Hi, I'm Vince Molinari, and welcome to FinTech TV.
We're broadcasting from the iconic New York Stock Exchange, and I'd like to welcome Sebastian Bado, who is the vice president of Enterprise for Ledger.
And what an auspicious day as we have MyA going live on their first trade here at the New York Stock Exchange.
Always a great event and delighted to have you come here with us today, Sebastian.
Thank you for having me.
Well, delighted.
So listen, for our audience, and I think they all probably know.
Ledger is, but just in case, maybe give us a little overview of who Ledger is and what you've been up to for the past 11 years.
So yes, we've been around for 11 years.
We're an OG in the crypto space.
We're the worldwide leader in global security and hardware wallets.
We've sold 8 million hardware wallets in the world.
Congratulations.
Over 20% of the world's crypto is secured today by Ledger, but we've also been busy adding more and more services for consumer services so people can.
Once they have their hardware wallet, be able to trade and you know, buy stuff, take swap, do whatever you want to do with your crypto, get access to all the different apps, and then especially on the enterprise space on MySpace, where we are seeing a lot of influx of new more institutional players in the space and we're trying to help them secure that crypto, create governance around them because they cannot need that governance and then you know, be able to do everything that they would want to do in treasury management.
Well, so there's so much to unbundle within that, but, you know, I'm very anxious to ask you the question, particularly from an enterprise level.
You know, I'd say the crypto universe, you know, happens a little bit differently than most asset classes.
Retail first, right?
And that progression to, hey, institutional adoption when it's coming, when it's coming from your, from your ledger, and particularly with enterprise, is it starting to arrive?
What what feels different today, if anything?
I think there was a first wave because You needed custodians, you needed exchanges, etc. but a lot of the people that were in the space were crypton native.
What is happening right now is to switch towards, you know, existing traditional financial institutions are getting into the space, be it through stablecoins, be it through issuing different assets, being wanting to hold assets, creating treasuries, you see more and more Bitcoin treasuries, but now also eat treasuries, etc. and then what's been very interesting and what we've seen having these discussions is that I think a lot lot of people in the space, right, like the big banks that are had projects ready to go.
They were just waiting for the green light and the green light is regulation.
Now that the green light is here, we're going to see a lot coming down the pipes in the next 6 to 18 months.
So it's a very exciting time for the space overall, but specifically here in the enterprise space because that's the next wave, right?
Like the first wave was a big of many ways of retail.
Now there's a big wave and that wave is going to be much larger than anything that we've seen up to this point I believe.
You know, talking to some folks this morning, they're almost calling it a little bit of the ketchup trade, you know, we've had this, you know, kind of frozen state here in the US.
Now we have the change in administration, amazing executive orders, you know, people talk about trad 5 mean Defi, Tradfi meaning crypto.
Here we are, you know, yesterday with bullish going public.
We saw what happened with Circle.
So you know what's your sense of that?
It's almost A little bit of reconciliation of figuring out valuations between the two, you know, you have this token economy value, you have the traditional equity value, any sense of what's happening?
I think there was at the beginning and it's always kind of like the thing you could have seen that in e-commerce before, right?
Like when e-commerce started, you had, you know, the big box stores had like e-commerce that going to work, etc. and then after a while they were like, well actually you need to get into that game and then you're you're in between the two, right?
So it's not like.
E-commerce because you know traditional retail still totally works and exists and always will likely, but you know you find like a common ground.
I think the same happened with crypto right like the crypto OG said oh it's crypto is going to take over the world.
The whole banking system is going to be gone.
I was saying we don't believe in crypto at all and now we're finding like a good middle ground, which is that you knowtruck by is seeing that you know it's cheaper, it's easier, the rails are better.
Uh, that's been building over the past 10 years is actually now being used and new use cases are coming and then the bottom line is that like when you try to fight what are you looking for?
Looking for an edge, crypto is the new edge, a new way to, you know, create more to create value.
So I think that that's why its so many people.
I love hearing you say that and it's almost going back to, you know, history is proven in.
Traditional markets, new asset classes that begin to trade and there's new opportunities to capture alpha and new trading strategies, new products, right?
It feels a bit like that's where we're arriving right now and it's all about innovation, right?
Like when you think about innovation, there have been a lot of innovation in the financial world, you know, I mean it was I think it was a virtual Ahaway that said, you know, the last thing that finance did was like invent the ATM.
Well, maybe crypto is going to be the way to like, you know, bring something new to this.
Well, absolutely, and I want to talk a little bit more about you touched on treasury, right?
We can harken back to OG and Michael Sayer and micro strategies and now all of a sudden the world seemed to recognize, wait, there's this crypto treasury balance sheet within a public company structure.
And again, kind of that converging, you know, started as we know with Bitcoin, lots of Ethereum led and perhaps many others coming.
Any sense what's happening there?
I thought that there was an announcement this morning like there's now a DNB Treasury company that's saying that that's and they'll be on air right after you today.
So great.
Uh, no, I think, I think really there's an opportunity there as well.
I think on Bitcoin, it was also a way for, you know, funds that could not actually invest in Bitcoin to invest in Bitcoin indirectly by buying micro strategy, etc.
I don't know how long that's going to last.
Uh, but there are the chains or other things and then like I think it's always this idea of it's a first step, right?
So you start maybe doing things that way and then like from that point on, what are you going to do if you're holding a lot of Bitcoin, you're not just going to hold it right one way or another, you're going to start investing it, you're going to lend it, you're going to stake it, and that's when you start like building, coming up with new products, you start to innovate around the space.
Well, you know, again, maybe another good segue, it would almost be and then just if I didn't bring up and talk to you about stablecoin, you know, the advent and really kind of the explosive growth.
Any sense what's happening?
Where do you see that going, and do we get to a saturation point?
I mean, I don't like it's a saturation point because I think it's a question of use cases, right?
I mean, you saw that, you know, circles that obviously there's Tablecoin, but they're not the only ones.
Everyone is like going after the space.
I think that you're going to see a lot of corporates going after tablecoin.
Amazon should have a stablecoin down the line, right, make their customers buyablecoin, not have to pay credit card and bank fees.
I mean they could save billions of dollars if they start doing it.
Walmart will do it as well.
A bunch of other people are going to be doing it.
The bottom line is that and then banks are going to be integrating it into, you know, and I think that's the really important part is that crypto, the one thing that I think has stopped crypto's development outside of regulation.
Has been the fact that it's been seen as complicated by some users and I think is going to make it a lot more good and easy and people are going to start using Table phone without using knowing that that's the beauty, that's the ultimate arrival, right?
Well, before we close out, Sebastian, talk to me a little bit, and I think this is perhaps the cornerstone of Ledger, right?
It's all about security, right?
What what's your sense of, you know, I don't want to understate it, but I think that's the ultimate importance when you're talking about value and assets and protection.
Well, the more value there is, the more important it is to, you know, really safeguard that value, and that's the heart of what we do.
That's the heart of our technology, a ledger wallet has never been compromised and so the bottom line is that we feel that, you know, I think about it as like, you know, security is one of the foundations of the crypto space.
Right, and as the crypto house is building and getting bigger and bigger, security is going to be and that foundation is going to be more and more important.
So I think the discussions that we're having now with the people coming in, especially card players, are really centered about the importance of that security.
It will always be our DNA and we're really happy to be able to help secure the ecosystem and work with the new players coming in to help secure their ecosystems that they are building.
Well, you know, I love the analogy of the foundation of security and going on up and glad to see that you guys started 11 years ago and building on bedrock, so you can't get a better foundation.
Thank you Sebastian.
What a pleasure.
Thank you for coming in today.
Thank you for having me.
My pleasure.
