We could tell you how happy we are to be part of this entrepreneurial journey since 2014 (yes, we are!) and how great the team is (yes, it is!). But instead, let’s use this opportunity to share views on the crypto market.
When we invested in Ledger back in 2014, the crypto markets were nascent. We made this investment on the back of a conviction that the crypto technologies were more than speculative assets. Actually we are no big fans of the speculative component of the crypto markets. We are big fans of the transformative power of these technologies and we take a long view here.
At the risk of displeasing Elon, we are not particularly outraged that US regulators want to take a deep look at trust & security in crypto markets (China is a different story and we come back to that below). Trust and security are at the core of Ledger’s mission too. But not any kind of security — a decentralized approach to it. If the crypto revolution ends up putting the control back in the hands of centralized mega corporations (or of central banks), where is the revolution? In 2014 Ledger had this vision and today it has the leadership with a smart combination of hardware and software: provide the highest level of security while giving full control to the end user: only then can Trust really thrive. That applies to individuals and to corporates, that’s why Ledger is addressing both.
Over the recent weeks, the volatility of the crypto markets increased substantially and the tech newspapers waved the dreaded word of a “crypto-krach”. We still believe that beyond the hype, beyond the fears, crypto technologies are slowly paving the way towards a long-term asset class. As a professional money manager, we are not in this game for the thrill of the ups & downs. Instead, our role is to equip crypto entrepreneurs with enough cash to sustain and potentially benefit from the volatile nature of crypto markets. That’s what we did at Ledger over its early years and that’s what we do at the board of another promising French startup: Coinhouse, the first crypto expert team in France to be fully vetted by the AMF. Other investments will soon follow in this space.
As passengers on the crypto journey, we may think Decentralization and its benefits are granted, because they have always been embedded in blockchains with open source code, so everything should be fine, right? We’d better be careful here, because decentralization is approaching a risky turn. Governments and central banks are coming up to speed: for obvious costs & control reasons, they will soon emit central cryptocurrencies — China already leading the pack. Some governments may do that for the security of their citizens. But this technology is a powerful tool in the hands of less democratic regimes, coupled with the current disappearance of cash across the world. We need a strong decentralized, stable and trustworthy infrastructure provider in this context. And there is one, now more powerful than ever — Ledger!
Ledger was born as a European player and Europe has a role to play in this emerging ecosystem. For Bitcoin and many subsegments of the cryptoworld, it’s too late. Asia and the US are too far ahead. But one important protocol can still be financed and supported in Europe: Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency in marketcap. Ethereum nodes are not overwhelmingly located in the US & Asia, in contrast to many other protocols. Europe currently has a fair share of them (about one third between Germany and France). The European Investment Bank recently issued a two-years 100-million euro digital bonds on ETH. That’s a small start but a good one. With a little bit of self confidence, awareness and investment, Europe can achieve something big on Ethereum.
Let’s now hope that success stories like Ledger’s will inspire more European entrepreneurs to invest in the field of blockchain, crypto and NFT.
