Every crypto cycle, someone tells you to compromise on security to "onboard the masses." It always blows up.
In today's episode, we sit down with Ian Rogers from Ledger to explore why "storytelling plus time equals value" - and why self-custody will always matter.
Ian breaks down how we're witnessing the digitization of all value, not just information, and why that changes everything.
Let's get into it.
The Rollup
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Ian Rogers Socials: https://x.com/iancr
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Questions asked in this interview
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0:18What was it about Ledger's story that drew you in?
0:34Is there any common thread that kind of ties your experience together in these ecosystems?
Every cycle people come in and they tell you why they need to compromise on security, why they need to compromise on self-custody. It's usually got onboarding the masses and their rationality, and it all blows up. And Ledger says, "You know what? We're going to keep high standards of security and self-custody. We're not going to go below them, and therefore we'll be here tomorrow."
You were kind of looking at your portfolio of work: music, luxury brands, kind of going from one thing to the next, and you heard about Bitcoin. What was it about Ledger's story that drew you in?
Our goal is to help spread the collective knowledge of everyone in our community. We are breaking crypto out of its echo chamber and taking it to the real world.
Not quite. I knew about Bitcoin in 2009, 2010, but I looked at it through the lens of digital music. I watched Napster and anyone in the peer-to-peer business get sued out of existence. I said, "Okay, this is super interesting technology, but they can't kill the technology, they can kill businesses around the technology." They got rid of Kazaa, LimeWire, Bearshare. So I looked at Bitcoin and said, "This threatens state sovereignty. They'll come after this." But by around 2015, I realized it was too big. Game theory kicked in: if one country bans it, another will welcome it. That's when I started paying attention, and I joined Ledger in 2021. During COVID, I spent time with Tony Fadell, the godfather of the iPod and co-inventor of the iPhone. We looked at crypto and said, "This is it. The technology is here. Smart contracts are real. You've got trillions in stimulus." That was go time. I went to my friend Pascal, the CEO of Ledger, and said, "What are we doing?" That's how I joined in January '21.
There was a clip I saw just today that speaks to what you're talking about, where Tucker Carlson and a co-founder said they thought Bitcoin was created by the federal government but got out of hand. They mentioned the Rockefellers and Rothschilds would never let their power go to this new world. But I'm curious about the connection between digital music and Bitcoin. So, when you were doing digital music, how did you stumble upon Bitcoin back in 2009, 2010?
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Rogers, I. (2025, August 23). Why Self-Custody Is Crypto's Non-Negotiable Standard with Ian Rogers [Interview transcript]. The Rollup. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1046002/
MLA
Ian Rogers. "Why Self-Custody Is Crypto's Non-Negotiable Standard with Ian Rogers." The Rollup, 23 Aug. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1046002/.
BibTeX
@misc{rogers2025_1046002,
author = {Ian Rogers},
title = {Why Self-Custody Is Crypto's Non-Negotiable Standard with Ian Rogers},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, The Rollup. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1046002/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
