The hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has reported a 500% increase in revenue for the first quarter of 2021.
More Demand for Hardware Wallets
Alongside the massive increase in trading value for both Bitcoin and most altcoins throughout the first three months in this year, the demand for hardware wallets has spiked as well, since investors are looking for a safe cold storage option for their assets.
Hardware wallets, such as the Ledger Nano S and Nano X, or Ledger’s primary competitors, the Trezor One and Trezor Model T, save the user’s private key on a secure and encrypted chip. Once plugged into a PC or mobile device via USB, the wallet can sign transaction using the private key and send the signed transaction to the end device, from which it is then broadcast to blockchain validators. This way, the private key never leaves the hardware wallet it is stored on.
This does not mean that there can’t be any security flaws associated with hardware wallets. In 2020, the Ledger user database was hacked, which compromised the personal information of over 1 million users. In 2019, the IT security company Kaspersky released an in-depth report about potential attack vectors to hardware wallets, but so far, none of them have been proven to work in the wild. Another potential way to compromise the security of hardware wallets are fake devices that might enter the market.
150 open Positions
According to Ledger, the company has 150 open staff positions, waiting to be filled. To quote Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier:
The entire industry is in hyper-growth, and we are proud to be a part of it.
Ledger’s hiring spree also entails executive positions. Just yesterday, the hardware wallet manufacturer announced that to lead positions were filled.
We're proud to welcome @IqbalGandham, who has joined us as VP of Transactions and Payments, alongside Charles Hamel, our new VP Product: https://t.co/3Pv0I1Zx6Y
They'll be working on making @Ledger the safest gateway for ALL your crypto needs.
Let's get cracking, shall we?
— Ledger (@Ledger) May 19, 2021
In April 2021, Ledger also appointed former Apple Music executive Parker Todd Brooks as Vice President of NFT products. With this move, Ledger seeks to tap into the youngest hype surrounding digital art as non-fungible tokens, which can also be stored on both the Nano S and Nano X, like any other token hosted on Ethereum.
