Ledger  Chief Experience Officer on the Future of Bitcoin Self-Custody | Ian Rodgers

There are hundreds of millions of people on exchanges and tens of millions doing self-custody insecurely with software only. I think all of our goals should be growing the number of people in secure self-custody. The reality is our phones and computers were built to share information, not to protect value. Sometimes even on the team we talk about who is the Ledger user, and my response is like who is the Google user—you know, someone who uses the internet.

I'm good, man. It is a good day for Bitcoin, isn't it? The network's still running, you know—we've always got every day is a good day. The decentralized process of blocks goes on. So, yeah, last week in Paris, we announced the Ledger Nano Gen 5 and some new things inside of Ledger Wallet, which is now what we call what was formerly known as Ledger Live. Let's start with the new Nano. I did this on stage last week, but really, it's funny—I'll tell the personal story. When I joined the company almost five years ago, I told my friend Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod and co-founder of the iPhone, that I was going to join Ledger with our friend Pascal to run the consumer business. Tony's response was, 'Ian, that business is not B2C, it's B2G—business to geek—and you have some road ahead before it's truly a B2C business.' Specifically on the devices, for those of us who've been in crypto for a long time, the Ledger Nano is iconic—I joke it's like the Air Jordan Jumpman of crypto because if you're making a piece of art with a physical representation of digital value, you're probably including the little Nano with the swivel. At the same time, as iconic as it is, pushing okay with two thumbs, I've onboarded enough people to know they're like, 'Okay, what do I do now?' and they're looking at this teeny screen, going sideways with the right button, then clicking okay with two thumbs—that's what Tony was referring to. So, with Tony, we put the same Ledger architecture behind an e-ink touchscreen, because you've got a low number of colors that a secure element can actually drive. The key for us is to have a secure screen so you can sign the transaction on the secure screen—that means generating and storing the private key inside the secure element, doing cryptographic operations inside it, and powering the screen with that same secure element. Some hardware wallets don't do any of that; they use a secondary chip or a general-purpose MCU for cryptographic operations. We do everything inside the secure element, and that secure element also powers the screen. We weren't sure if you could drive a touchscreen from these chips—they weren't meant for that—but we proved it was possible with Stax, our first secure touchscreen device with an innovative touchscreen. Then we did Ledger Flex, which the Block just rated as the number one hardware wallet available, and it is. It's a tank with a beautiful 16 shades of gray touchscreen and a metal frame, but it comes at $249. What we really wanted was to get this down into the Nano X price point, so that's why we spent all this time and energy on the Nano Gen 5—to bring the superior usability of touchscreen devices down to the same price point as the Nano X. Here's the Gen 5; apologies for the background eating it, but it's a beautiful device with a custom screen, a real workhorse at a great price. That's what we announced last week, along with new features from Ledger Wallet, including going super easy from bank account to stablecoin and paycheck to stablecoin to make on-ramps way easier than in the past. We also announced more browser connectivity and multisig as part of everything we did last week.

Yeah, I mean, it definitely can be, depending on the individual. But I think the three things you want to look at when selecting a hardware wallet are—first of all, let's just zoom out. We have to remember there are relatively few people in secure self-custody. For all of us, I'm glad you did what you did with your parents, because getting people into secure self-custody should be our goal. A lot of the time, we're talking to ourselves and forgetting that there are hundreds of millions on exchanges and tens of millions doing self-custody insecurely with software only. We kind of end up fighting over details with the maybe 10 million people actually doing secure self-custody with hardware. At Ledger, we've sold 8 million devices to about 5 million people—many say they have four Ledgers, so it's about 1.2 per customer. So, all of our goals should be growing the number of people in secure self-custody. We look at it in three buckets. One is security: if your bar is generating and storing the private key inside a secure element, doing cryptographic operations inside it, and powering the screen with it, Ledger is the only choice—we're the only ones that take the security architecture all the way there. Secondly, recovery: writing down 24 words on paper is okay, but with Ledger Recover, which has about $50,000 of recovery coverage, if there's a malfunction and it recovers your seed to the wrong place, that covers 99% of all crypto holders and gives them a simple backup solution. We added a recovery key this year—an NFC-based, PIN-protected backup. These devices have NFC, so you hold the card against the back, enter the PIN, and have a simple recovery—you can't write the word down wrong. Having multiples in multiple locations gives peace of mind. The third thing is ease of use: how easy is it to set up, back up, recover, and does it do everything you want? Ledger devices were originally for Bitcoin—to hold long-term investment. But today, they hold any investment, real-world assets, anything on-chain, 10,000 different tokens. Also, it's a yield-bearing savings account, and we have a credit card where you can load Bitcoin or anything else and tap to spend anywhere that accepts Visa or Mastercard. We've gone from being a one-thing long-term investment to managing investments, savings, cash, and also passwords—it supports 2FA, passkeys, and you can protect your exchange account, Google account, X account, login.gov account, whatever it is, using your Ledger. So usability is all the way there to do all those things. I think we're in a place where so many people are managing value with devices meant to share information—the reality is our phones and computers were built to share information, not to protect value. Ledger is a solution built ground-up to protect value, whether it's Bitcoin, passwords, passkeys, so you're secure and don't have to worry about your phone being compromised and losing value.

Yeah, I think it's just like with our computers and phones—we have lots of different kinds of users. Sometimes even on the team we talk about who is the Ledger user, and my response is like who is the Google user—you know, someone who uses the internet. I think the Ledger user is someone who has digital value, which will become all of us over the next 10 years. Practically speaking, you have people who were early in crypto—Ledger is well known with that group. Second are traders who use crypto every day, with a heterogeneous setup: some deep storage, some warm storage, some burner wallets—these are super savvy people. Then another growing class is young people who haven't had the experience of going into a bank and filling out a form to set up an account. The reality is that managing your value is an app, not a bank account, and already, your Ledger or exchange accounts or neo-banks are doing way more for you than traditional banks did at that age. I think Ledger is the premium version of any of those apps because you have security, self-custody, and access not only to the walled garden of the custody account—like an AOL account—but to the open web and the entire world of decentralized finance. I always tell the story of going to a wedding a few years ago: a friend's age group was like, 'We don't know what Ian does; he's a nerd,' but the groom and groomsmen were like, 'Dude, he works at Ledger'—they're in the cohort that knows and understands Ledger. I think that's the fastest-growing segment of Ledger customers.

Yeah, I think one of the hardest things about setting up a crypto wallet generally is just what is it—if you aren't a little freaked out when writing down your 24 words, you probably don't understand it yet. Even today, one of the first questions is, 'What if you lose it?' and now you've got to explain the basics. If it's a wallet, then my value is in it—that's how a wallet works. So hardware wallet has always been a misnomer, just tolerated. But I think we're beyond it now, especially since the average consumer thinks of their wallet as an app. That's why we wanted to be clear and said, what are these devices and what do they do? They're signers—this is what they do. That's simple but really important. So getting people to understand this device is a secure signer; this is what it does. Then on the other side, I have an app on my phone, a wallet, and Ledger has the best wallet out there that does more than most you'll encounter. We need to put that front and center, especially since many people don't know that—there are so many who used Ledger Live five years ago and don't know what it does today. We've gradually added more features, and we want people to try it today. For us, it's setting an intention of what this is competitive with. Ledger Wallet isn't just for updating firmware and adding apps; it does what many other software wallets do and way more, but securely with our hardware devices. We wanted to put that front and center and be clear. Look, people will stop saying hardware wallet, but for us, we can say, look, you have a signer, you have the wallet app, and with that, you can really do anything you want—it makes it simpler for us to communicate what our products are made for.