Bitcoin Security & Freedom with Pascal Gauthier - WBD555

Pascal Gauthier is the CEO of Ledger. In this interview, we
discuss how to build and grow a business in a bear market, making
the business part of the mission, how nation-states are trying to
steal Bitcoins, the vulnerability of software wallets to hacks at
scale, and why freedom is not something that we should bargain
for.


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Ledger is a French hardware wallet manufacturer. Founded in 2014,
it is now a market leader, providing 2 of the leading hardware
wallets on the market, with sales in over 165 countries. It’s
valuation is at least $1.5 billion. In July it was seeking to
raise $100 million to fund further expansion at the exact time as
other digital currency companies were struggling to stay afloat.
How has this company continued to grow throughout the recent bear
market?


The company is clear-eyed about the criticality of the Bitcoin
mission: the opportunity to regain personal financial freedoms
that have been eroded over time. And freedom has always required
security: they are interdependent. It’s just that the weapons
have changed over time. Today, a state can hold a person captive
by denying them access to uncensorable private money. So, today,
freedom is nothing without digital security for money.


Ledger has made their mission to provide the market with personal
security for its digital assets. What differentiates Ledger from
other companies is that they see business as the means to achieve
the mission: a ruthless pragmatism that acknowledges that without
money we will never achieve or retain freedom. This is because
security is an arms race.


Hacking is now a state-level enterprise: Russia, North Korea, and
China are just some of the nations that have invested heavily in
developing cyber warfare skills. This has contributed to: 300,000
new pieces of malware being created every day; a hacker attack
occurring every 39 seconds; yet, the chance a cybercrime is
detected and prosecuted in the US is 0.05%.


This means security in the nascent yet highly valuable digital
assets industry is an asymmetric balance of power, so those
seeking to provide security solutions need to invest and focus.
Ledger does both. It invests heavily in R&D. And, it only
provides air-gapped hardware that performs a singular security
function. That is why they are successful. And that is good for
Bitcoin.