerce age uh and now cxo of Ledger and then we've got Pascal CEO of Ledger also pretty interesting guy himself so Jens welcome to the show thank you so much I'm here because Pascal is interesting when I moved to when I moved to France eight and a half years ago one of the first people I got introduced to was was Pascal and I I I literally like after 10 minutes what wanted a second date I was like you're you're not like all the other French dud the first dinner I went to have with h Pascal was I think I got padded down by a security guard this I was like what what's going what is going on here so wow wow where did we go where did we go was it was uh I think

ditto ditto organized it in like 2018 or 2019 in New York Trey Trey organized it and um and uh there was security guard there and I was like I don't know if this is because of Pascal or if it's because of the restaurant or not not not not because of me one one of the other first people I met when I moved to Paris eight and a half years ago was Tony Fidel and so that's like all part of this all part of the story it's all come together so is this the first show you guys have done together or you guys have done a bunch of speaking together we usually do we speak a lot together but podcast hold hold on a second like we do both uh on podcast no I think we've done a few podcasts together uh we've been pitching

a lot together to raise money definitely definitely uh and uh otherwise in work yes we divide and conquer like you know he he does his things I do my things and uh we cover more Grand like that how do you guys divide and conquer in the in the fundraising pitches we do them together no it's just like it's it's a Duo like you know and we're really good at this like you know we don't step on each other toes like you know I say my things and then I give it to end and you know it's a and it's a Well oil show that uh we didn't even prepare like you know we were very natural together nice is there anything you guys disagree on it's a good question sure I'm sure there must be you know eventually but uh but we are non-confrontation so we end

up either agreeing or po likly disagree you disagree on how much color to wear in your clothing Pascal I've only seen you wear black no well you know we each have our style no no but like look in business we very rarely disagree you know we always say you know we always sort of violently agree in the end on on sort of everything but but equally you know in the company the way we run things is you know we like to you know like it's very difficult to work with people if you impose ideas so in the end like it has to be it has to feel like you know it's a it's a flow and that your team and the people that you work with uh you know feels like a team and not so much like you know

confrontational and you know if every idea has to pass in confrontational way I think you're doing it wrong and so for us whether it's with Ian and you know the rest of the comx at Ledger we have a tendency to you know end up agreeing on things and you know moving as one so yeah I would also I would also say that you know Pascal's very good at at you know both selecting a a board of directors as well as an an executive committee for the company that's quite diverse where people bring their own skills I mean I always I always say that companies work when everybody does their job right so you want to have a diverse group of people that are good at different things um and I also think that you know Ledger is a French company it's you know started in in France 10

years ago but it's really a global company if you look at the makeup of the people that are in it and like truly Global in a way that the companies that I was a part of in in California were not you know were not truly Global in the same way um but also it's not a small French crypto company right it really feels like a company with a global footprint and a global mindset and I think that I think that you know Pascal's done a done a good job you know I always say that like lbmh took a you know it shows that they are they shows LV M bringing me in shows that they think outside of the box I'm not the obvious choice you know for the role the person who was in the that Chief digital role at lvmh before me was a you know a

person from Microsoft a person from France and a great person but maybe a little safer as a choice than than me I'm kind of a kind of a weird person and I would say that you know same at at at Ledger Pascal has a vision that's like you know quite ambitious and quite quite Global and I think it shows up in the in the people that are around him yeah so I want to have you guys on because you guys just released what I think is fair to call the most beautiful crypto product that has ever been released and um I got a sneak peek at it it's just like gorgeously designed it's called Ledger stacks and there there you go if you're watching on YouTube you can not only see Ian showing off the stacks but you can see Ian and Pascal's cool little

uh backgrounds here um so yeah you've got this dope product called Stacks which we'll we'll definitely talk about in a second you stack them together and you stack them on top of each other it's really cool um but before we do that I thought it'd be interesting to just share you guys come at the world from a really interesting perspective like Pascal I've heard you talk about like your vision for like digital ownership and digital value and like just why I guess why this matters then Ian I've heard you come at this from like a perspective of look like building websites for the Beasty Boys and you know kind of like in the heart of the 1990s dog fight between like AOL and Microsoft and Yahoo and these companies and uh just realizing like how long it takes for some of this stuff to play out

so maybe Pascal I could pick on you to to tea up this conversation around like Ledger as a business is I mean you came into the business I think end of 2014 or maybe early 2015 you've been at this for 10 years like why is this concept of like self- custody or digital value or digital ownership like so damn important to you yeah I mean when you do a business I think you can either you know try to solve like an sort of everyday problem and or you know if the everyday prr is sort of big enough then you can try to change the world and I think uh when I startled to put Bitcoin it was 14 and then I was the

first investor in Ledger I led the seed round and for me like you know security you know Bitcoin was going to change the world and security was like a must like you can't go around with your private keys if then not absolutely secure and being French I had a bias because you know I was always told growing up that you know cheap and pin technology whether you have in credit card is actually the best form of security and uh and the leg team was raising money and they they pitched to me chip and pin applied to bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and and for me it was just like Okay so this changes the world and actually if you think about it you know with Bitcoin you have uh suddenly you have digital ownership you can own like a digital token which was not

possible before and since Bitcoin you can see the digital ownership takes many forms and actually if you really think about digital ownership soly you think well actually my sort of login password to my Instagram account is is actually sort of some kind of digital ownership and so if you start thinking like that you're like oh okay now I've got a lot of Secrets online they're very important to me actually they're more important uh you know every day that sort of passes U because there is more value attached to them and so and then you also realize that you're being hacked every day and that you know the way they use your computer and your phone is vastly insecure because since you know we've been using this for a long time now and we've been you know patching security

for a long time and we know about like zerox day Etc and so we all know very intuitively that computers and phones have not been designed for the security in the sense of securing uh you know unique digital assets and so if you think about those two Trends then you're thinking ultimately you know you need to to to bring something to people for the security but also for the freedom you know and because I feel that from security starts freedom in the sense of you know digital ownership is not only some new but it's also something that is sort of opposed to this you know World economic Forum view that you know you're not going to own anything in the future and that's okay so I think that's not okay I think you know uh you know Freedom comes from private property uh

and if you don't have private property uh then you're not free and if you think that all your life most of your life now is digital the fact that you don't own anything I think is is a fundamental problem I don't think that you should own fundamentally everything I I think at least should have the choice and so uh you know Ledger is here to give that choice sometimes you want to own sometimes it's yours and you need to be able to do it in a very secure way and in a very easy way and so you were referring to Stacks Stacks is that combination of super secure and super easy to use and that's what we're trying to do and we believe it's a fundamental Trend that is happening everywhere in the world at the same time we believe it's a big problem to solve and we

believe that it's something where we can change people's lives uh and we know it because you know people are very uh intimate with Ledger people are very uh um you know react uh in in in various ways with Ledger but it's always very emotional and why because it's it's very important it's a very important important problem that we're trying to to solve and that's sort of the Genesis of sort of why Ledger and why we believe it's super important for the future yeah Ian how do you think about this I look this is the reason that I came to Ledger like I said I met Pascal in in 2015 and the time he was you know investor and board member um at Ledger and I kind of went through you know the the normal you know the the normal path

of trying to get my head around you know what is ledger exactly but it was after the Ico boom and bust of 2017 that I really felt like I understood Ledger and and and felt kind of how important Ledger was um in in the overall picture in the world of digital assets because you know look I was I did I did Winamp I did Yahoo music I did Beats music I did Apple music so in some ways I'm you know at least partially uh to blame for the fact that you don't own compact discs anymore right and that you you now rent your music and you don't have ownership in the in the digital world so this invention of digital ownership is as important as the invention of the internet to Pascal's point we leave We Live digital lives we will have digital ownership and then if you just follow

that forward well therefore you will have self- custody and therefore security is Paramount right like all of these things are are true and I also think that you know and I believed for a few years now that in a world of artificial intelligence um digital ownership is the yin to that yang right if you if you have digital abundance you must have digital scarcity and you know if I have um you know if I'm already consuming AI which is created by a web that is Con you know you know created by AI provenance is important right so knowing that this is my voice coming out of this of this microphone you know is is ultimately is ultimately important it's and in a world of of AI all of these things are important and what I

realized is that ledger is foundational to that and this is what I mean by after the Ico boom um the Ico boom you know was this for me it felt like.com Madness and then you know the question is oh my God what matters here and the answer at the end of the day is digital ownership matters and that was what I realized about Ledger was that that you know in the same way that Cisco didn't care the winner of kind of um you know World War 3.0 as Ken alowa called it in his book from 1999 Cisco was just like Microsoft versus AOL versus netk versus and Cisco is like you know what we believe more internet tomorrow than yesterday you know similarly Ico boom and you know oh

my God what's you know like watch the you know which of these things am I supposed to be watching and then when the bust happened I realized Ledger doesn't Ledger Ledger is about digital ownership at a very base level um there and and if you and and we will have digital ownership and we will have self- custody and therefore we need security and so what I realized is that it it felt a bit like 2002 where I knew the internet was a big part of the lives of future humans but the cell phone that I had in my hand was fundamentally bad at the Internet it's like okay that changes and I feel the same way about about Ledger I know that digital ownership is a huge part of the lives of future humans yet my cell phone

as amazing as it is is fundamentally bad at digital ownership right and so in every industrial translation transition you have an unbundling and a rebundling right and so you know Ledger will lead both the unbundling and the rebundling Ian what phone do you have where there's five cameras on that thing this is this is the uh Pascal and I have the same one this is the s24 nice nice a lot of cameras on that bad boy um where so where does Ledger okay so if you look at the internet today we've got like five and a half billion internet users I think there's probably four or five billion social media users there's let's call it 400 to 500 million crypto users globally if I

had to I don't know Ledger's user numbers but if I had to guess it's somewhere in the range of like probably five to 10 million ledgers sold historically probably closer to the seven seven seven seven million sold and and as I'm sure you know you know every time we meet someone they say I've got five ledgers so you know 7 million sold doesn't mean 7 million people world of SEC actually actually the number of average Ledger per user is like 1.2 1.3 so actually the number of user is probably around five exactly interesting um so where does Ledger sit in this because on one side of the spectrum it's like it's the way to opt out of the system it's like I'm actually going to hold like no value on The Ledger on my ledger but like in a world where like hits the fan uh you know

in like a world where like all of Ryan sas' tweets come true like I need I need the Ledger and then there's uh and then there's like no I watch that movie by the way that movie the movie that's called in a world where all of Ryan suus tweets come true watch that's the movie we need yeah exactly uh world uh World War 3.0 by the way great great book actually um such a good book great book um and then there's the other side of the Spectrum which is like when I saw the Ledger Stacks I was like Tony Fidel is working on this thing and they got the eink guy and this little documentary which is a great documentary I we'll link it in the show notes I was like man this is a mainstream this is a mainstream product this is not for the

for the Ryan cus world comes true this is the mainstream product world and um I want to ask you guys about a phone later on because but I'm like they got to be thinking about a phone too at some point so like where does Ledger fit into this world is it the opt out or is it the like more and more value goes onto this in Into The Ledger ecosystem so I I'll I'll do the first bit and then I'll give it to end to to add up to what I'm going to say but I think um when you say 500 million users uh of of crypto is is 5 million 500 million people that have some kind of crypto tracker in some form actually most users are on exchanges today they actually don't own their crypto and right now

users have I've been on boarded by coinbase which is great now they're being on boarded by ETFs if you look at users that have their private Keys you're looking at a subset of this and if you look at users that have their private keys and have real value you're looking again at a subset I would argue that users with more than a, with their private key is you're looking at you know 20 to 30 million people on the planet like you know that's not that's not many people and that's going to grow okay so why isn't it too many people right now because crypto right now has been used primarily as a medium for speculation you know people buy and sell crypto you know people trade uh and that's that's one that's probably the main use case which is why binance is probably you know one

of the biggest companies in the planet right now like you know the numbers are private but there are actually I think extremely big you know much bigger than than coinbase and coinbase is is already a really great really great company and so that's that's that's the that's the use case right now we believe that the use case so that's number one number two it was much easier to build an exchange that to build company like Ledger at scale you know it's easy Tech versus hard tech I think that what Ledger does is hard tech you need Hardware operating system software to build an exchange is from a technology standpoint isn't uh that hard so actually when you go through transformation transformation and a new asset class you know you probably start with Easy Tech and you go

towards hard tech which is why Stacks exist today and didn't exist in 2014 it's very difficult to do stacks in 2014 it becomes Possible only today uh and finally I think now what we're starting to see is okay you know blockchains l1s were in their infancy are still somehow in their infancy now you got l2s and now you start to have like the application layer being built on top interestingly enough if you are on ethereum on SOL you can interact with your private keys and so therefore you would see that you actually need the private keys and so therefore you need a ledger in order to do Define a bunch of things that otherwise you cannot do if you give your private keys to to a bank or to an exchange interestingly enough you know

Bitcoin with with what's happening right now with l2s and different thing is taking the same direction and so basically what we think now you know the the years of Ledger have yet to come in terms of mass Market this is why stack is actually perfectly time in terms of when it's coming out because the next generation of users and users in general will want to interact with crypto and it's not just a case of uh you know making money with crypto but it's also interacting with applications around you because you need to share uh you know you have a an e-commerce uh experience that is nft gated because you have a piece of art that that you want to buy that is an nft and because you have so

many use cases because you want to pay with crypto because you have all these things that you want to do where you need to to have your private keys this is this has yet to come because we are in 1995 when it comes to comparison with the Internet or maybe 1998 there are not so many things that you can do with crypto when you have your private keys today and especially not for the larger audience but in next 10 years uh it's going to be so and so therefore having your private Keys is going to be a no-brainer and having a ledger is going to be a no-brainer because you actually need it if you want to be able to interact with the protocol which is what you do when you use your phone for example you interact with a web protocol with your Ledger you will be able to

interact with those different uh public blockchains directly and you won't be able to do that if you go through an exchange for example yeah and I think if you look at everything that we're doing you can see that what we what we really are is we are Maxis on self- custody and security and so the game for us is you know how do you bring self- custody and security to more and more people because as as you know you guys both said in the in the kind of the setup for this question you've got um a a much larger group of people who have you know some sort of exposure to the asset class then you have people in Secure self- custody you know when you start to get into secure self- custody good operational security like you really get down to a very small

group of people but we think that all of those things really matter in the future so the question is how do you how do you bring that to more people um there's kind of an amazing story behind Stacks because it really is a story of a of you know a group of friends you know who have this belief and and want to push it Forward including um including Tony Fidel but I also think that the opportunity here is that um that that Stax is to this this conversation of digital assets what the iPod was to music um in a very specific way um in accessibility way that you were um alluding to at at the beginning which is before if you had there were MP3 players

before the iPod you know they they existed no one remembers them but they existed and they were really for enthusiasts right so you had you know you already had MP3s you're like oh cool MP3 player holds eight songs and I'm a geek and I and I want one I I was that geek and I had one yeah but what the what the iPod did is it fundamentally turned that around to where you know somebody might have the the iPod may have been their first purchase with respect to digital music they're like I don't I don't have any digital music yet but my friends have this they love it you know I'm I'm in the store I'm going to buy one I'm going to start ripping CDs I'm going to start buying songs I think similarly you know Stacks could be that device which is I don't have

Bitcoin yet I really want to get into this my friends are into it um you know this device is cool I can buy this device and buy my first Bitcoin the other thing is and and if you look at my stacks here you can see there's an app on the front of it called security key um so to Pascal's point this security key app sorry for the the background kind of eats it but the security key app is is my my pass key my TFA it's a better security device than you know face ID on my phone or the or the um you know thumb print on my phone um you know if I want real security around you know as Pascal said earlier not only my the digital ownership of my digital assets

but also the ownership of my Digital Life the proof that I am me and I think it's pretty easy to extend this to imagine extending this out into where you know um social media uh Services you know they actually value kind of a proof of humanity you know a proof of identity um and we think that these things are also a big part of the lives of future humans but it only makes sense if you have a device that you know the average consumer can use easily but I think we went just very quickly on something that is actually fundamental is that's the different between Ledger today and stacks with Ledger of 2014 in 2014 15 16 the use case was Buy and Hold You only had

Bitcoin you would put it on your Ledger secure your crypto just let it sit yeah yeah and so and then people were like well you know if I want to do things with my crypto I might as well leave them on an exchange because on Exchange I can swap I can do all these things I can you know invest in shitcoins etc etc meem coins whatever you want to do with your crypto life uh actually now you can start in any Journey with crypto and Ledger your crypto Journey with Ledger meaning like you buy Stacks you open it you follow the instruction you can buy your first Bitcoin uh right from the partners that have been integrated into Ledger live uh you can swap you can do you can stake you can do sort of whatever you want with your Ledger and so you don't have to do what people used

to do which is you open an exchange account you buy some crypto and then you forward it to to your Ledger because then you want to own it actually now you can do you know sort of end to endend uh with your Ledger and you can even offramp with your Ledger because you can sell your crypto from your Ledger and you can add a credit card to to your Ledger that's available in Europe and it's going to be available available hopefully in the US uh later this year so actually you can go about you marry crypto life with your Ledger because on top of it you can connect your Stacks to other software experiences you can connect directly to Rabbi metamask coinbase wallet Etc like you know you don't need to stay only Into The Ledger environment but in terms of security and where your private keys are and how you

engage now and how you connect to to your world of crypto you can do it with your ledger so that's you know very fundamental as a difference between you know Ledger then and Ledger now uh and to Ian's Point like you know you would buy an iPod because you wanted to buy music not because you just wanted the iPod and now you buy Ledger because you actually want crypto and that's something uh that has been developed since 21 and that's something that is that has come to maturity uh in the past you know 12 months and it's working super well right now we've actually announced uh crypto.com today as a new buy partner we've announced PayPal before we have coinbase uh so actually you have a good price comparison uh in in Ledger if you want to access the the

Bitcoin or crypto Market in general nice um I got my iCloud got hacked like a year and a half ago and um it was this crazy uh yeah it was this crazy like V like just intense feeling um did you ever get your iCloud back no I never got it back W that's the thing that I think people don't anticipate right the notion that you would yeah the notion that you could get hacked I think people understand the notion that you might lose every photo you have in iCloud and never get it back I think is yeah it was the photos and the notes it was this like extremely personal I mean I lost no money I didn't lose any crypto um like was able to thankfully like lock

down the accounts but I mean just this feeling of like yeah I lost all my digital possessions um that I've been accumulating for the last you know 10 15 years uh it actually made me think about ledgers about Ledger a lot as like because I yeah I was thinking about like yeah I use I use ledgers to protect my crypto um but like who is looking out for my digital possessions um and it was the first time I really started to think about Ledger in this light with like because I was talking to Ariel about like stacks and I kind of knew this thing was coming out and I was like ah I see I think I see what they're trying to do here so yeah and I I think look and that's why I bring up the security key app right because um I mean

Wall Street Journal did a lot of really great reporting last year um Joanna Stern did great reporting on um on exactly what you experienced and in terms of iCloud hack because it's happening you know all over the place um you know and the story the stories were just you know because it wasn't also just people who were being targeted it was it was like college kids in bars were being targeted by kind of people that used to be low rent thieves and now they found a higher rent way you know to to to get into people's bank accounts instead of into their pockets right um and so I that's what I bring it up because I think it's not a um it's not a it's not a uh it's not only a very high class problem it really is an every person problem and the reality is is

that two things one we've given far too much of our Lives over to these other companies right um and if you want to really feel that move from iOS to Android go just do it I've done it in the past year again and you feel how much you know that company in the center owns your ass they own your logins they own you know and then what we do is maybe we choose another person to give it to right you choose one password is going to own me in the middle um Etc and so you know obviously at that point security matters a lot so I think having um you know and PAs key is a you know is a very interesting um development it's being pushed by Apple it's being pushed by

Google it's it's not you know it's it's about password lists it does solve a lot of the you know the internet is fundamentally broken because of of passwords I got another uh email from have I been pwned this morning um and something to do with a some telegram hack I don't know I don't think it was telegram specifically I don't even know what it was to be honest with you but you know what it means is like hey your email address and login is found and have I been pwned okay I don't worry too much about it because I use a unique password for everything etc etc but this is you know this is reality um so you're right and and we really need to consider that digital ownership is certainly our our you know digital possessions our our Bitcoin um our tokens our non-fungible tokens um but it

is also you know we need Security in a way that these devices that we that we give our lives to do does not provide yeah so we've been dancing around like Ledger stacks and I want to like deliver what is the what the like the pitch for for Ledger Stacks so like December 22 I think it 20 December 2022 you guys announced this thing thought we would launch it in March of 23 um I guess I have a couple questions on that around like why why so long like why why why was it so hard I know there's a lot of first here which I obviously want to cover but like give me the 30 second Pitch for just like what is ledger stacks for for people who have never seen a picture of it they're not watching on YouTube they can't see you

holding it up Ian like someone listening on Spotify or apple like what is a ledger stacks so I I let me tell this story and I won't I'll try not to belabor it it's it's a it really is a good story and I said earlier it's a story of friends but um you know Tony Fidel who was the inventor of the iPod and the co-inventor of the iPhone and the inventor of Nest is the one who designed Stacks he came to me and Pascal and said I know what your next device is right and and it was because you know he was passionate about it um and he said to us it's it should should communicate value meaning be the size of a credit card so it is the size of a credit card when I put it in people's hands they often say to me oh it's smaller than I

thought it was so just so so your picture in your head it's the size of a credit card in terms of of um you know width and height um and and it has a a a a first ofit kind eink screen that curves all the way around the edge and then they magnet together and stack on top of each other hence the name and the reason for that with for Tony was you stack value and what does that future like stack of cash with the ban around it look like the other thing that it acknowledges is many Ledger customers have more than one for for a variety of reasons but often just account segregation the same reason you have a banking account a checking account and a

I mean I'm sorry a savings account checking account I've got several ledgers I've got the one associated with block works I've got the some for ens I've got I've got a bunch of I've got one I never will touch like exactly and and so and then you've probably had to like put a a sticker I mean I used to put exactly a piece of tape and then I'd write on it with a sharpie you know so not a very elegant way of telling them apart but now because of eink you know the way eink works is it's a by stable technology and when you change the the um the screen it stays changed and doesn't draw any power so in this case you can actually change the the screen goes around the edge so that that includes the spine and so they're stacked up you can tell them apart um

you know on the spine plus you can put whatever you would like to um whether it's you know a picture of your dog or an nft on the cover you can put whatever you like and you can tell them you can tell them apart in in that way so that was the that was the the the the design of of it and the and and the other you know big piece of this that plays into what we've been talking about for the last 15 minutes is um you do more with your Ledger today than you've did in the past so the the ability to you know if you're approving a complex transaction being able to see more data is better and especially at the work we're doing right now around clear signing you know so if you imagine you're really seeing you know I mean we always say with

Ledger is what you see is what you sign um so seeing that on a bigger screen is better so there are a few firsts here this is most importantly the first secure touchcreen ever developed right so meaning that it's actually the secure element that that same you know chip that's in your credit card is actually powering the display so this is a chip that was not meant to power a display it was not meant for performance a chip that was built for security but in this case it is powering a touchcreen that's actually partly why eink is important because eink you've only got 16 colors it's you know it's it's it's simple relative to your phone screen and something that you can power um from the secure element and so that's why you get both the ease of use and the security

which is which is important and then if you I can turn to why it took us more than a year longer than than than uh it thought we did but but also thank you very much for watching our little mini documentary which I call a pentary but I I really hope people watch it so thanks for putting in the show notes because it tells the story quite well this episode is brought to you by SE se's belief about the world I think is a good one they believe that the evm is here to stay agree with that they believe that the evm is going to look kind of like what JavaScript ended up looking like in the web 2 world agree with that they also believe that the evm and its current iteration lacks a lot of the performance and scalability that developers need so what SE has done with

their V2 upgrade is they just introduced the first high performance parallelized evm into the market today they've got Lightning Fast block times and finality of just 390 milliseconds what this does is it unlocks an entirely new design space with 100x the throughput of even some of the fastest even vml 2s on the market today sav2 is now live on public devet with main net scheduled for Q2 you can stay up to date with say on X at say Network SEI Network big thanks to say hey everyone Santi and I have been talking about salana a lot recently and we're excited to have a salana sponsor of Empire marinade is a staking protocol in salana I remember when they launched

I think it was back at a salana hackathon and they were funded with this 80k grant it's super cool to see how far they've come they're the only Stak pool today that delivers autore rebalancing me rewards and automatic downside protection with their new protected staking rewards you can stake natively or liquid Stak with marinade and get the same high performance delegation strategy that thousands are using already to stake your soul to over a hundred of the best Salon of validators marinade has been live for over 2 years and they have audits completed by four of the top security firms in crypto the delegation strategy is a first of its kind so if you're staking your salana if you want to start staking your salana if you want to get some yield from your

soul start staking today with marinade go hit the link in the show notes big thanks to marinade for everything that they've done in salana staking land go check them out go stake your salana with marinade today this episode is brought to you by Avalanche Avalanche is a leading network of blockchains giving some of the world's largest financial institutions the design space to explore new use cases and business models while leveraging complet completely customizable infrastructure everything that Avalanche has been building the last few years has culminated in this moment where today you have institutions and developers able to essentially have Limitless possibilities with the chain they've enabled developers to build cross-chain swaps or create gaming environments where one subnet can unlock features in another or can use usdc as a

native gas token Onyx for example by JP Morgan or city or dtcc digital assets or uh the Australian New Zealand banking group they are all building on Avalanche Evergreen subnets really cool stuff big thanks to Avalanche for sponsoring this episode of Empire go explore Avalanche subnet ecosystem at core. appd Discover that's core C.A slcover thanks again Avalanche this episode is brought to you by mantle mantle is an L2 backed by one of the industry's largest treasuries at the time of recording it's valued at 4.4 billion dollar the mantle ecosystem engages in a lot of early stage exciting projects such as Athena and igen lay and they give out actually the rewards to

the mantle Community there are two aird drops I want to tell you about the first one it was with Athena they offered 2.5 billion Athena shards to Holders of their native token MNT so the reward station program distributes these pre-sale token allocations to MNT holders who stake the tokens the second one they have going on is with myo myo that gives out over 90,000 miso tokens worth about $50,000 today that starts on April 25th runs through May 2nd if you want to check that out you got to stake your MNT and you can check out the reward station at mantle.

XYZ reward station big thanks to mantle for sponsoring Empire well before we talk about the the time it took and I'm assuming the that's probably an easy answer actually which is like look we just did a bunch of Firsts like first eink first curved eink display first organic semiconductor materials on plastic substrates like only screen made it less than 100 degrees a lot of first takes a lot of time to build Hardware software I'm assuming that's the answer there the world's first secure touchcreen I keep hearing you and Pascal say this like what does um you're inherently saying that my current touchcreen is is not secure like are you so just tell me what this means like is my are you telling me that the billions of iPhones out in the world are not don't have secure touch

screens and like what does that correct correct I mean you know like your Hardware security work just like a building you know if you have a secure building uh and you have sort of AR arm guards all around and you building is heavily like Fort KNX for example you understand very easily that sort of what's inside is uh is secure now if I tell you that you know take Fort KN but I also want you to have like a a daycare center movie theater a club and a shopping mall then you know you very quickly you're gonna say well let's let's have two buildings right so so Hardware security works exactly like physical security actually when you look at it with a microscope it is actually

physical security now you can put the private keys in something that is very secure okay but then that secure element gets communication from the outside and so and the secure element is not smart like doesn't really know uh what you know the nature of the communication that is coming so if the secure element doesn't control its whole environment then you could actually tell the secure piece to do something stupid now if you want the secure piece to do absolutely what's right the secure piece needs to control the buttons need to control the screen basically need to control every interaction that tells the secure element to do something and so in the case of a Stacks it's only the touch of

the screen uh the screen itself Etc that's why the screen is secure because it's fully controlled by the secure elements itself on your phone when you have a secure Enclave people say well I do have a s Enclave in my phone sure but that s Enclave gets messages from most places that are very insecure and so therefore he gets the message and then sends your money somewhere but doesn't know whether the message was the right one or the wrong one because the SEC Enclave in the phone doesn't control uh entirely the phone so that's the main difference between your phone and stacks yeah and I I wrote a little post last week for my friends because I I definitely had had people that were um that were like okay I you know I love you I but I still don't get it um and

and I think you know the the um the yeah there there there it is is I think it's one way to do it is to look at the Alternatives right so you know everyone listening to the show is an is an owner of crypto so let's let's let's think about the the ways that they own cryptos you could be on an exchange and as we know not your keys not your coins so um you know I I would definitely advocate for self self- custody um you could be in a a software wallet which is where you're relying on the security of your phone but frankly your phone meets none of the three security requirements and I I'll come back to that in one second you could be in a um in a hardware wallet which doesn't have a secure element which you know and what I always say to

that is like let's trade for 24 hours I'll give you my ledger you give me your your your uh device that doesn't have a secure element and um and then we'll trade back in 24 hours and no one's taken me up on that yet because I have access to our tack lab the donon um or you could have um a hardware device which doesn't have a secure screen um and those are really just signing oracles um and if you have if your if your OS is compromised or if you are if you've been you know given a rogue app Then That app can easily tell you yeah here's here's the transaction and then you know but what you're actually signing is is something else so the three things you need to be secure are you need a secure element ship which which create which you know creates your

um private key to begin with with kind of the the correct entropy Etc and stores your stores and protects your your um private key so that's number one number two it needs to you need a secure OS running on that chip that performs the operation in other words as Pascal said if you're pulling your private key out of the secure enclave and putting it in the OS and then deleting it or putting it back you know that's that's not secure and then third you the user need to be able to eyeball that transaction and say yes or no on a secure screen so you need to check all three of those boxes to have security and that really is why is why Ledger and that is exactly what we won't compromise

on I'm telling you all the time people say oh you know but what about a what about a software wallet you say we say look you know you can imagine you know having uh you know an account abstracted wallet where you've got a certain amount of spending money that is in a software wallet but you're going to sign those governance rules with a device that's as secure as Ledger right you know and or people would say yeah but what you know what about you know just like a a little card that doesn't have a screen it's like why would you know no secure screen is required we will'll leave the compromising to somebody else every cycle people want to compromise on security self- custody or both and they always the the the reason they give always includes the phrase onboarding

the masses and it always leads to exactly the same Peril so that's just we we just that's just not what we will do our goal is let's make something that's as as easy and delightful to use as Stacks but as secure as Ledger Nano has been you know since 2016 is there you know it's funny because very intuitively when you ask people they they know all of this I mean they don't know how the you know technology works but like they know that their phone is not secure and uh when we were developing pasy you know I've tried this on many people it's like you know if I give you you know stacks and buy The Simple Touch simple NFC touch you could you can actually open your Instagram your uh X your redit account

whatever is important to you with your with your stacks and you know your sort of password or your the the thing that helps you you know open your account is only in stack you know people people say oh you know give me that tomorrow because people intuitively all know that they got a problem with sort of loging password and they all know that their Instagram is under attack and you know your experience is not unique like you know you've lost uh something that is fairly important I mean if you lost your Cloud I don't know what was in your cloud sometimes it's uh value sometimes it's emotional value like you know you probably had like a lot of pictures I don't know like you know things that you cared about like things that where your digital things and these are typically those things that people keep on getting

hacked on so they know that the technology they use today is not fit for purpose and is not future proof and now that uh you know sort of Ledger offers like a wider range in terms of what you can protect with your Ledger also we think that we will augment like our total addressable market like you know people will be able to protect take more and more of the Digital Life and so Ledger is going to become like a reflex for for most think what was it like working with Tony kind of the for hopefully most people listening to this know Tony Fidel but for those who don't he's kind of the The Godfather of the iPod I think that's a fair thing to say and also as a there's a documentary actually about I'm forgetting the company that he worked on pre-app

um uh yeah it's called um uh General magic phenomenal phenomenal General Magic the movie it's great you see a young phal documentary young Tony is like great great documentary but it's an amazing it's an amazing documentary it's a great documentary about Innovation because you know those people um you know were literally the smartest people on the planet and they in a commercial failure um but they all went on to do amazing things you know Tony the iPod and ultimately the iPhone you had um Andy ruin who went on to to create you know danger and then um and then Android you had you know the woman who became the CT for Obama um was part of the team you know it's just just an All-Star team great great film and also you know

Tony's book build um would both recommend as well it's a great book great audio book um and and a really about Innovation what I would say is you know we were friends with Tony for years five years um before we started on this project with him and and it it was just in incredible to watch him work I you know I always say that Tony is the only person I've ever met who can you know imagine the circuit board and the um you know the the billboard at the same time like he he knows the tech deeply um but he also understands the market opportunity and he really really pushes on ease of use um you know what I say in that little um mini documentary that you references and I think it's it's true and I think it's

what we accomplished here is you know our if Ledger team alone had built this device it wouldn't be as beautiful if Tony and team alone had built this device it wouldn't be as secure so putting those two cult together was not always easy but it was super rewarding and I think it's what the space needs um because it is kind of a it's a new thing this is not like we we all kind of look at like web 2 and the internet that we've just grown up with as if it's like kind of the end point but it's not it's just a A Way Station as a part of the of the evolution and and you know and Tony really gets that and he wants to to bring you know the security that ledger has but the ease of use that is kind of the expectation of what Apple has always

had and and put those two things together um the other thing is is that working with Tony on this you know I tell the story if you go back to a podcast that Tony and I did in December of 22 you hear us tell the story of him coming to me with the idea but not telling me what it was because he didn't know if it was possible yet and then we push a little further and he's like okay I'll tell you the idea but don't tell Pascal because I'm still doing the diligence and I'm not sure if it's possible and therein lies the foreshadowing right because it turns out that you know this is exactly where Tony lives I always tell the story and we tell it in this podcast that in the original iPod there was a hard drive that had never been used before and that

was a risk because what the that hard drive was new and what it would definitely was not designed for was a device that you put in your pocket and you might drop on the ground right it was meant to be to go into you know a very thin laptop for those days and you know so they took a risk putting that you know that part into the first iPod it was a risk that paid off but it was a risk similarly here you know Tony knew and if you watch the little documentary you see him tell the story of you know knowing that this technology was you know existed and then we got convinced by A supplier that we could bring it to mass production and that was where the where the disconnect was but this is where Tony lives which is like okay there's a market need there's a there's

a new technology that's on the cusp of possible can we bring this new techn techology to life in a really delightful way in this product and it's just that reminder that there's always a Confluence of kind of innovation imagination Market opportunity and I mean really Tony is just the best in the world at at pulling those things together yeah I want to say something in addition to what Ian just said you know because we we say the word you know technology a lot but uh but two things you know first to be a ledger uh you know I absolutely wanted Ian to join because you know uh the world is about storytelling and so Ian is uh one of the

best storytellers I know and you know the when you can tell the story it changes the face of of a company you can take the same company and you know if you don't know how to tell the story or if you don't know how to put the company in a good light you know it's always true but you know there is a a good story and there is a bad story about the same company and so first you need a Storyteller and the second thing that uh you know Ledger needed is a a product guy like you know what is the product because most tech companies the biggest mistake is to think technology first and to get super excited about technology and try to you know force that into into the market and force Technologies to users uh what actually companies should

do and what Ledger has where Ledger has evolved is that first you think product and then technology as sort of slave to the product not the other way around and what was very interesting to you know we all read the book you know Steve Jobs uh and when I read the book you know this is pretty much what what it said in the book like you know think product and you know technology comes Su St jobs always very famous to you know say that you wouldn't have flash on iPhones and you know that's that that was it you know and people were um you know it was it was a curious decision at the time but it was you know it was the decision is and why because it was always product first and you know it's one thing to read in the book it's another thing to

see Tony do it and yes there are pieces of new technology that he sees Etc and actually if you see again if you read the book and you and you know how they were thinking about the the screen and the kind of material that they use like he was you know reading that book but you know so sort of seeing it live and and Tony really think about the product but uh everything about the product it's very interesting right now so we release taxs and people are starting to post things on on on X and it's wonderful to see it uh but it's also wonderful to see that you know when Tony thinks about the product he thinks about like you know what cool things would could user want to do with the product like you know the eing screen and the remnant image the

little click when you when you click on the button like you know there are some little gimmicks I don't know if you remember the first iPod but there was this uh you could roll you know the rolling thing yeah yeah the rolling thing and all of these things you know are decisions that you can you could take that decision you could take another one Etc but why do you take this one is because the rolling thing was actually very satisfactory and there is something that is very satisfactory when you hold a stack because you know it's very smooth because of eating Etc and so there are many product decision that are just about like you know how is it going to feel you know how people are going to play with it you know how are they gonna feel good when they touch it etc etc and

so Tony is a real product guy like he thinks product first and Technology second which is something that very few companies do in in our space you know if you think about web 3 crypto Bitcoin whatever whatever you want like you have all these crazy terms and people talk about like you know the next evolution of the tech but very few people to product and what the product does and I think that's what we're trying to do and for sure there was a big shift in the company that was you know Wonderful to to see Tony do this because once once you start to think product then you start to think you know product experience everything around the product and not just uh you know is it going to be an eing screen and you know just Bas everything on a piece of technology but

more like what's the product what's going to be the usage Etc and so to see this at work is a is a you know is wonderful it's very unique in in a it's very cool I wish I could have experienced that I feel like we've been in a drought of uh Hardware product like there are product people there are amazing product people today but they're software product people they're like the product managers the chief product officers of some of the best software social platforms out there and they've done amazing things but the hardware product I think we've been in this like extreme drought the last several years so it's just cool to cool to see you I really so and thank you it's funny because I was at consensus last week and I I realized after on day two I just when I met people I was like I'm here

promoting my film um I was really just like I I really was I'm trying to get everyone to watch that little that little pentary and I've even sent it to um you know investors and friends who are I know are not that interested in in crypto or Ledger because to me it's a story to your point about Hardware that if you're interested in building things like if if if you're interested in in Innovation you're going to love this story um and like to Pascal's point about about the little things that's why I'm holding up the devices you know I had a friend who was at my house and these these two things were sitting on the table he doesn't know anything about them and and you know he's he's not a he's not a crypto person he's not a ledger user he was playing with them as

if they were as if I just had two poker chips sitting on the table you know for um for like 45 minutes and he finally what are these things anyway because they are just in terms of of of a of a device you know it's quite satisfying um and and I and I think that that's I agree with you that's what's been missing and especially in a world where you got these like companies that are over promising and underd delivering like Humane and and and rabbit R1 um you know the Ledger Stacks is exactly what we said it was so yes it's a year and two months late for us to for us to get that to Market because the yield on the screen um was so low but I think if you if you watch that documentary or it's you know it's 20 minutes long so I don't

want to overstate it um and and we put it together in two weeks so again I don't want to overstate it but you do get the feel for um what it takes to bring something you know that's truly new to Market and the little things for example the magnet tension which you know not only makes it just satisfying to play with but also gives you these great things like these are the little folios that they go in which are satisfying in this like you know the way that you open and close your um your air your airpods lid kind of like compulsively like perfect level of like uh magnetism exactly so you're like click click click it's like that as well so yeah thank you yeah um Pascal can I can maybe we can shift gears a little

bit I'd love to just learn a bit more about The Ledger business as a whole so like when I think about Ledger you've got the like Ledger products like the LED like what I what people will think of as Ledger products historically then you've got Ledger Stacks then you've got Ledger live um and which is the software platform and then you have I don't know if you guys are you guys still doing Ledger like the Enterprise business like trade link this kind of open network to connect to you know there's like this whole B2B business so maybe walk me through like different business lines of of Ledger yeah well one way to understand the business lines is first you know a mission is to secure the you know the world of uh digital assets you know whether it's for Consumer Enterprise um

and we have to do it for sort of everyone because you know we don't want to be uh Ledger will always be safe for consumers but equally if you're going to send your crypto at some point to a bank or to an exchange we rather them to be powered with the same sort of security technology so for the users in the end it's not a tradeoff you know of security it's just a trade-off of do I want to own or do I want to trust like a third party with my assets but when it comes to security it should be the same everywhere otherwise you know crypto just doesn't work if every time you send your crypto somewhere you worry about security you know it's a problem and so the way that we think about this is you know let's secure this world of assets

right now we secure more than 20% of all crypto in the world so it's probably like you know around 500 billion dollars um and we're very proud to do it because we know that we bring Peace of Minds to our customers whether they're consumers or on the on the Enterprise side on the consumer side it's very easy it's a it's an iPod like business model or iPhone like business model you have you know iPod and iTunes so iPod you know you buy the the iPod this is where the music is and then iTune this is where you buy your music and so similarly you know you have like the Nano s s plus X now you got Stacks you know this is where your private keys are and then you have Ledger live this is where you're going to buy sale swap stake and you know

engage basically with the with with the world of web three and we get a commission on on your on your action the primary reason why we bring all the services to the platform though is not necessarily to make money it's first to bring the service to our users because that's what users want and then we try to bring them like a you know good service like where you can compare prices you can find you know uh everything that you're looking for basically in the security of your Ledger and your Ledger life so that's the business model uh uh uh for the consumer part and that's uh and that's really you know the business model of apple with whether the iPod or iPhone uh when it comes to Enterprise uh there are two things you know first we have like some kind of uh uh Ledger stacks on steroid

for Enterprise basically it's a it's a s solution where we provide like a the whole security infrastructure you know software the service to bank exchanges custodians Etc like we have over a 100 customers we secure billions of dollars in in assets and basically we do security of the private keys and security of the governance around the private keys if you're a bank suddenly you have like a bunch of people that need to access crypto you know if they if the crypto is on a nano then of course that's not very uh secure the private keys are secure but the process to access the crypto is not very secure if everybody knows the PIN to your to your to your Nano or to your Stacks then you know certainly the the governance around those cryptos is not secure so

what the what this what the solution does does the security of the private keys but also the security of the governance uh around the private keys and that's you know and that's wonderful because there are so many things that you can do but you can really have like business rules that are enforced by the security layer you know I sort of skipped the technical part but it works very nicely and we secure some of the biggest names in the industry with that with that technology and it's software the service on top of this now which is super exciting and actually probably one of the most exciting thing that we do uh from the Enterprise side we went from sort of securing your money when it's uh stays still securing your money at rest to now securing your money when it moves

and when it moves is basically when you're trading there was something um that happened you know after FTX and a bunch of other players which is you know now everybody realizes that of course you have a counterparty risk when you put your money on an exchange when you're going to trade and so people don't want that risk and so actually with technology you can completely change the game and remove that risk from the equation and so that's what basically Ledger trading is it's completely a feature on top of Ledger Enterprise it's super easy to install it's actually free we take zero fees on transaction which is actually uh a first in this market everybody takes fees on

transaction we take zero and we actually have the best solution in the market to trade of exchange and basically what you do is through Ledger Enterprise you know you use it as a technology backbone to connect the money to The Exchange into the custodians in the middle you can actually pick and choose who you want to work with you can have multiple custodians you can have multiple exchange I mean it's really the way you want to do it and again Ledger is not a counterpart in the trade we're just a technology platform technology provider so actually sort of Traders and and people engaging into this trading activity can use like a technology that remove a lot of the risk uh in their everyday trading activity and bring zero cost uh uh zero additional cost in their

trading activity um Pascal how do you think so we had we had a Dave Ripley from the new CEO of Kraken on the podcast a couple weeks ago and I mean we're were just talking about the IPO Market um and regulatory regime change and SEC and Trump vers Biden and Paul you know and the impact that that I'll have on not just crypto markets but the IPO market like how do you think about I think there's all for the for the IPO maybe we can talk about that for an IPO there's as it relates to crypto all eyes I think are on Kraken and circle it's um maybe you could throw in there but it's kind of all eyes on Kraken and circle how do you think about I don't know your guys's numbers I would assume I I remember you guys raised it over a

billion I would assume revenues got to be with those numbers got to be around the probably around 200 million I would guess in Revenue somewhere around that um how do you think about just like IPO and like some sort of liquidity event this cycle yeah so so number one I feel that you know for us it's all about utility it's all about you know engaging in peer-to-peer activity with your with your Ledger and it's less about you know trading and uh when you when you talk about the consumer value proposition okay so uh when you talk about the consumer value proposition is more like you own your private Keys you own your money you own your identity and how do we engage together Etc we feel that this is

actually the lowest in terms of Regulation this is actually where you know am I allowed to send you $50 actually I am like in every jurisdiction everywhere in the world even China didn't ban the fact that you know Chinese citizen can own Bitcoin you know own a private ownership is actually okay uh everywhere in the world and you know that's the use case for our consumers that we are working on so we are sort of less concern I mean you know we understand regulation we understand why regulation is putting pressure on centralized entities like exchanges for example and that's probably you know for the best sometimes sometimes it's too much like you know regulation doesn't shouldn't hit too hard if you don't want to uh prevent Innovation from happening in the future uh but that being said you

know uh Bitcoin cannot be regulated because it's open source and because it's uh and because it's Cod you know and I think that's sort of the future uh that that we are looking at and not so much uh you know sort of only trading and speculation I think there is a case for training and speculation I think that's 100% fine but I think also there is a case for sort of utility and what do you do when you have your private keys and how do you engage and how do you engage peer to- peer so I would say from a regulation standpoint that's that's sort of more focus and of course from an Enterprise point and from supporting the partners that are providing uh the buy sell swaps taking Services of course we keep a Keen Eye on regulation as it happens and we have

actually a team that is taking care of of this both in Washington and brel and what we're trying to do is to basically educate around us to make sure that people understand what this is all about and actually this is this this is quite good we actually believe that Finance on the blockchain and even we centralize entities if they're properly regulated and if they play a fair game actually we believe that it's a better system going forward than the Legacy system that we have now so uh that's uh that's how we feel and how we think about uh regulation and your second question was I mean to put it bluntly like you think an IPO is possible this cycle or you think that's the next cycle type thing uh look I think the markets have

really changed you know before an IPO was like you know uh almost like an obligation if you wanted to raise like a certain amount of money like now actually private Market you can raise as much in private markets as you can raise in public markets so it's it's sort of less of an issue so now the question is you know where can you raise where is it better for you is it private is it public you know we will see in the future is ledger going to raise money in the future I think so I mean it's fair to think that that we will because we have high ambition you know STX is only a stepping stone towards our future and they're great things that we want to do um and will we raise from public or private markets I think we want to have

the choice to be able to raise from both and you know when a window is open and if it's the best thing for the company we'll do it but we see it but it's not an end for it's more of a mean to an end and so raising for public or private Market will be almost like a last minute decision what we want to to to for it to be a last minute decision the company needs to be ready right and actually to run to run a company like a public company is not a bad idea there are many good things about running your company as a public company because it forces you to organize the company it forces you to organize your team it forces you to organize your processes right and it's something that the the internal tool the financial tools Etc and it's

something that that we're working on but not so much to grow public but at least to be ready because if one day we have the opportunity and this is where we can raise uh the big money this is what we'll do and if public markets are open and we can raise the same then we have a choice yeah I've always loved ledgers business because again I have no idea if I was close or not on that Revenue number but um yeah a lot of Revenue it's within the hundreds of millions it's with hundreds of millions and I've said on stage that actually ideally we want to hit a billion in 25 25 there you go um we are all hoping for a big 25 I think it'll be a big 25 the one downside to Ledger business is that it's um like onetime Revenue like you buy someone

buys a ledger one time and maybe they don't buy it again like I've really liked what guys have done with like staking like I stake inside a ledger live like I'm sure that's nice ARR whatever but what about the um no but so it's not it's not it's not a one time it's just like saying the iPhone business is a onetime buy many because people keep upgrading every two years or they buy the new product correct that's actually true I buy a new Ledger like every two years it's true correct so and and by the way like you know the way that we've been taking ledgers to Market has been fairly slow you know Nan was in 16 the X was in 18 s+ was in 19 Etc but like now we entering like the stack is the the tree that high the forest what we've

developed with STX we have a a big Hardware team now we have an amazing supply chain and now we ready to to ship sort of more product sort of faster and actually what's going to happen with your with your Ledger is the same thing that happened to your phone you know before your phone was only to make a few phone calls and then it became like a computer basically and because it became a computer then know the combination of Hardware operating system and software makes it that you know the three have to evil together in order to to uh to have a new experience and I think uh you know stack is already one step in that direction but there will be other products in the future and you had a question earlier on you know what about a phone so you know I'm not going going

to make a statement here that we're going to do a phone but definitely your Hardware wet in the future will do much more than what he's doing now and for this the hardware needs to evolve the operating say needs to evolve and the software connectivity needs to evolve and if I bring you a new wallet in 26 for example that has like you know killer features that allows you to do much more with your crypto you probably will upgrade from your previous experience so it's not a onetime buy it's actually a market where we will renew uh uh like such and also of course you have now all this software business with the connectivity into Ledger live and you know the commission that we get from the great services that we bring to our users so he actually makes the

business very balanced and he makes the business very repeatable so it's not a it's not like you sell an noos in 2016 and then you don't have a business in right right right yeah this is this is actually why Pascal gave me the title of Chief experience officer this is three and a half years ago but when I came in his point to me was um look when you buy an iPhone you're not buying a piece of Hardware you're buying into an ecosystem yeah um you know it's not that your phone was stolen your iCloud account was stolen you know what I mean like you're buying into an ecosystem with Hardware operating system Services transactional services and and and a business that goes through that through that full stack the other thing that I I just find interesting and I say this because I think your listeners might just you know

it's an in it's we keep making a comparison to a phone but the reality is is that um it's actually smart and good operational security to have n number of ledgers right because you've got you know look if you if what if what someone does tomorrow is they buy um they buy a STA and then they buy three Nan plus to use as backups for that Stacks that's actually smart you don't have that same situation with your phone right where you buy the top end phone and you buy like three low-end phones as like backups to your phone it's not because it's not the same product it really is a different product and you're talking security and operational security matters and redundance mat redundancy matters and you know so it is a different product in that way yeah uh

Pascal what is the craziest thing about being the CEO of Ledger like I don't know I I don't know how you sleep at night because just securing all all this all this Capital but what's uh what's something that people don't see behind the scenes of being the CEO of Ledger well first you're right like you know in order to sleep at night you need to be very resilient to stress which which I am so I sleep super well at night and you know I you know there are things that are you know very difficult in life you know I think you know I take very seriously seriously my job but also you know I I try to take a distance from you know from from the job not to go crazy okay so the the funniest thing is actually every time I switch on the

news whatever I see in the news like impacts the business like you know it's crazy like I never see anything I remember uh switching on the news one day onto something that was like that was a war a war basically you know the war started in Ukraine and in all my jobs before like you know that would have you know not impacted me directly but in crypto you know everything that happens in the world has an impact on crypto and has an impact on Ledger it's it's actually crazy to see and so of course we had teams in in Ukraine we had to take care of our teams we had to uh take care of business continuity Etc and so it's actually fascinating like you know I like we were saying you know before the show started that Ian and I

went to you know sort of Washington the other day we're going to Brussel like you know you have to take care of uh of Regulation you know that's that's crazy not many businesses have to do this like yeah the type of things that we have to do the complex it of what we have to do the the number of people that we have to meet I would say this is this is why you know I came into crypto but I didn't realize it was going to be so full of experience so complex so rich uh and that's actually that's that's what's crazy about the about the job today I can I can be you know there's someone that I really like uh in in in Washington it's a gentleman called Tom emmer who's the whip speaking at uh he's speaking at permission actually yeah we

love love Tom Tom is amazing and uh and what he's doing for crypto and Bitcoin is amazing so in my job as a CEO I get to meet uh people like this and so I feel I feel very fortunate uh and actually whenever I come to the US and you know people say oh in the US like you know I don't know our politicians are not that good Etc andm with someone like Tom emmer I say you know your politicians are pretty good like I would say like Tom Emer is actually someone is rooting for Freedom someone that is a a real gentleman like he's not a he's not I mean in my book he's not a politician he's actually someone who's trying to do what's right and you know trying to fight for for the people truly um and so what's extraordinary my job is this like

you know everything impacts Ledger and you get to meet extraordinary people and uh and sort of influence policies you know globally because you're ledger so that's fantastic if we can end with you Ian uh a non- lger question so you helped move lvmh I think you're at lvmh for five or six years helped move them from like I don't know three or five% of their brands were doing e-commerce and then by covid you know 100% was e-commerce right so this like massive jump and I think you from talking to people who are over there like you were kind of you shephered these Brands into the into the e-commerce age so if you think about um I'd love to hear prediction from you about like what these Brands will do in crypto and like what not not like this year not next

year but like five to 10 years in the future like what is it going to be like to experience like tag or or Sephora or Dior or lvmh or I don't know the I mean the Belmont the list goes on with their portfolio obviously like what are what What will what will that experience be like as it relates to doing things on chain I think it'll be similar to what the internet has done to the businesses where um they I don't I don't think that they will be the tip of the spear or the leader or nor nor do they need to be I actually think that you know elv M Brands waiting um to really jump into in other words if if all the LV M Brands had just started doing Ecommerce with Amazon day one that would have been a huge mistake right what they what they

waited for was for the internet to really change the way that that um that people live their lives and then to find the right way to to fit in to those lives and and it did change people you know in that they really valued customer service in a different way right it wasn't like call me on the phone it was you know send me a text message in a blue bubble and welcome me into the store and and you know actually I have more money than time as opposed to wanting to spend five hours hours at Dior I want to be able to get in get exactly what I want and get out quickly you know so the definition of luxury really changed um due to the internet I mean the internet has has changed our definition of luxury and it's brought it to an entirely new group of people

luxury isn't just a shopping mall in New York City or Chicago or or or you know or Tokyo it's anyone anywhere um and you know how do you and how do you really serve those people I think similarly when it comes to digital ownership um I think there's a very big thing in that I believe that you know 15 years from now fully 50% of luxury purchases will be pure digital because the impetus for buying a luxury watch and the impetus for buying you know an nft which is part of a of a strong Community has high value um gives you access to a community of interesting people globally is the same right I mean you buy a luxury watch not to tell the time you buy a luxury

watch because you appreciate the Aesthetics you think the value will go sideways or maybe up kind of makes a statement of who you are and what kind of person you are and it enters you into that small world of people who really appreciate the value of this scarce item right I mean you could say exactly the same thing you know if you look at you know I we were listening to the the CEO of Ferrari speak a few weeks ago and he kept reinforcing that Ferrari is a community it's not a car it's a community it's like okay well cryptopunks is a community um and it's a community of things that cost around the same prices of Ferrari and where there are 10,000 Ferraris made every year there were 10,000 Crypt punks made in 2021 and now there will be fewer than 10,000 every year for some reason or

another right um so I think that these parallels really really hold and I think you know the definition of what is luxury you know as we lead digital lives you know luxury purchases will be digital just like you know I used to you know shoot photographs on 35 millimeter film and hang them on my wall so that five people could come to my apartment and see them and you know now my 17-year-old thinks that would be absurd because well who would see them right you know you you pick them you post them on Instagram so that the people in your community can see them so I think that there's simply from a product perspective more and more luxury products will be digital I also think though if you look at some bigger things like I really think that bright moments is a luxury product so you know L bright

moments is an in-person experience it sells a product that costs on the order of $3,000 but it's an in-person experience like you would get get from you know a luxury store or a Belmond Etc so I think that the definition of luxury continues to evolve and um and they'll and these companies will have to keep up with that but I also think that they will just become part of what they do you know I I buy a bag and now I get a digital proof of purchase that gets me something it gets me proof I get to floss I get to maybe come to the event um you know I mean if you look at what Louis Vuitton has done with their via product project you know they just did a big a lunch around Viva Tech in Paris and only the Via members

were able to come like so they're they're already um you know experimenting with that quite successfully lauro Piana has a really interesting program Dior has done a really interesting thing with sneakers that's been very successful um so I think that luxury brands are actually kind of the perfect experimenters with this because they're already playing with you know small communities with you know very high value and you know and and like Goods that are are both expensive and scarce love that Pascal Ian pleasure great conversation hopefully we'll uh see you guys at permissionless later this year we're talking to the team about getting you guys involved and doing something with like something with Stacks so we're excited about it love it we I definitely plan to be there I love

uh I love Utah I don't know if are we mountain biking because I think it's not the season for snowboarding but no we're biking it's October it's beautiful in October there hiking biking we'll do a little like VIP thing uh the weekend after in Park City so it'll be a good time amazing beautiful Pascal appreciate it thank you for everything Mery all right you heard about say a couple times just want to give them one last shout out big thanks to se for sponsoring this episode of Empire there are a ton of reasons to build on say if you want to get in touch with them you can reach out to me I'll put you in touch directly with the team you can also get in touch with them on Twitter at say Network you can follow the journey at say Network they are currently live they've got sav2 on

public devet today mainnet goes live later in Q2 really excited to have SE sponsoring and partnering with with us on this episode of Empire [Music]