Transcription
What Google demonstrated is cool; it's a step towards quantum computing, and you know that direction. But it's not something that's going to break anything, uh, anytime soon. Certainly not Bitcoin, certainly not Ledger.
When you say on x.com, "Oh my God, like, it's happening," people are like, "Oh my God, like, like, like," but it's not happening. And by the way, if it was happening like that, we would have bigger problems. You know, nuclear war, global nuclear war would be problem number one, not the fact that quantum computing can hack your Ledger.
What's going on, guys? Today, I got an awesome episode with Pascal Guér, the CEO of Ledger. They are the most trusted brand when it comes to crypto security. In this conversation, we talk about what products they've launched recently, how the regulatory environment has changed, what's going on with quantum computing, and whether that is actually going to break Bitcoin.
We discuss how we should be thinking about artificial intelligence, both in the hands of the good guys and the bad guys. Then we even get into what he's excited about in 2025. Tons of people have been asking me, "Will quantum computing actually be a problem for Bitcoin?" Pascal is one of the leading security experts in the industry. He's got a whole company working to prevent anything from happening to your Bitcoin or crypto assets, and he's here to answer all of our questions.
I hope you enjoy my latest conversation with Pascal Guér.
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All right, Pascal, I thought a great place to start the conversation is that you guys are the leading self-custody provider. You have amazing hardware, and you've been doing this a long time. There are tons of people that are worried about quantum computing. They saw the Google Willow announcement, and they think that quantum is going to come, and their Bitcoin may be at risk. Is this something to worry about, or should everyone take a deep breath and calm down?
Everyone should take a deep breath and calm down. What Google demonstrated is cool and is a step towards quantum computing, but it's not something that's going to break anything anytime soon, certainly not Bitcoin, certainly not Ledger.
This idea that suddenly quantum computing is going to happen one day, you know, on Monday, and suddenly that week it will break everything is a fallacy. When you build an attack, you also build a defense at the same time. Quantum computing has a long, long, long way to go to be able to do the things that people dream quantum computing can do, especially when it's about breaking cryptography, and very strong cryptography.
So the short answer is, no, nothing is happening right now. Sh Gim, our CTO, whose handle on Twitter is P3B7, wrote the best thread on the matter. Charles is a hacker; he's a guy who built the dungeon here at Ledger, and he's one of the top hackers in the world. I appointed him CTO back in 2019 when I took over because I thought only a hacker can know what the Ledger technical stack can be.
It's funny when you speak to hackers about these kinds of things; the answers are almost boring. This is why he only had 179 likes on his thread, which is probably the best thread on quantum computing that you can find right now. The answer is, calm down; there is nothing to see.
When you say on x.com, "Oh my God, like, it's happening," people are like, "Oh my God, like, like, like," but it's not happening. And by the way, if it was happening like that, we would have bigger problems. Nuclear war, global nuclear war would be problem number one, not the fact that quantum computing can hack your Ledger.
So no, it's not happening. But it's good, and those kinds of things are important to build the future. But like I said, building defense and offense are being done at the same time. So we at Ledger keep an eye on all these things. We have the dungeon, which is not just an attack lab but also a research lab. We have an elite team working on these matters, and when it happens, Ledger will have an answer, similar to a bunch of other companies.
One of the interesting things is, as people have asked me about quantum computing over the years, there are two things I always said, and I'd love for you to either agree or disagree. The first is that there is no quantum computer yet, but if there is one that ends up getting created, there are a heck of a lot of things that you probably would want to hack or get into before you did Bitcoin. Because if you hack Bitcoin and take all the Bitcoin, Bitcoin loses its value. The whole point is that it's never been hacked before. Do you agree with that, or do you look at it differently?
Yeah, look, I agree that the CIA, if you look online, has a report on quantum computing that pretty much says everything you need to know right now about the state of quantum computing and what it can or cannot do. But even what you're describing is not exactly the way it would happen. You will never be in a position where suddenly you have a computer that is so great that you can choose what to hack on the planet. Every defense will be upgraded, and that's the scenario.
So the day it happens, you have offense and defense. You still have weak spots somewhere, so you'll be able to hack what has not been upgraded or what is still weak, etc. But again, read the thread from Sh Gim, and you will understand this better. For quantum computing to work the way that you say it would work, it would require years—like, you know, five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Nobody really knows because there is something completely exponential in terms of quantum computing. Whatever you do now is nice, but you need to do this 250 times more.
And every time that you need to increase, it's all the much harder. So we're very far from having something that makes people freak out. So sorry to disappoint, but no, it's not happening, and Ledger is safe, and Bitcoin is safe.
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Amazing to hear. One of the things that has always been kind of a paradox to me is that when you think of Bitcoin, when you think of encryption, when you think of Ledger, these are very technical products. They're very secure; they use cutting-edge technology. But when you hear about a lot of stolen Bitcoin or people losing their Bitcoin, it's usually social engineering. It's kind of like the least technical thing that you could actually do is what people use.
So talk about building a company where security is your business—trust, privacy, and security. But at the end of the day, you still have users, and so you've got to balance how to handle this.
That's correct. Hacking is sort of offense versus defense, and so it depends on which range to steal. But also, there's an opportunity cost. If you're trying to steal $1, you cannot put a lot of effort and a lot of money into doing the hacking. You cannot spend $100 to hack $1. If you spend $100 to hack $1 million, then okay, that's a good return.
So you don't go hack Ledger because that's very expensive. What you do is social engineering because, you know, to send an email to someone and hope that they will return the 24 words, that's less costly. Therefore, the return on investment is probably greater, and that's what we've seen in the past ten years—social engineering and phishing emails, etc. That's what hackers do.
For that, Ledger launched our service, Ledger Recover, to start to take the 24 words out of the equation because the weak point, like you say, is the user himself and the user sharing the 24 words. We have documented everyone: Ledger, please do not share your 24 words. That's the thing that you shouldn't do.
I was on stage with someone the other day, and I was like, "Well, you know, this space doesn't need education anymore; people know everything." I'm like, "No, no, no, people don't know everything." Of course, we need a lot of education to the point where you shouldn't share your 24 words, but also explain what it means.
You know, never enter your 24 words on a computer, never enter your 24 words on a phone. People don't understand. I spoke to OGs the other day; I'm in the Alpha group, and people still talk about cold storage. They say, "Well, cold storage is okay because I keep my stuff on a piece of paper; I'm okay." So what do you do when you need to do a transaction?
They say, "Well, you know, it's easy; I go on a computer, and then I put my 24 words on the computer." Okay, but this is where you get hacked. So cold storage doesn't work. What works is Ledger in terms of security because your 24 words are never exposed by design. You can connect your Ledger online or offline; it doesn't matter.
In this case, cold storage is a real fallacy. But this is it. Then you, as a user, should never enter your words on the phone or computer, nor share these with anyone. But you still have them. So with Ledger Recover, we try to remove them out of the equation. It's a very secure way of doing it.
We have tens of thousands of users now that are using it, so it's a really good product, a really good service. It's never been hacked; it's open source; everybody can check what it does. That's part of the answer, and these answers need to come. You need to be able to onboard easier on self-custody; you need to remove all the friction.
Typically, storing those 24 words on a piece of paper somewhere has always been something where people have doubts. Also, if you know that your 24 words are on Ledger Recover and you can recover them electronically on your device, then the need for inputting the 24 words is somewhat removed. Therefore, this urge that you should share them is somewhat removed.
That's one of the examples of how you can protect users from themselves. But you're right that social engineering is most of the hacks that are happening right now. Except that now it has changed.
2024 is a very pivotal year in so many ways. It would be interesting for you to have a conversation with Charles in the dungeon one day. It seems that the big wolves are now out there. For a long time, I was talking with the donon about real hacking—not just social engineering, but complex hacking, like what you see in movies.
For a long time, there was not enough money to do this because complex hacking requires engineering, etc., and requires a cost. But now it's happening. There have been several hacks in 2024 where, you know, these are like bad boys' hacks—real hackers doing real things.
You have to take my word for it for now, but maybe we do an episode with Charles. But it's happening. The point we're making at Ledger is we've been trying to make that point for the past ten years, and people were like, "Well, but you know, nothing is too sophisticated." Now people are starting to be sophisticated.
We believe that security and what we do at Ledger will be front and center in the ten years to come, much more than it has been in the ten years that have passed. What hackers will typically do is deploy at scale through the Play Store or the App Store on your phone and computer apps with malware inside.
As soon as you have a software wallet or as soon as you flash your 24 words on the phone or computer, it will be sucked in; it will be put in a database, and they will extract the private keys from you just like that.
Again, people need to remember that neither phones nor computers were designed to do security. You need to have a security device with a secure screen because your phone and computer don't have a secure screen.
So even everybody that says, "Well, you know, the private keys are not on the phone or computer," you still have an app running on your phone. You never know what you sign, and blind signing is not good for this industry. Blind signing means that you cannot trust your phone and computer.
You send the money somewhere, and hopefully, it goes where you send it, but you don't know because behind the screen, there is the hacker that can take your money and then send it somewhere else.
So a hardware wallet with a big screen, where you can do clear signing, that's the only way to go in the future. People sometimes don't believe me, but I say you should believe me. We know what we're talking about, and it's not just to sell products. We have a mission; we have a vision. We're here to secure people, and we don't compromise at Ledger.
We don't compromise on security, and so a secure screen hardware wallet is the only way to actually do a transaction in crypto when you're not taking a risk.
When you mention a secure screen, what is that? What could possibly happen behind there?
So this is not a secure screen in the sense that the screen is not controlled by a secure element, or the screen is not controlled by security. When you have a Ledger—now wait, I'm going to get the Ledger, and I will show you.
Okay, so this is the stack. This is one of the newest Ledgers. It's a beautiful thing; it's been designed by Tony Fadell, who was the father of the iPod.
Okay, turn it on. So what you see here is a secure screen. The screen is controlled by the secure element that is inside the device. The secure element is sort of what you have on your credit card, like the chip and pin stuff.
When you touch the screen, every touch is secured. Because the screen is linked to the secure element, it means that everything you do is validated by the security enclave. So somebody can't be remotely controlling the device, and when you touch the screen and you think you're hitting one button, it's actually hitting a different button for you.
In here, you might have a secure element or secure enclave, but because it's not connected to the screen, when you push the screen, it's going to send a message to the secure enclave. The secure enclave is like, "Sure." So whatever is in the enclave is, let's say, secure, but because the enclave doesn't understand the message that is coming to it, it will sign everything you send it to sign.
It will only sign what it knows is secure because it's controlling the screen. It's more like vertically integrated security for the entire device.
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Very interesting. So that, you know, screen buttons, etc., every action is actually controlled within the secure environment, and so the secure environment controls everything, which is not true for a computer.
One of the things that is also exploding in popularity is artificial intelligence. I think a lot of people are rightfully excited about all of the cost savings and efficiencies and things like that that can be gained by this. There's a lot of generative AI that obviously is becoming quite popular as well.
But I immediately think this stuff probably can be used for nefarious purposes and may actually, as much as it will empower good actors to build cool products, I'm assuming the bad guys will also want to use these same technologies. Are you guys seeing anything there that's noteworthy?
Not really. But you know, good guys, bad guys—technology is for everyone, right? Often, bad guys need an edge. When people say at the beginning, "You know, Bitcoin is for criminals," this and that, it's not necessarily a bad sign. It was never the case, but even if it was the case, I'd be like, "Well, but criminals kind of have to use the best technology that is out there to always be on the edge."
Pablo Escobar was using a satellite phone before everybody else was using a satellite phone. It's not because satellite phones were designed for criminals; it's just that when you're a criminal in the jungle, you need that kind of technology to stay under the radar and be able to make your phone calls.
So yeah, I mean, technology is being used by everyone. Right now, we're not seeing a bunch of stuff that is done with AI that would be a problem for Ledger. Again, defenses are being built as offense is being used.
What is certain is that cryptography will be an answer to AI in a sense that AI is digital abundance and cryptography is digital scarcity. This is the yin to the yang, right?
What we have on the map is Ledger being not just the security of your cryptocurrency, but the security of everything that is important to you digitally. All of your digital secrets. Last year, we launched PasKey and a bunch of features where it's not just now about securing your cryptocurrency but other things or secrets that are important to you online.
PasKey being your access to your favorite websites. There is a long list of things that we will do, but at some point, you will need proof of humanity. Are you human? Are you a person? Are you American? What is your age, etc.?
All this mixed with identity is definitely on our roadmap for 2025 and beyond. It's something that we'll need because with AI, with bots, etc., God knows who's writing what where. But if it's signed with your Ledger, then we know it's you, PP, or me, Pascal. That's happening, and for us, it's not so much AI being a danger to Ledger right now because it's not really, but it's more like what can Ledger do to be the answer to AI being a danger. We're working on that, and that's super exciting going forward.
What about regulation? Obviously, in the United States, it's probably one of the bigger markets for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. There's a pretty abrasive regulatory environment. I think that it held back a lot of institutional adoption and also retail adoption.
But with the new administration coming in with President Trump going to the White House, new SEC chair, etc., it feels like maybe some of that abrasiveness is kind of slowly dissipating. What do you think that does for the industry in general, and is there any impact on Ledger?
First of all, I think the abrasive regulatory environment is in Europe. I think MAA and, in general, Europe rushing into regulation before the business even happens is terrible. The result in Europe is we don't have any exchanges that are moving any coins.
For a zone with 500 million people and a lot of value captured, you have to wonder why. Every champion of MAA and over-regulation saying that this will be good for business—well, now you have your answer: it's terrible for business.
What you add in the US is an administration that waged war on cryptocurrency but actually had no regulation. The regulation still doesn't exist in the US. I hope that you stay low on regulation. If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If you stop moving, subsidize it.
That's Ronald Reagan. So that's what we do in Europe. We tax, we regulate, and then we subsidize once we have no business. Hopefully, in the US, you won't regulate too much, and you will let the business ride. You know, trust your entrepreneurs to build good companies and not to steal from customers.
If you look at Coinbase, it's a great example of an amazing company that did extremely well in a toxic environment by doing what a good company and a good CEO should do. Coinbase built a good business because if you want to survive long-term, you have to build a good business.
You don't need regulation to build Coinbase, as it seems. Coinbase has always been gracious in offering help to regulators and offering ways to regulate the business that is both good for society in general and good for business.
I think this is the way it should be done—business in partnership with regulators and the executive power just to build an economy and have an economy thrive.
I think the way Europe did it is the reverse. People are regulating an industry that doesn't even exist with rules that are anti-business, etc. We've done it over and over again with so many things. I mean, the GDPR is probably one of the worst human inventions. Nobody cares.
The only thing it does is every time you open a website, you have a popup, which is super annoying. And voila! It doesn't solve any problem; it costs a lot of money; it's really ridiculous.
So yeah, I think in the US, it's going to be fantastic to watch what this new administration is going to do in the next four years. When it comes to Bitcoin and other things, you know, the Doge initiative with Vic and Elon is going to be interesting to watch, to say the least.
I'm very intrigued to see what impact it's going to have on business, not just for the US but also this kind of Renaissance movement for the world where finally we have less governmental control, more trust, power given back to the people, the freedom to be an entrepreneur, and to develop a society.
I don't really like this world where every time you try to do something, you have to demonstrate that you're not a drug dealer, that you're not a criminal, before you can actually do anything. I prefer that I'm given trust first, and then if I do something wrong, then of course, you have to pay for your crimes.
I would like to go back to a society where entrepreneurship is not frowned upon, like it was in the past four years in the US.
When you think of 2024, it seems like one of the big stories was the ETFs getting approved, and that led to lots of inflows. Obviously, the price has done well; we get to halving. How does institutional participation change your focus at Ledger?
Some of those institutions either legally are not allowed to or are not yet ready for self-custody, so they'll use custody providers. How do you guys think about being a custody provider for institutions? Are there some that are starting to do self-custody? Do you think there's an education gap? Just talk a little bit about your relationship with these institutions.
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Sure, but we are a technology player, so we provide technology to a bunch of custody providers. Today, if you're a financial institution, you're probably already using Ledger without knowing you use Ledger. You don't do self-custody with Ledger, but you use Kainu or one of the various custodians that use Ledger technology.
You have your money there, and it's secured by Ledger technology. That's the play. Because we have this network of custodians all over the planet, we were able to build this new Ledger Enterprise Trad Link feature, which is an off-exchange trading feature that we've launched in 2024 and that we are rolling out in 2025. It's a real success right now.
When it comes to financial institutions, again, in the past ten years, in my mind, nothing has happened. Everything is going to happen in the next ten years. 2024 will be remembered as a very pivotal year for many things. You will have these graphs in 20 years where 2024 will be the year.
We have seen nothing yet. The ETFs of 2024 were certainly a big move. BlackRock touching Bitcoin and saying, "This is my baby now," that's a big moment. People underestimate how BlackRock changed the world when they decided to do that.
You know, this moment where the SEC didn't want to approve those ETFs but still had to do it. Their account was hacked when they were—I mean, only in crypto, right? That was in January of 2024. Crazy!
So 2024 was really a good year for this. We're ready for the next ten years. I think with Ledger Enterprise, we have the best technology platform to secure digital assets for financial institutions. Again, we sell to custodians; we sell to banks, and then custodian banks deliver the service to the end customer. It's going very well right now.
When you think of Ledger's business moving forward, you guys have recently launched these products. You showed us the Stacks product, but it is consumer-friendly. You worked with Tony Fadell, as you mentioned. Security is still at the heart of these things, but it does feel like you are becoming much more of a consumer hardware company, similar to Apple, where there's a brand, there's a boldness, and there's a user experience that's at the center of these devices.
You're smiling because I think that has been a big focus for you guys. How does that evolve over time? You're still dealing with crypto; you're still dealing with encryption and security and very technical things, but it feels like the device today is light years ahead of where it was even four or five years ago.
100%. Look, the graveyard of great technology innovations is full of French companies. We are amazing at building great technology, but we come short when it comes to taking it to market and making it a product.
Ledger and companies usually start with technology innovation; it's very natural. If the founding team at Ledger didn't have this idea, and it was a very technical idea, we wouldn't be here today. But at some point, if you want to reach the mass market and the consumer market, you have to think product first.
It's not very difficult. You open YouTube, you watch three videos of Steve Jobs, you read one book of Steve Jobs, and you understand the concept. Even if the concept is quite easy to understand in a way, it's really pragmatic. Think product and technology after.
It's very hard to do because you always have the tension between engineering and product, etc. People like their gadgets. People like, "I want this technology to be in," etc.
For me, when I took over as CEO in 2019, it was really the moment where I was like, "Okay, how do we go into a real product, a real experience?" Ledger was always designed to become this product, but the difference between wanting something and doing it is perfect execution, and that's very difficult.
For me, perfect execution is always about the people. Who knows how to do this? Tony Fadell is, you know, I did my best; I cannot find better than Tony to help me do this. If anybody knows anyone that is greater, please let me know.
I say this as a joke, but it was wonderful to work with Tony because he knows how to do this. Watching him think about the product and the experience first and then from there go to technology was very interesting.
There was friction at the beginning when we tried to pivot from a technology model first to a product model first, but in the end, it worked super well. Of course, Stacks was late to come to market because Tony being Tony, Apple being Apple—you’re not going to do the easy thing; you take the hard route.
While you're going to do this, you invent a screen that doesn't exist and that no one has ever done. Even Iink didn't think it was possible to do. You know, in the company that produces this, they thought it was not possible to do.
We have a few videos and things that Ian Rogers and Ariel, our VP of marketing, did that show the story of how we built Stacks. The CEO of Iing says, "Yeah, you know, it was not possible to do," and when we did it, it was like, "Okay, so you did it."
That was really the hard way to do it, and we were late, etc. It's difficult for a small company when your product is late, but I guess this is how you achieve greatness. Looking back, I'm glad we did it.
Being late actually has no impact because no one did anything of significance in the meantime, and now we are redefining the space. I'm glad that you made the comment that you made. We see these comments on x.com, and the feedback usually that we get from our customers is, "As soon as you use this—and by the way, I can only use this now—I love our Nanos, but this is a greater experience."
We've designed it to be a greater experience, and security has to be easy to use. If you want to onboard the next generation of people on self-custody, you know, it's digital property. If you make digital property too hard to use, you can't onboard too many users.
But this feels really like, "Okay, now it works. Now I want to use it. I want to use it every day." Sometimes I don't have a transaction to do, and I'm like, "Man, what could I do?" But it's a thing of beauty.
What we have to come is amazing. Now we have a strong team, and we have an amazing roadmap for the next three years. This is the first time at Ledger that we have a three-year roadmap that actually makes sense, where we know what we're going to do, etc.
We came a long way, but it's difficult. Ten years—that was the 10th anniversary for Ledger this year. I remember the first three years were very difficult. Can you imagine 2014, 2015, 2016? It was a different market.
But now these products are selling like little pancakes or little breads, and the results we are seeing in terms of usage are amazing too. It's not just that we sell more products; it's that people, once they have these products, do more things.
What's happening is there is a world of connectivity that is coming now that hasn't really happened in the past ten years. But now, you know, this idea of having your private keys—why? Because you're a sovereign individual.
Philosophically, you want the money to be yours, sure. But you don't convince everyone with this. By the way, what is the product again? The product is this: now you have public blockchains that are protocols, just like the web is a protocol.
But the web is not a product; Facebook is a product. You're going to use Facebook, and Facebook connects to the web protocol. DeFi is a product. Now, to do DeFi, how do you do DeFi? Well, with these little babies—clear signing, web three, check directly on this, connect to DeFi.
That's the product, and only if you do that can you have a secure transaction. Because on DeFi, if you don't secure the endpoint, then you're at risk of losing your money. It's coming fast now. The next five years will be applications that run on top of blockchain. Even Bitcoin layer twos are coming, so you can imagine so much liquidity, so much security, and you build an applicative layer on top.
That's the product, and we designed this to be ready for people to engage with the protocol, to connect to the web. If you're on an exchange, you're on the internet. If you want to come to the internet, you need to be on Ledger.
What is the thing you're looking forward to most in 2025?
Well, actually, at Ledger, we have an investment fund as well with Kov, and we've been investing in Bitcoin layer twos and basically the applicative layer—a bunch of DeFi stuff, etc. I think, in general, DeFi is the big push for us.
It seems a little backwards; people say, "Well, you know, we already know everything about DeFi." I'm like, "I don't think we know everything about DeFi." DeFi exists, and actually, in 2022, 2023, and 2024, DeFi has shown that it was resilient when everything went down—not DeFi.
So very resilient, gaining traction, gaining market share against CeFi, and it is the future. But the future takes time. It was one of our former presidents, François, who said in French, "You need to give time to time."
So I think DeFi is something very exciting for 2025 and the years to come, but it's going to be a big push for Ledger. We integrated recently a Tor swap; this was one of the integrations that was the most acclaimed by users. Everybody was super excited, and the Tor swap integration with Ledger is a huge success.
It's online, so you can really see how transactions are pushing into TS, and so it's pretty amazing.
I think that you all, more so than probably any company I know in the space, have a seat at the intersection of consumers, institutions, security, and what I'll call the financialization of all these assets.
Talking about connecting to the internet, it's almost like this kind of headquarters, if you will, for somebody, both digitally and also in the physical world. It's a very unique position.
But the one thing that I tell people behind closed doors—I've never told you before, but I figure this is a good place—you guys continue to innovate. Throughout the years, I think Ledger could have just sat on its hands and said, "Hey, we got a good business; you know, things seem to be working; we're the leader."
Now, all of a sudden, as you guys continue to innovate, you can see that the business is pushing the pace of innovation and what's possible. But also, there is this back and forth between the hardware and the software. The more people are able to hold their assets and engage in DeFi applications or engage in various things, that allows the opportunity for software developers to build certain types of products, etc.
It's kind of a friendly competition of who can go faster, but it makes the whole space better. I think that people don't appreciate how important the security of these hardware devices is, not just for defense but also for what is possible with this technology as the industry continues to develop.
Look, I appreciate you saying this. I will second you, of course. It's been a hard shift from, "Hey, I'm buying a Ledger, and I put it in a drawer," to actually, "My Ledger is my gate to enter my world of crypto."
I think it has been that way because crypto has evolved a lot. In 2014, what could you do apart from, "I buy and I hold Bitcoin"? That's it. You know, and I send and receive. Okay, fine, but then that's it.
Now you can do more, and you will be able to do more, etc. It's funny because we have cohorts of users. All new users, when they come, when they buy a Ledger, they connect to everything because now that's what Ledger is.
Old users have to figure out what Ledger is, and sometimes it's very difficult because we are a privacy-first business. Therefore, we don't have a way to reach out to our users and say, "Hey, mister, we know you have Ledger, and now this is everything that you can do with it."
We have a lot to do in terms of education and reaching out to our users and saying, "Hey, now this is what's possible." But again, I mean, these groups of original gangsters are like, "Well, but Ledger is only cold storage." I'm like, "No, no, no, Ledger is exactly what you describe. Ledger is now connectivity, and that is the future."
The future of crypto is not to be in a vault somewhere and stay still. Some of it will do that, of course, but you're going to want to engage. I was talking to a friend; it's funny. He got into crypto sort of with me, but that's not his business.
His business was, I don't know, sort of finance in regional France. He was telling me the other day that now he was only borrowing money on DeFi. It was crazy! Who needs the banks anymore? He was so excited.
He was like, "I go on a DeFi platform, I do my thing, I get my loan." He was so automated, etc. He was so excited, but he got it. He was like, "Who needs the banks anymore?"
But he has a Ledger, right? So he understands that too because he has me, but he also understands the need now that if you're going to do this online, it's great, but only if you can secure the endpoint and only if you do it with a Ledger or something secure like Ledger that doesn't exist.
You see my point? I think this world is super exciting, and as soon as people see it, they're like, "Oh my God!" It's very powerful.
Where can we send people to get a Ledger if they're interested?
Ledger.com. Now we have a distribution network everywhere in the world. It depends on where you live. Sometimes to order on ledger.com, you may have costs to import, etc. But most countries now have local distributors and resellers. It's pretty well done.
To see that the industry has evolved—what was it? Yes, so 2017, the bull run, and then the crash in 2018-2019. We picked up again in 2020, bull run 2021, and in 2018-2019, we lost all of our distribution. After the bull run, people were not convinced, etc.
This crash of 2022-2023, we gained distribution. So no one walked away from crypto, which was interesting. Now we have a very strong distribution network everywhere in the world. Next year, we are going to localize more Ledger, and we have a few regions and countries where we want to press more in terms of local distribution, having a marketing presence, you know, presence with people, etc.
I think you guys are doing a fantastic job, so I appreciate all the hard work. I think every single person who's got a Ledger and got anything on there is thankful for all the security you guys provide as well.
Thank you for taking the time to do this. Consider me a huge fan, as always, and we definitely do it again in the future.
Pleasure, as always.