- Key insight: Ledger is expanding its U.S. presence to bring crypto-securing technology to financial institutions interested in digital assets.
- What's at stake: Banks and investment firms are looking for the needed tech to safely secure their digital assets as they receive guidance from regulators.
- Supporting data: Ledger devices secure approximately 30% of bitcoin and dollar stablecoins held by retail investors globally, according to the company.
A French crypto wallet company has expanded its physical footprint in the U.S.
Ledger, a crypto wallet technology provider, opened a new corporate office in New York City this week in hopes of expanding its market share among U.S. institutions interested in crypto investment.
Over the last year, a
"By opening our New York office, we are placing Ledger Enterprise at the epicenter of the financial world to meet the growing demand for secure infrastructure," Ledger CEO Pascal Guthier said in a statement.
Sebastien Badault, executive vice president of Ledger Enterprise, is moving to New York to lead the newly established office and spoke with American Banker at Ledger NYC's official opening event on Monday.
"The U.S. is our biggest market, 40% of our business, and it has been for a very long time because the crypto community has been strong here," Badalut said. "This move towards the U.S. is probably the biggest move that I've seen in the five years I've been at Ledger."
Ledger has had teams working in temporary office spaces in New York in the past, but the newly opened office — located just south of Union Square in downtown Manhattan — is the company's first permanent corporate location in the U.S.
A priority of the company's establishment in New York City specifically, according to Badalut, is physical proximity to the headquarters of potential enterprise clients. Ledger began building its enterprise division in 2019, according to Badalut, as the company initially expected banks to start entering the crypto space back in 2020.
"It actually took another five years, but now we're seeing this massive wave," he said. "I don't believe there's a bank or financial institution that doesn't have either a stablecoin, tokenization or trading platform strategy happening. What we are trying to do now is to be that security layer that all of these companies need to go to market."
Ledger Enterprise has two main components: a software platform for digital asset management and a piece of physical hardware for storing cryptographic keys and signing off on transactions.
"The governance layer will need at least two signatures to sign a transaction," Badalut explained. "A head of accounting could initiate the transaction on the website, then sign the transaction with his Ledger device, and then the other people in the order will see the transaction and have the chance to check and approve it with their devices. Banks can also customize the governance by saying that any transaction over a certain amount of money requires the CFO to sign on top of somebody else in the company."
The enterprise products also automatically create audit trails for every digital asset transaction.
"If you're a regulated company or a public company, you're able to show that to your auditors," he said.
The Ledger Wallet devices themselves, no larger than the palm of a hand and about half of the size of a standard smartphone, do not connect to the internet and rely on local network connections such as Bluetooth or physical cables. The cryptographic keys for a digital asset are stored directly on the small devices, some of which are styled to look like physical wallets or miniature tablets.
According to the company, Ledger devices secure approximately 30% of bitcoin and dollar stablecoins held by retail investors globally. A Ledger spokesperson told American Banker that when a Ledger user connects to Ledger Wallet or Vault (the company's retail and enterprise software), the app processes the wallet's unique "address" to find and show the user their balance, which is how Ledger derives the total value secured by all addresses.
An address, in this case, refers to a randomly generated series of alphanumeric characters that corresponds to a specific cryptocurrency stored in a blockchain wallet. It functions similarly to an email address or bank account number, providing just enough information to direct funds into or out of a holder's account.
"We do not know how much each individual holds, we do not link multiple wallet addresses together and there is no personally identifiable information attached to any address," the spokesperson said.
"We don't know any more than what the blockchain knows, which is accessible to everyone," Badault said when asked about how Ledger derives its global estimate percentages.
Ledger's competitors include Trezor, a Prague-based crypto hardware provider that primarily serves individual users, and U.S.-based digital asset custodians such as
One North American client of Ledger's enterprise division is Tetra Digital Group, a Canadian digital asset infrastructure provider and a custodian through Tetra Trust. Tetra stores and manages the crypto keys for digital assets held at various Canadian institutions as a B2B company.
Didier Lavallée, Tetra's CEO, told American Banker that the company primarily uses Ledger Enterprise software and hardware through a partnership launched in late 2021. Tetra chose to work with Ledger Enterprise due to its systems meeting the regulatory requirements of the Canadian market.
"As a regulated business, Tetra has to follow strict rules around KYB/KYC and has a strong governance program driven by our compliance team," Lavallée said. "While Ledger does not support our processes directly, some of the features (e.g., whitelisting addresses) allow us to properly implement our program and monitor effectively."
Lavallée said that the newly opened NYC office will help support potential future partnerships in North America.
Ledger also announced the hiring of stablecoin issuer
"Andrews brings the institutional rigor and financial leadership necessary to scale Ledger's global vision," Guthier said. "His deep experience at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets is exactly what is required as we deepen our footprint in the United States."
