硬件钱包制造商 Ledger 正在重新定义数字身份保护

随着比特币飙升和人工智能威胁升级，这家总部位于巴黎的硬件钱包制造商正在利用其在加密安全领域的领先地位重新定义数字身份保护，将目光投向更大的市场。

As cryptocurrency soars and AI threats escalate, Ledger, a Paris-based hardware wallet maker, is leveraging its lead in crypto security to redefine digital identity protection, setting its sights on a larger market.

随着加密货币飙升和人工智能威胁升级，总部位于巴黎的硬件钱包制造商 Ledger 正在利用其在加密安全领域的领先地位重新定义数字身份保护，将目光投向更大的市场。

Nina Bambysheva, Forbes Staff

Nina Bambysheva，福布斯员工

Bitcoin’s rally from $68,000 to $98,000 over the past two weeks has pushed Ledger’s hardware sales up threefold, while transactions on Ledger Live, its service for buying, swapping and staking crypto and NFTs, surged 3.5x.

过去两周，比特币从 68,000 美元上涨至 98,000 美元，推动 Ledger 的硬件销售额增长了三倍，而 Ledger Live（其购买、交换和质押加密货币和 NFT 的服务）上的交易量激增了 3.5 倍。

But Pascal Gauthier, Ledger’s 48-year-old CEO, is thinking bigger. “Cryptocurrency is at the heart of what we do, but we are becoming—we always were, but it's going to be more obvious to the public—much more of a cybersecurity company,” he says.

但 Ledger 48 岁的首席执行官帕斯卡·高蒂尔 (Pascal Gauthier) 的想法更远大。 “加密货币是我们工作的核心，但我们正在变得——我们一直都是，但对公众来说会更加明显——更像是一家网络安全公司，”他说。

This ambition puts Ledger on a collision course with tech behemoths like Apple and Google, whose password management services like iCloud Keychain and Google Password Manager are widely used. But smartphones, for all their ubiquity, have fundamental security flaws, argues Gauthier. And popular software wallets like MetaMask or Phantom? “A terrible choice for security,” he says bluntly. “People with real money in the space understand this.”

这一雄心壮志使 Ledger 与苹果和谷歌等科技巨头发生了冲突，后者的密码管理服务（如 iCloud Keychain 和 Google Password Manager）被广泛使用。但高蒂尔认为，尽管智能手机无处不在，但却存在根本性的安全缺陷。还有 MetaMask 或 Phantom 等流行的软件钱包吗？ “对于安全来说，这是一个糟糕的选择，”他直言不讳地说。 “在这个领域拥有真金白银的人都明白这一点。”

The company has raised $600 million in funding, including a $380 million Series C in 2021 that valued the company at $1.5 billion, and a $108 million extension in early 2023 at the same valuation. It claims to have sold more than 7 million devices across 210 countries, securing around 20% of the world’s crypto—no less than $400 billion, based on Forbes’ estimates. And despite a year-long delay in launching Ledger Stax, its first device designed by iPod designer and founder of Nest Labs Tony Fadell with sleek Apple-like aesthetics, Ledger says it’s on track to hit $1 billion in cumulative 10-year revenue (the company says it's profitable but won’t disclose specifics).

该公司已筹集 6 亿美元资金，其中包括 2021 年 3.8 亿美元的 C 轮融资，该轮融资使该公司估值达到 15 亿美元，以及 2023 年初以相同估值进行的 1.08 亿美元延期融资。该公司声称已在 210 个国家/地区销售了超过 700 万台设备，占据了全球约 20% 的加密货币，根据福布斯的估计，价值不少于 4000 亿美元。尽管 Ledger Stax 的推出推迟了一年，这是其第一款由 iPod 设计师兼 Nest Labs 创始人 Tony Fadell 设计的设备，具有类似苹果的时尚美学，但 Ledger 表示，它的 10 年累计收入有望达到 10 亿美元（即公司表示已经盈利，但未透露具体细节）。

Hardware still anchors Ledger’s business, but services are driving much of its recent growth. Ledger Live, a mobile app for buying, swapping, and staking crypto and NFTs, and Ledger Enterprise, a platform for businesses self-custodying digital assets, now account for nearly half of the company’s expansion. The strategy is clear: diversify beyond hardware as competition heats up—not just from rivals like Prague-based hard wallet maker Trezor but from centralized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, which have millions of crypto-owning customers and continue to be the default choice for investors.

硬件仍然是 Ledger 业务的支柱，但服务是其近期增长的主要推动力。 Ledger Live 是一款用于购买、交换和质押加密货币和 NFT 的移动应用程序，Ledger Enterprise 是一个供企业自我托管数字资产的平台，目前占据了该公司扩张的近一半。该策略很明确：随着竞争的加剧，实现硬件以外的多元化——不仅来自布拉格硬钱包制造商 Trezor 等竞争对手，还来自 Binance 和 Coinbase 等中心化交易所，这些交易所拥有数百万拥有加密货币的客户，并且仍然是加密货币的默认选择。投资者。

“When the bear market hit in 2022-2023, the question was do you fire everybody, stop doing everything, protect cash and wait for the market to come back, or do you keep investing? We decided to keep investing,” recalls Gauthier. “My board asked me several times if I was sure, but I was because you want to be positioned at the beginning of the bull run with all sales open, meaning you have products to sell.”

“当 2022 年至 2023 年熊市来袭时，问题是你是解雇所有人、停止做一切事情、保护现金并等待市场回归，还是继续投资？我们决定继续投资。”高蒂尔回忆道。 “我的董事会多次问我是否确定，但我之所以确定，是因为你希望在牛市开始时处于所有销售开放的位置，这意味着你有产品可供销售。”

And Ledger is moving beyond crypto, aiming to redefine digital security. Its newest feature, Ledger Sync, launched last month, tackles a familiar vulnerability: the reliance on centralized servers to store passwords and emails. Sync shifts control back to users, generating encryption keys directly on their Ledger devices—keys even the company cannot access.

Ledger 正在超越加密货币，旨在重新定义数字安全。其最新功能 Ledger Sync 于上个月推出，解决了一个常见的漏洞：依赖集中式服务器来存储密码和电子邮件。同步将控制权交还给用户，直接在他们的 Ledger 设备上生成加密密钥——甚至公司也无法访问这些密钥。

In September, the firm launched another ambitious product, Security Key—an app that allows you to use your Ledger device with websites that support passkeys, which are generated by biometrics like fingerprints or facial recognition, or through multi-factor authentication (MFA). Security Key marks Ledger’s entry into the authentication market, projected to reach $40 billion by the end of the decade, and its response to a growing problem: the rise of AI-generated hacks and digital identity fraud.

9 月份，该公司推出了另一款雄心勃勃的产品 Security Key，该应用程序允许您将 Ledger 设备与支持密钥的网站一起使用，这些密钥是通过指纹或面部识别等生物识别技术或通过多重身份验证 (MFA) 生成的。安全密钥标志着 Ledger 进入了身份验证市场（预计到本世纪末将达到 400 亿美元），并标志着 Ledger 对日益严重的问题的回应：人工智能引发的黑客攻击和数字身份欺诈的兴起。

“The cold storage crypto wallet market is limited, probably a few hundred million dollars,” says Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer. “The authentication market is multiples larger.”

Benchmark 分析师马克·帕尔默 (Mark Palmer) 表示：“冷存储加密钱包市场有限，可能只有几亿美元。” “认证市场要大好几倍。”

Ledger’s premium wallet, Stax, features the first-ever secure E-Ink touchscreen powered by the Secure Element chip—the same technology used in bank cards and biometric passports to resist physical and remote attacks.

Ledger 的高级钱包 Stax 配备了首款由 Secure Element 芯片驱动的安全电子墨水触摸屏，该技术与银行卡和生物识别护照中使用的技术相同，可抵御物理和远程攻击。

Ledger’s pitch is that its devices are more than just hardware—they’re a platform for building an ecosystem of secure services. Unlike software-first solutions, Ledger’s hardware generates encryption keys offline, mitigating risks of remote compromise. “Your Ledger could be something that gets you through borders in the future, and then the total addressable market becomes much bigger,” says Gauthier.

Ledger 的宣传是，其设备不仅仅是硬件，它们还是构建安全服务生态系统的平台。与软件优先的解决方案不同，Ledger 的硬件可以离线生成加密密钥，从而降低远程泄露的风险。 Gauthier 表示：“未来，你的 Ledger 可能会帮助你跨越国界，然后整个潜在市场就会变得更大。”

Ledger’s ascent hasn’t been without turbulence. Last year, its rollout of Ledger Recover, a feature designed for users anxious about losing their seed phrases, sparked a fierce backlash. The service, which allows account recovery through ID verification with partner Onfido, was seen by some critics as

莱杰的崛起并非一帆风顺。去年，其推出的 Ledger Recover 功能引发了强烈反对，该功能专为担心丢失助记词的用户而设计。该服务允许通过合作伙伴 Onfido 进行身份验证来恢复帐户，一些评论家认为该服务