Ledger Recover with Pascal Gauthier, NVK, Matt Odell & Harry Sudock - WBD661

Pascal Gauthier is the CEO of Ledger, NVK is the founder of
Coinkite, Matt Odell is a podcaster and Bitcoin educator and
Harry Sudock is Cheif Strategy Officer at Griid. In this
interview, we host a group discussion, regarding Ledger’s Recover
firmware update. We talk about the questions this update has
raised about the trade-offs between mitigating seed recovery risk
over state seizure risks. 


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Full disclosure, Ledger is a sponsor of the What Bitcoin Did
Podcast. 


Just under a week ago, Ledger launched a seed recovery service
called Ledger Recover. There was an immediate backlash on
Twitter, with various prominent voices raising concerns about the
security implications. Fundamentally, does this feature open up
users to hacking or state seizure risks? Or, is this a useful
service that will support efforts to get more users to
self-custody? 


The purpose of this show was to enable Pascal Gauthier, the CEO
of Ledger, to explain the aims of Ledger’s seed recovery service,
and the methods employed to protect users. The show then enabled
trusted independent and prominent voices within the community
(including a Ledger competitor) to set out their concerns and
discuss them openly with Pascal. 


Should security for Bitcoin be provided using open or
closed-source software? Given the challenges in providing robust
security, are there any acceptable trade-offs? Can we afford
anything less than full transparency from commercial companies
involved in Bitcoin security? 


The rudimentary issue is whether Bitcoin security should be
regarded as a binary choice. Should we as a community should aim
for a minimum expectation of security? Or, should we take the
world as it is and pragmatically make incremental improvements to
people’s security? Can we afford as a community to have the
majority of people custody on exchanges? Or, do we strive for
higher ideals than seeing self-custody as an end in itself?