Why Self-Custody Still Matters | Pascal & Ian

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 and a rebundling. And so, you know, Ledger will lead both the unbundling and the rebundling.

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All good.

Sweet. All right, everyone, welcome back to Empire. I'm going solo. No Santi today. We've got Ian Rogers. I think it's fair to call you one of the most interesting people in crypto. Beastie Boys extraordinaire. Sold some companies to— I think I'll get these right— AOL, Yahoo, Apple. Owner of a pretty great NFT collection that I'm an enjoyer of. I think X. I might get this title wrong, Chief Digital Officer of LVMH, or really helped push LVMH's portcôtes into the kind of digital e-commerce age, uh, and now CXO of Ledger. And then we've got Pascal, CEO of Ledger, also a pretty interesting guy himself. So gents, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm here because Pascal is interesting. When I moved to, when I moved to France 8 and a half years ago, one of the first people I got introduced to was, was Pascal. And I, I literally like after 10 minutes wanted a second date. I was like, you're not like all the other French dudes.

The first dinner I went to have with Pascal was I think I got patted down by a security guard. And I was like, what's going— what is going on here? So, wow.

Where did we go? Where did we go?

It was, I think, Ditto. Ditto organized it in like 2018 or 2019 in New York. Trey, Trey organized it and, and There's a 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.

Not because of me.

One of the other first people I met when I moved to Paris 8 and a half years ago was Tony Fadell. So that's like all part of the story.

It's all coming together. Is this the first show you guys have done together? Or you guys have done a bunch of speaking together?

We usually do.

Yeah, we speak a lot together.

But on podcasts?

Well, hold on a second. We do both. On podcasts, no, I think we've done a few podcasts together. We've been pitching a lot together to raise money.

Definitely.

And otherwise in work, yes, we divide and conquer. Like, you know, Ian does his things, I do my things, and we cover more ground like that.

How do you guys divide and conquer in the fundraising pitches?

We do them together.

No, it's just like, it's a duo, like, you know, and we're really good at this. Like, you know, we don't step on each other's toes. Like, you know, I say my things and then I give it to Ian. You know, it's a well-oiled show that 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.

I'm sure, I'm sure there must be.

No, eventually, but, uh, but we are non-confrontational, so we end up either agreeing or would like to 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 on sort of everything. But equally, you know, in the company, the way we run things, 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 flow and that your team and the people that you work with, you know, feels like a team and not so much like, you know, confrontational. And if every idea has to pass in a confrontational way, I think you're doing it wrong. And so for us, whether it's with Ian and, you know, and the rest of the comex 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 board of directors as well as 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, in France 10 years ago, but it's really a global company if you look at the makeup of, 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 LVMH took a, you know, It shows that they are— it shows that LVMH 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 that chief digital role at LVMH before me was, you know, a person from Microsoft, a person from France, and a great person, but maybe a little safer as a choice than me. I'm kind of a weird person. And I would say that, you know, same 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 wanted 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 I got a sneak peek at it. It's just like gorgeously designed. It's called Ledger Stacks. And 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 backgrounds here. So yeah, you've got this dope product called Stacks, which we'll definitely talk about in a second. You stack them together and you stack stack on top of each other. It's really cool. 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 Beastie Boys and, you know, kind of like in the heart of the 1990s dogfight between like AOL and Microsoft and Yahoo and these companies and just realizing like how long it takes for some of this stuff to play out. So maybe, Pascal, I could pick on you to tee 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 everyday problem, and/or, you know, if the everyday problem is sort of big enough, then you can try to change the world. And I think when I stumbled upon Bitcoin, I 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 they're not absolutely secure. And being French, I had a bias because, you know, I was always told growing up that, you know, chip and PIN technology, what you have in your credit card, is actually the best form of security. And the Ledger team was raising money, and they pitched to me chip and PIN applied to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. 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 suddenly you have digital ownership. You can own 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, suddenly you think, well, actually, my login password to my Instagram account is actually 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 every day that passes because there is more value attached to them. And then you also realize that you're being hacked every day and that the way that you use your computer and your phone is vastly insecure because since we've been using these for a long time now and we've been patching security for a long time and we know about like 0xDay, 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 something 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 freedom comes from private property. And if you don't have private property, 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 a fundamental problem. I don't think that you should own fundamentally everything. Actually, I think at least you should have the choice. And so 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. 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. And we know it because, you know, people are very intimate with Ledger. People are very, you know, react in various ways with Ledger, but it's always very emotional. And why? Because it's very important. It's a very important problem that we're trying 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 mean, look, this is the reason that I came to Ledger. Like I said, I met Pascal in 2015, and at the time he was, you know, investor and board member at Ledger. And I kind of went through, you know, the the normal, you know, 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 felt kind of how important Ledger was in the overall picture in the world of digital assets. Because, you know, look, 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 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 live, 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 true. And I also think that and I believe for a few years now that in a world of artificial intelligence, digital ownership is the yin to that yang, right? If you have digital abundance, you must have digital scarcity. And if I'm already consuming AI, which is created by a web that is created by AI, provenance is important, right? So knowing that this is my voice coming out of this microphone is ultimately important. In a world 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, the ICO boom, you know, was this, for me, it felt like dot-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, you know, in the same way that Cisco didn't care the winner of kind of, You know, World War 3.0, as Ken Aloe called it in his book from 1999. Cisco was just like Microsoft versus AOL versus Netscape versus, and Cisco was 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 is about digital ownership at a very base level. Level there. And if you— 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 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 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 5 cameras on that thing?

This is— this is the, uh, Pascal and I have the same one. This is the S24.

Nice, nice, nice. A lot of cameras on that bad boy. Where— so where does Ledger— okay, so if you look at the internet today, we've got like 5.5 billion internet users. I think there's probably 4 or 5 billion social media users. There is, let's call it, 400 or 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 5 to 10 million Ledgers sold historically, probably closer to the 7.

7.

7 million sold. And as I'm sure you know, you know, every time we meet someone, they say, I've got 5 Ledgers. So, you know, 7 million sold doesn't mean 7 million people in the world of security.

Actually, the number of average Ledger per user is like 1.2, 1.3. So actually the number of users probably around 5.

Exactly. Interesting. 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 shit hits the fan, you know, in like a world where like all of Ryan Selkis's tweets come true, like I need, I need the Ledger. And then there's, and then there's like, no, no, no.

Watch that movie, by the way. The movie, the movie that's called In a World Where All of Ryan Selkis's Tweets Come True.

That's the movie we need. Yeah, exactly. World War 3.0, by the way. Great, great book, actually.

Such a good book.

Great book. And then there's the other side of the spectrum, which is like when I saw the Ledger stacks, I was like, Tony Fadell is working on this thing and they got the E Ink guy in this little documentary, which is a great documentary. we'll link 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 Selkis world comes true. This is the mainstream product world. And I want to ask you guys about a phone later on because 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 on to this and into the Ledger ecosystem?

So I'll do the first. Bit, and then I'll give it to Ian to, uh, to add up to what I'm gonna say. But I think, um, when you say 500 million users, uh, 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 been onboarded by Coinbase, which is great. Now they're being onboarded 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 $1,000 with their private keys, you're looking at 20 to 30 million people on the planet. 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. People buy and sell crypto, people trade, and that's probably the main use case, which is why Binance is probably, you know, one of the biggest companies on the planet right now. Like, you know, the numbers are private, but they are actually, I think, extremely big, you know, much bigger than Coinbase. And Coinbase is already a really great, really great company. And so 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 than to build a 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 that hard. So actually, when you go through transformation and transformation and a new asset class, you know, you probably start with easy tech and you go towards hard tech, which is why Stacks exists today and didn't exist in 2014. It's very difficult to do Stacks in 2014. It becomes possible only today. And finally, I think now what we're starting to see is, okay, blockchains, L1s were in their infancy, are still somehow in their infancy. Now you've got L2s, and now you start to have the application layer being built on top. Interestingly enough, if you are on Ethereum, on Solana, 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 DeFi and 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 that, what's happening right now with L2s and different things 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 markets. This is why Stacks is actually perfectly timed 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 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 an e-commerce experience that is NFT-gated, because you have a piece of art 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 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 in 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 the 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 the web protocol. With your Ledger, you will be able to interact with those different public blockchains directly. And you won't be able to do that if you go through an exchange, for example.

And I think if you look at everything that we're doing, you can see that 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 you guys both said in the kind of the setup for this question, You've got a much larger group of people who have, you know, some sort of exposure to the asset class than 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? There's kind of an amazing story behind Stacks because it really is a story of, of, you know, a group of friends you know, who have this belief and, and want to push it forward, including, um, including Tony Fadell. But I also think that the opportunity here is that, um, that, that Stacks is to this, this conversation of digital assets what the iPod was to music, um, in a very specific way, um, in an accessibility way that you were, um, alluding to at the beginning, which is before, if you had, there were MP3 players before the iPod, you know, they did, 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 8 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 Passkey, my 2FA. It's a better security device than, you know, Face ID on my phone or the, or the, um, you know, thumbprint 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, social media services, you know, they actually value kind of a proof of humanity, you know, a proof of identity. 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 that's the difference between Ledger today 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., meme coins, whatever you want to do with your crypto life. Actually, now you can start and end your journey with crypto and Ledger, your crypto journey with Ledger, meaning like you buy Stacks, you open it, you follow the instruction, and you can buy your first Bitcoin right from the partners that are being integrated into Ledger Live. 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 your Ledger because then you want to own it. Actually, now you can do, you know, sort of end-to-end with your Ledger, and you can even off-ramp with your Ledger because you can sell your crypto from your Ledger, and you can add a credit card to your Ledger that's available in Europe. It's going to be available, hopefully, in the US later this year. So actually, you can go about your merry crypto life with your Ledger because on top of it, you can connect your Stacks to other software experiences. You can connect directly to Rabby, 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 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. 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 a Ledger because you actually want crypto. And that's something that has been developed since 2021, and that's something that has come to maturity in the past, you know, 12 months, and it's working super well right now. We've actually announced Crypto.com today as a new buy partner. We've announced PayPal before, we have Coinbase. So actually you have a good price comparison in Ledger if you want to access the Bitcoin or crypto market in Nice.

I got my iCloud got hacked like a year and a half ago and it was this crazy—

Was it a SIM swap?

Yeah, it was this crazy, like this, like just intense feeling.

Did you ever get your iCloud back?

No, I never got it back.

Wow. That's the thing that I think people don't anticipate, right? It was 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 and 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 that I've been accumulating for the last, you know, 10, 15 years. It actually made me think about Ledger, about Ledger a lot as like because I was thinking about like, yeah, I use, I use Ledger to protect my crypto. But like, who is looking out for my digital possessions? And it's the first time I really started to think about Ledger in this light with like— I was talking to Ariel about like Stacks and I kind of knew this thing was coming out and I was like, I see, I think I see what they're trying to do here.

So yeah, and I think, look, and that's why I bring up the security key app, right? Because I mean, Wall Street Journal did a lot of really great reporting last year. Joanna Stern did great reporting on, 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 get into people's bank accounts instead of into their pockets, right? Um, and so I, I— that's why 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 in 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. 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 1Password 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 passkeys 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 passwordless. 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 Jason Yanowitz, um, and something to do with 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 in 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 Bitcoin, our tokens, our non-fungible tokens. 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 Ledger Stacks. So like December '22, I think it was 2020, December 2022, you guys announced this thing, thought we would launch it in March of '23. I guess I have a couple of questions on that around like, why, why so long? Like, what, why, why was it so hard? I know there's a lot of firsts here, which I obviously want to cover, but like, give me the 30-second pitch for just like, what is Ledger Stacks 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 Stack?

So I, I'll, 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, you know, Tony Fadell, who was the inventor of the iPod and the co-inventor of the iPhone and the inventor of Nest, is the one who designed Stax. 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. And he said to us, it 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 your picture in your head, it's the size of a credit card in terms of width and height. And it has a first of its kind. E-ink 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 band around it look like? The other thing that it acknowledges is that 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, savings account, checking account. Yeah, I've got several Ledgers.

I've I've got the one associated with Blockworks. 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 so, and then you've probably had to like put a sticker. I mean, I used to— yeah, 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 E Ink, you know, the way E Ink works is it's a bistable technology. And when you change the, the, the screen, it stays changed and doesn't draw any power. So in this case, you can actually change The screen goes around the edge, so that includes the spine. And so when they're stacked up, you can tell them apart, you know, on the spine. Plus you can put whatever you would like to, whether it's, you know, a picture of your dog or an NFT on the COVID you can put whatever you like and you can tell them apart in that way. So that was the design of it. And the other, you know, big piece of this that plays into what we've been talking about for the last 15 minutes is, You do more with your Ledger today than you 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 with 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 touchscreen 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 touchscreen. That's actually partly why E Ink is important because E Ink, you've only got 16 colors. It's, you know, it's, it's real, it's simple relative to your phone screen and something that you can power. 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 want, I can turn to why it took us more than a year longer than, than, than, uh, I thought we did. But, but also, thank you very much for watching our little mini documentary, which I call a Podumentary. Uh, 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 Sei. Sei'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 Web2 world. Agree with that. They also believe that the EVM in its current iteration lacks a lot of the performance and scalability that developers need. So what Sei 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 EVM L2s on the market today. Sei V2 is now live on public Devnet with Mainnet scheduled for Q2. You can stay up to date with Sei on X @SeiNetwork, S-E-I Network. Big thanks to Sei. Hey everyone, Santi and I have been talking about Solana a lot recently and we're excited to have a Solana sponsor of Empire. Marinade is a staking protocol on Solana. I remember when they launched, I think it was back at the Solana Hackathon and they were funded with this $80K grant. It's super cool to see how far they've come. They're the only stake pool today that delivers auto rebalancing, MEV rewards, and automatic downside protection with their new protected staking rewards. You can stake natively or liquid stake with Marinade and get the same high-performance delegation strategy that thousands are using already to stake your SOL to over 100 of the best Solana validators. Marinade has been live for over 2 years, and they have audits completed by 4 of the top security firms in crypto. The delegation strategy is a first of its kind. So if you're staking your Solana, if you want to start staking your Solana, if you want to get some yield from your SOL, start staking today with Marinade. Go hit the link in the show notes. Big thanks to Marinade for everything that they've done in Solana staking land. Go check them out. Go stake your Solana 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 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 JPMorgan or Citi or DTCC's digital assets or the Australian New Zealand Banking Group. They're 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.app/discover. That's core, core.app/discover. 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, its value valued at $4.4 billion. The Mantle ecosystem engages in a lot of early-stage exciting projects such as Athena and EigenLayer, and they give out actually the rewards to the Mantle community. There are two airdrops 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 presale token allocations to MNT holders who stake the tokens. The second one they have going on is with MISO, M-I-S-O. 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/rewardstation. Big thanks to Mantle for sponsoring Empire. Well, before we talk about the, the time it took, and I'm assuming that that's Probably an easy answer actually, which is like, look, we just did a bunch of firsts, like first e-ink, first curved e-ink display, first organic semiconductor materials on plastic substrates, like only screen made at less than 100 degrees. A lot of firsts takes a lot of time to build hardware and software. I'm assuming that's the answer there. The world's first secure touchscreen. I keep hearing you and Pascal say this, like what does, um, you're inherently saying that my current touchscreen is, is not secure. Like, are you, so 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 touchscreens? And like, what does that mean?

Correct. Correct. I mean, you know, like, your hardware security works just like a building. If you have a secure building and you have these armed guards all around and the building is heavily— like Fort Knox, for example— you understand very easily that sort of what's inside is secure. Now, if I tell you that, you know, take Fort Knox, but I also want you to have like a daycare center, a movie theater, a club, and a shopping mall, then, you know, you very quickly you're going to say, well, let's have two buildings, right? 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 the secure element is not smart, like doesn't really know 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, needs to control control the screen, basically need to control every interaction that tells the secure element to do something. And so in the case of Stacks, it's only the touch of the screen, the screen itself, etc. And 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 secure enclave in my phone. Sure, but that secure enclave gets messages from most places that are very insecure. And so therefore it 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 secure enclave in the phone doesn't control entirely the phone. So that's the main difference between your phone and Stacks.

Yeah. And I wrote a little post last week for my friends because I definitely had people that were like, okay, I love you, Ian, but I still don't get it. And I think I think, you know, the, the, um, the, yeah, there, there, there it 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 crypto. So you could be on an exchange and very, 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, a software wallet, which is where you're relying on the security of your phone, but frankly, your phone meets none of the 3 security requirements. And I'll come back to that in one second. You could be 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 device that doesn't have a secure element, 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 attack lab, the Donjon. Or you could have a hardware device which doesn't have a secure screen. 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 3 things you need to be secure are: you need a secure element chip, which, which create— which, you know, creates your, um, private key to begin with, with kind of the, 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 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 software wallet? You say, we say, look, you know, you can imagine, you know, having, 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 other people— or people would say, yeah, but what, you know, what about, you know, just like a little card that doesn't have a screen? It's like, why would you— no, secure screen is required. We will leave the compromising to somebody else. Every cycle, people want to compromise on security, self-custody, or both, and they always— the, the reason they give always includes the phrase onboarding the masses, and it always leads to exactly the same spiral. So that's just, we just, that's just not what we will do. Our goal is let's make something that's as easy and delightful to use as Stacks, but as secure as Ledger Nano has been since 2016.

You know, it's funny because very intuitively when you ask people, they know all of this. I mean, they don't know how the technology works, but like they know that their phone is not secure. And when we were developing Passkey, you know, I've tried this on many people. It's like, If I give you Stacks and by the simple touch, simple NFC touch, you can actually open your Instagram, your X, your Reddit account, whatever is important to you with your Stacks and your sort of password or the thing that helps you open your account is only in Stacks. People say, oh, give me that tomorrow because people intuitively all know that they got a problem with sort of logging password and that they all know that their Instagram is under attack. And, you know, your experience is not unique. Like, you know, you've lost something that is fairly important. I mean, if you lost your cloud, I don't know what was in your cloud. Sometimes it's 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 were 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 Ledger offers a wider range in terms of what you can protect with your Ledger, also we think that we will augment our total addressable market. People will be able to protect more and more of their digital life. And so Ledger is going to become a reflex for most, I think.

What was it like working with Tony? Kind of the— hopefully most people listening to this know Tony Fadell, but for those who don't, he's kind of the godfather of the iPod. I think that's fair thing to say. And also, as a— there's a documentary actually about— I'm forgetting the company that he worked on pre-Apple.

Um, uh, yeah, it's called, um, uh, General Magic.

Phenomenal, phenomenal.

General Magic: The Movie. It's great.

You see a young documentary. Young Tony is like— great, great documentary.

But it's an amazing— that's an amazing documentary. It's a great documentary about innovation because, you know, those people, um You know, we're literally the smartest people on the planet and they're 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 Rubin who went on to, to create, you know, Danger, and then, um, and then Android. You had, you know, the woman who became the CTO for Obama, um, was part of the team. You know, it's just an, 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 audiobook, um, and, and really about innovation. What I would say is, you know, we were friends with Tony for years, 5 years, um, before we started on this project with him. And, and it, it was just 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 tech deeply, 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 mini documentary that you reference is— and I think it's, it's true, and I think it's what we accomplished here— is, you know, if 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 cultures together was not always easy, but it was super rewarding, and I think it's what the space needs. Because it is kind of a, it's a new thing. This is not like, we all kind of look at like Web2 and the internet that we've just grown up with as if it's like kind of the endpoint, but it's not. It's just a way station as a part of the evolution. And, you know, and Tony really gets that and he wants 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 put those two things together. The other thing is, is that working with Tony on this, is, you know, the— 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.

Drives.

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 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 technology to life? In a really delightful way in this product. And it, 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, I wanna say something in addition to what Ian just said, you know, because we, we say the word, you know, technology, uh, a lot, but, uh, but two things. You know, first, to build Ledger, you know, I absolutely wanted Ian to join because, you know, the world is about storytelling. And so Ian is one of the best storytellers I know. And, you know, when you can tell a story, it changes the face of the 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, it's always true, but, you know, there is There is 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 Ledger needed is 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 force that into the market and force technologies to users. What actually companies should do and where Ledger has evolved is that 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. And when I read the book, you know, this is pretty much what, what he said in the book, like, you know, think product and, you know, technology comes second. Steve Jobs is always very famous to, you know, say that you wouldn't have flash on iPhones and, you know, that's, that was it. And people were It was a curious decision at the time, but it was the decision. And why? Because he was always product first. And it's one thing to read it in the book. It's another thing to see Tony do it. And yes, there are pieces of new technology that he sees, et cetera. And actually, if you see, again, if you read the book and you know how they were thinking about the screen and the kind of material that they used, like he was reading that book, but sort of seeing it live. And Tony really thinks about the product. But everything about the product. It was very interesting right now. So we released DAX and people are starting to post things on X and it's wonderful to see it. But it's also wonderful to see that when Tony thinks about the product, he thinks about what cool things would user want to do with the product, like the E Ink screen and the remnant image, the little click when you click on the button. There are some little gimmicks. I don't know if you remember the first iPod, but there was this 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 ink, etc. And so there are many product decisions 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 going to feel good when they touch et cetera, et cetera. 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 Web3, 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 talk products 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 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 e-ink screen and, you know, just base 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, uh, is a, you know, is wonderful. It's, uh, yeah, it's very unique in a career.

Uh, it's very cool. I wish I could have experienced that. I feel like we've been in a drought of hardware product. Like, there are product people, there are amazing product people today, but if they're software product people, they're like the product managers or 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.

I really— so, and thank you. It's funny because I was at Consensus last week and I realized after, on day 2, I would just, when I met people I was like, I'm here promoting my film. Um, I was really just like, I really was— I'm trying to get everyone to watch that little, that little documentary. 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. Yeah, 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 gonna love this story. Um, and like 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 went, 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've got these like companies that are overpromising and underdelivering, like Humane and, and, and Rabbit R1. Um, you know, Ledger Stacks is exactly what we said it was. So yes, it's a year and 2 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 though it's, you know, it's 20 minutes long, so I don't wanna overstate it. Um, and, and then we put it together in 2 weeks. Week. 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 AirPods lid kind of like compulsively, like the perfect level of like magnetism. Exactly. So you're like, click, click. It's like that as well. So yeah, thank you.

Yeah. Pascal, can I— 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 Ledger, like what I— what people will think of as Ledger products historically. Then you've got Ledger Stacks, then you've got Ledger Live. Live, 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 TradeLink, this kind of open network to connect to? You know, there's like this whole B2B business. So maybe walk me through like the different business lines of Ledger.

Yeah, well, one way to understand the business lines is first, you know, our mission is to secure the, you know, the world of digital assets, you know, whether it's for consumer, enterprise, and we have to do it for sort of everyone because, you know, we don't want to be— 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'd rather them to be powered with the same sort of security technology. So for the users, in the end, it's not a trade-off of security, it's just a trade-off of do I want to own or do I want to trust like a third party who's 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 around $500 billion. And we're very proud to do it because we know that we bring peace of mind to our customers, whether they're consumers or on the enterprise side. On the consumer side, it's very easy. 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 iPod, this is where the music is. And then iTunes 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 where you're going to buy, sell, swap, stake, and engage basically with the world of Web3. And we get a commission on your action. The primary reason why we bring all these 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 good service, like where you can compare prices, you can find everything that you're looking for basically in the security of your ledger. That you like. So that's the business model 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, Ledger Stacks on steroids for enterprise. Basically, it's a SaaS solution where we provide like the whole security infrastructure, you know, software as a service to bank exchanges, custodians, etc. Like, we have over 100 customers. We secure billions of dollars 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 the crypto is on a Nano, then of course that's not very secure, the private keys are secure, but the process to access the crypto is not very secure. If everybody knows the PIN to your Nano or to your Stacks, then, you know, suddenly the governance around those cryptos is not secure. So what the solution does is does the security of the private keys, but also the security of the governance 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 that 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 a software as a service. On top of this now, which is super exciting and actually probably one of the most exciting things that we do, uh, for— from the enterprise side, we went from sort of securing your money when it stays still, securing money at rest, to now securing your money when it moves. And when it moves, it's 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 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 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 off exchange. And basically what you do is through Ledger Enterprise, you know, you use it as a technology backbone to connect connect the money to the exchange and to 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 and technology provider. So actually, sort of traders and, and people engaging into this trading activity can use like a technology that removes a lot of the risk 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, uh, Dave Ripley, from the new CEO of Kraken, on the podcast a couple weeks ago. And I mean, we were just talking about the IPO market, um, and regulatory regime change and SEC and Trump versus Biden and Paul. Yeah, and the impact that that'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 NYDIG in there, but it's kind of all eyes on Kraken and Circle. How do you think about— I don't know your guys' numbers. I would assume— I remember you guys raised it over a billion. I would assume revenue's got to be, with those numbers, got to be around that 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 when you talk about the consumer value proposition. Okay, so when you talk about the consumer value proposition, it's 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 Chinese citizens can own Bitcoin. Private ownership is actually okay everywhere in the world. And that's the use case for our consumers that we are working on. So we are sort of less concerned. I mean, we understand regulation. We understand why regulation is putting pressure on centralized entities like exchanges, for example. And that's probably for the best sometimes. Sometimes it's too much. Regulation shouldn't hit too hard if you don't want to prevent innovation from happening in the future. But that being said, you know, Bitcoin cannot be regulated because it's open source and because it's, you know, and I think that's sort of the future that we're looking at and not so much, you know, sort of only trading and speculation. I think there's a case for trading 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 sort of more focus. And of course, from an enterprise standpoint, from supporting the partners that are providing the buy, sell, swap, staking services, of course, we keep a keen eye on regulation as it happens. And we have actually a team that is taking care of this both in Washington and Brazil. 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 quite good. We actually believe that finance on the blockchain, and even with centralized 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 that's how we feel and how we think about 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 of 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 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, Stacks is only a stepping stone towards our future, and there are great things that we want to do. 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 us. It's more of a means to an end. And so raising for public or private market will be almost like a last-minute decision. What we want to do— for it to be a last-minute decision, the company needs to be ready. And actually, to run a company like a public company is not a bad idea. There are many good things about running a 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 internal tool, the financial tools, etc., and it's something that we're working on, but not so much to go public, but at least to be ready. Because if one day we have the opportunity, and this is where we can raise 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 Ledger's business because again, I have no idea if I was close or not on that revenue number, but yeah, a lot of revenue.

It's within the hundreds of millions. It's within hundreds of millions. And I've said on stage that actually, ideally, we want to hit a billion in '25.

'25. There you go. We are all hoping for a big '25. I think it'll be a big '25. The one downside to Ledger's business is that it's like one-time revenue, like you buy— someone buys a Ledger one time and maybe they don't buy it again. Like, I've really liked what you guys have done with like staking. Like, I stake inside a Ledger Live. Like, I'm sure that's nice ARR or 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, uh, the iPhone business is a one-time buy.

I mean, because people keep upgrading every 2 years or they buy the new product. That's actually true. I need to buy a new Ledger like every 2 years.

That's true, correct. So, and, and by the way, like, you know, the way that we've been taking Ledger to market has been fairly slow. You know, Nano S was in '16, the X was in '18, S+ was in '19, etc. But like, now we're entering— like, the Stacks is the, the tree that hides the forest. What we've developed with Stacks— we have a big hardware team now, we have an amazing supply chain, and now we are ready to to ship sort of more products sort of faster. And actually, what's going to happen 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, you know, the combination of hardware, operating system, and software makes it that, you know, the three have to evolve together in order to have a new experience. And I think, you know, Stacks is really one step in that direction, but the 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 to make a statement here that we're going to do a phone, but definitely your hardware wallet in the future will do much more than what it's doing now. And for this, the hardware needs to evolve, the operating system 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 one-time buy, it's actually a market where we will renew 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 it actually makes the business very balanced and it makes the business very repeatable. So it's not a It's not like you sell an iOS in 2016 and then you don't have a business anymore.

Right, right, right.

This is actually why Pascal gave me the title of Chief Experience Officer. This is 3 and a half years ago, but when I came in, his point to me was, look, when you buy an iPhone, you're not buying a piece of hardware, you're buying into an ecosystem.

Yeah.

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 a business that goes through that. Through that full stack. The other thing that I just find interesting, and I say this because I think your listeners might just, you know, it's an, it's, we keep making a comparison to a phone, but the reality is, is that 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, they buy a Stacks and then they buy 3 Nano S 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 You buy like 3 low-end phones as like backups to your phone. It's not, it's cuz it's not the same product. It really is a different product. And you're talking security and operational security matters and redundancy matters. And, you know, so it, 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, I don't know how you sleep at night cuz just securing all, all this, all this capital. But what's, uh, what's something that people 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 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 Basically 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 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 actually crazy to see. And so of course we had teams in Ukraine, we had to take care of our teams, we had to 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 Brussels. Like, you know, you have to take care of regulation, you know, That's crazy. Not many businesses have to do this. The type of things that we have to do, the complexity of what we have to do, the number of people that we have to meet. I would say this is why I came into crypto, but I didn't realize that it was going to be so full of experience, so complex, so rich. And that's actually, that's what's crazy about the job today. I can be, you know, There's someone that I really like in Washington. It's a gentleman called Tom Emmer, who's the whip of the—

He's speaking at Permissionless, actually. Yeah, we love Tom.

Tom is amazing, and what he's doing for crypto and Bitcoin is amazing. So in my job as CEO, I get to meet people like this. And so I feel very fortunate. And actually, whenever I come to the US and people say, oh, in the US, like, you know, I don't know, our politicians are not that good, etc. And you meet with someone like Tom Emmer, I say, you know, your politicians are pretty good. Like, you know, I would say a guy like Tom Emmer is actually someone who is rooting for freedom, someone that is 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 the people truly. And so what's extraordinary in my job is this, like, you know, everything in Pax Ledger, and you get to meet extraordinary people and, uh, and, uh, sort of influence policies, you know, globally, uh, because you're Ledger. So that's fantastic.

Maybe we can end with you, Ian, uh, a non-Ledger question. So you helped move LVMH— I think you're at LVMH for 5 or 6 years— helped move them from like, I don't know, 3 or 5% 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 I think you, from talking to people who are over there, like you were kind of, you shepherded these brands into the, into the e-commerce age. So if you think about, I'd love to hear a 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 5 to 10 years in the future. Like what is it going to be like to experience like TAG or Sephora or Dior or LVMH or I don't know, I mean, the Belmont, the list goes on with their portfolio, obviously. 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, LVMH brands waiting, um, to really jump into— in other words, if, if all the LVMH brands had just started doing e-commerce with Amazon day one, that would have been a huge mistake, right? With 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 into those lives. And, and it did change people, you know, in, 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 I don't want to spend 5 hours at Dior. I want to be able to get in, get exactly what I want, and get out quickly. So the definition of luxury really changed due to the internet. I mean, the internet 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 Tokyo. It's anyone anywhere. And how do you really serve those people? I think similarly, when it comes to digital ownership, I think there's a very big thing in that I believe that 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 an NFT, which is part of a strong community, has high value, 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. It 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. If you look at, we were listening to 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, and it's a community of things that cost around the same price as a Ferrari. And where there are 10,000 Ferraris made every year, there were 10,000 CryptoPunks made in 2021, and now there will be fewer than 10,000 every year for some reason or another, right? So I think that these parallels really, really hold. And I think, you know, the definition of what is luxury As we lead digital lives, luxury purchases will be digital. Just like I used to shoot photographs on 35mm film and hang them on my wall so that 5 people could come to my apartment and see them. And now my 17-year-old thinks that would be absurd because, well, who would see them, right? 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 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 from a luxury store or a Belmond, et cetera. 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, uh, lunch around VivaTech in Paris and only the Via members were able to come. Like, so they're already, you know, experimenting with that quite successfully. Loro Piana has a really interesting program. Dior has done a really interesting thing with sneakers that's been very successful. 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 like goods that are both expensive and scarce.

Hm. Love that. Pascal, Ian, pleasure. Great conversation. Hopefully we'll 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. I definitely plan to be there. I love, I love Utah. I don't know if we're— are we mountain biking? Because I think it's not the season for snowboarding, but now we're biking.

It's October. It's beautiful in October. They're hiking, biking. We'll do a little like VIP thing the weekend after in Park City. So it'll be a good time.

Amazing.

Beautiful. Pascal, appreciate it.

Thank you for everything. Merci.

All right, you heard about Sei a couple times. Just want to give them one last shout out. Big thanks to Sei for sponsoring this episode of Empire. There are a ton of reasons to build on Sei. 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 @SeiNetwork. You can follow the journey @SeiNetwork. They are currently live. They've got Sei V2 on public DevNet today. Mainnet goes live later in Q2. Really excited to have Sei sponsoring and partnering with us on this episode of Empire.