Yahoo Finance French bitcoin wallet maker Ledger valued at $1.5bn as it raises $380m
Ledger, a French company that makes cryptocurrency wallets, raised $380m (£269m) in a Series C funding round, which values it at about $1.5bn.
The round was led by 10T Holdings with support from existing investors such as UK's Draper Esprit and new ones like Felix Capital.
Ledger makes a physical cryptocurrency wallet, the price of which starts at about £50, which stores users' private keys – pieces of information used to authorise outgoing transactions on the blockchain network.
The main principle behind these wallets is to provide full isolation between the private keys and a user’s easy-to-hack computer or smartphone.
It is also the creator of cryptocurrency management platform Ledger Live and an assets security solution for financial institutions, Ledger Enterprise Solutions.
Ledger claims to have secured an estimated 15% of all cryptocurrency assets globally, and believes it is “uniquely positioned to capitalise on the hypergrowth of digital assets as they become increasingly mainstream”.
It has sold more than 3m hardware wallets in 190 countries, and has more than 1.5 million monthly users on Ledger Live.
Read more: Bitcoin continues to enjoy boost from El Salvador accepting it as legal tender
CEO Pascal Gauthier said “our products are designed to give users maximum control over their digital assets and provide unparalleled protection against cyber-attacks".
He believes the firm is "well-positioned to become the secure gateway to the digital asset world with the potential to integrate our services into nearly every feature of the digital asset ecosystem”.
Ledger wants to use the new funds to expand so that its products and services “underpin the activity of retail investors, financial institutions, and other industries investing in and managing digital assets”.
Ledger previously raised $8.3m in a Series A round in 2017 and $75m in a Series B round a year later.
Last month Samsung (005930.KS) said it is connecting its smartphone’s cryptocurrency wallet to Ledger storage devices.
“By providing support for hardware wallets we are providing our customers with not just enhanced convenience, but also an entirely new level of security,” Woong Ah Yoon, Samsung’s VP and head of blockchain, had said at the time.
The fundraising round comes amid much excitement around cryptos, and bitcoin (BTC-USD) in particular. This week, Donald Trump slammed bitcoin for being a "scam" while El Salvador accepted it as legal tender, sending bitcoin's price up.
Ledger's Twitter account congratulated the country's president Nayib Bukele, an active Twitter user himself, on the news.
Congratulations @nayibbukele - one step at a time towards mass adoption. #Bitcoin https://t.co/I9JkZtinwN
— Ledger (@Ledger) June 9, 2021
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