Ledger (Hardware Wallet Company)

Ledger was founded in France in 2014 by a team of eight with backgrounds in embedded security; Eric Larchevêque later wrote that he started the company with seven co-founders, with the aim of securing the blockchain revolution.⁠[1][2][3][4]

In June 2016, Ledger launched the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet, which used the ST31H320 secure chip with 320 KB of storage shared by firmware and apps. By early 2019 the Nano S had sold more than 1.4 million units, and the company called it the world’s most popular hardware wallet.⁠[5][5][6]

Ledger raised an $8.3 million Series A in March 2017. On January 18, 2018, it announced a $75 million (€61 million) Series B led by Draper Esprit, with Draper Associates, Draper Dragon, Boost VC, FirstMark Capital, Cathay Innovation and Korelya Capital participating and existing investors CapHorn Invest, GDTRE and Digital Currency GroupDigital Currency GroupDigital Currency Group (DCG) is a crypto asset investment and holding company headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, founded by Barry Silbert in 2015. It invests in blockchain startups with permanent capital and owns subsidiaries including the digital asset manager Grayscale. In 2022, its crypto lender Genesis suffered losses after major client Three Arrows Capital defaulted and filed for bankruptcy the following year, leaving DCG and Silbert facing a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General, an SEC penalty, and multiple civil suits.Open the full entry following on. The company then had 82 employees in San Francisco, Paris and Vierzon, was already profitable, and had sold more than one million hardware wallets in 165 countries; CEO Larchevêque said the funds would go to R&D and scaling operations.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

After the round, Pascal Gauthier, a former Criteo COO and one of Ledger’s seed investors, became the company’s president; the board consisted of Simon Cook of Draper Esprit, Fleur Pellerin of Korelya Capital, Cyril Bertrand of Xange, CTO Nicolas Bacca, President Gauthier and CEO Larchevêque. Draper Network founder Tim Draper said Ledger provided security for cryptocurrency “far beyond” what he got from his bank.⁠[1][1][1][1][7]

On May 15, 2018, Ledger opened an early access program for Ledger Vault, its digital asset security platform for institutional investors, with six participants: Genesis Trading, Global Advisors, LCX, IronChain Capital, XBTO and Smart Valor.⁠[8][8][8]

In January 2019, Ledger unveiled the Bluetooth-enabled Ledger Nano X at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, along with the Ledger Live Mobile app. The Nano X can hold up to 100 crypto asset apps at once, six times the Nano S, has a larger screen, and won that year’s CES Innovation Award in Cyber Security and Personal Privacy.⁠[6][2][6][6][6]

On April 24, 2019, President Pascal Gauthier became CEO and Larchevêque became Executive Chairman. Larchevêque explained that the company then had 180 employees across five sites and that he was spending all his time on day-to-day execution at the expense of critical strategic thinking, so he decided to focus on strategy, regulatory outreach and partnerships.⁠[3][3][3][3]

In June that year, Ledger cut the price of the Nano S to €59/$59, by which time it had sold more than 1.5 million units; the company said the Nano S secure chip had limited storage and recommended the Nano X for users managing many crypto assets. Ledger was valued at $290 million in 2019.⁠[5][5][5][9]

On July 14, 2020, a researcher in Ledger’s bug bounty program reported a potential data breach on its website, which the company fixed immediately; a week later its investigation found that an unauthorized third party had used an API key on June 25 to access its e-commerce and marketing database, involving about one million email addresses, with detailed information such as names, postal addresses, phone numbers and ordered products exposed for about 9,500 customers. Ledger notified the French data protection authority CNIL on July 17, brought in Orange Cyberdefense on July 21 to assess the damage, and disclosed the incident on July 29; it stressed that the breach had no link to its hardware wallets, Ledger Live or customer assets, and that no payment information or passwords were involved.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10]

On December 20, 2020, Ledger learned that the contents of a customer database had been dumped on the hacking forum RaidForums; the published data showed the names, postal addresses and phone numbers of about 272,000 customers, far more than its logs had been able to confirm. CEO Gauthier wrote to customers expressing deep regret, acknowledged that many had been targeted by email and SMS phishing, and offered protective advice to those worried about physical attacks, but said the company would not refund customers as some had suggested and would instead keep investing in security, with a new chief information security officer about to join. The breach later led to a class action lawsuit against Ledger.⁠[11][11][11][11][11][11][11][11][11][9]

In March 2021, Ledger formed Ledger Enterprise Solutions, a business unit for institutional clients built around Ledger Vault that added consulting services such as auditing and training, led by Vice President Jean-Michel Pailhon; Vault clients included Crypto.comCrypto.comCrypto.com is a cryptocurrency trading and payments platform founded in 2016, formerly known as Monaco and co-founded by Kris Marszalek and others. It offers a trading app, an exchange, crypto payment cards, custody, derivatives and prediction markets, and is closely associated with the Cronos blockchain and its CRO token. It is known for large sports naming-rights sponsorships and holds licenses in many jurisdictions worldwide.Open the full entry and CoinShares. At the time, the Nano S and Nano X sold for $59 and $119 respectively.⁠[12][12][12][12][12]

On June 10, 2021, Ledger announced a $380 million Series C led by Dan Tapiero’s 10T Holdings at a $1.5 billion valuation, making it a “unicorn”; existing investors including Cathay Innovation, Draper Associates, Draper Esprit, DCG and Korelya Capital participated, and new investors such as Tekne Capital, Uphold Ventures, Felix Capital and Financière Agache joined. The company had sold more than three million hardware wallets, Ledger Live had 1.5 million monthly users, and it said it secured about 15% of the world’s crypto assets; Gauthier said the company sought to become a secure gateway to the entire digital asset ecosystem.⁠[9][13][13][13][13][13][13][9]

In April 2022, Ledger began shipping the Ledger Nano S Plus, with a larger screen and memory for more than 100 apps, and sold more than half a million that year. In December, at its Ledger Op3n event in Paris, it unveiled the Ledger Stax, designed with Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod and co-creator of the iPhone: a credit card-sized device whose curved E Ink display covers the front and spine, able to manage more than 500 crypto assets and NFT collections, at a retail price of $279. The company said it had historically been profitable and had its two best-ever sales days in November after the collapse of FTX.⁠[14][14][14][14][15][15][14][15][15][15]

On March 30, 2023, Ledger announced an additional €100 million in its Series C at a €1.3 billion valuation, with existing investors including 10T, Cité Gestion Private Bank, Cap Horn, Morgan Creek, Cathay Innovation, Korelya Capital and Molten Ventures and new investors True Global Ventures, Digital Finance Group and VaynerFund. Chairman and CEO Gauthier said 2022 had been a standout year for Ledger and that the company was doubling down on its mission to bring self-custody to everyone.⁠[16][16][16][16][16]

On May 16, 2023, Ledger revealed plans for Ledger Recover, a seed phrase recovery service in which users could opt to have their seed phrase encrypted and split into three parts held by Ledger, the UK company Coincover and the US company EscrowTech, with any two able to restore it. Some members of the crypto community argued that this amounted to a “backdoor” allowing private keys to be removed from the device, provoking strong backlash.⁠[17][18][18][19][17]

On May 23, in a Twitter Spaces session joined by more than 13,000 users, Gauthier called the experience “humbling,” apologized for the “miscommunication” around the launch, and announced that Recover would be postponed while the company accelerated open-sourcing, starting with core operating system components and Recover, which would not be released until that work was complete; CTO Charles Guillemet said a white paper on the Recover protocol would be made public.⁠[17][17][17][17][17]

On October 24, 2023, after finalizing the open-source Recover code on GitHub, Ledger launched the service as a paid subscription provided by Coincover, initially supporting the Nano X and requiring identity verification with a government-issued document. Ledger stressed that the service was entirely optional and said this identity verification collected much less information than exchanges’ know-your-customer checks.⁠[19][19][19][19][19][19][19][19]

On the morning of December 14, 2023, a former Ledger employee fell victim to a sophisticated phishing attack in which the attacker used a session token to bypass two-factor authentication and take over the person’s account on the JavaScript package manager NPMJS; when the employee left, the company had revoked other system access but missed the NPMJS access. The attacker then published malicious Ledger Connect Kit versions 1.1.5 through 1.1.7 containing Angel Drainer, a malware-as-a-service, which used a rogue WalletConnect project to trick users of decentralized apps on Ethereum Virtual Machine chains into signing transactions that drained their wallets.⁠[20][20][20][20][20][20]

After ecosystem participants including Blockaid raised the alarm, Ledger deployed a genuine fixed version within 40 minutes of becoming aware, but because of content delivery network caching the malicious file remained available for about five hours in total; the company estimated that funds were actively drained for less than two hours. WalletConnect disabled the rogue project, and Tether froze the attacker’s USDT at Ledger’s request. On-chain investigator ZachXBTZachXBTZachXBT is a pseudonymous blockchain investigator who examines cryptocurrency scams, thefts and fund movements, and serves as an incident response advisor to Paradigm. His work involves public investigations, onchain analysis and collaboration with security researchers and law enforcement.Open the full entry counted more than $610,000 stolen. Ledger said the attacker never had access to its infrastructure or code repositories, and pledged to audit access controls on all internal and external tools and to step up efforts to eliminate blind signing.⁠[20][20][20][20][20][20][21][20][20][20]

In July 2024, during the company’s tenth anniversary and following the Stax released earlier that year, Ledger launched the Ledger Flex, with a 2.8-inch high-resolution secure E Ink touchscreen and NFC, priced at $249, which together with the Stax formed its new generation of secure touchscreen devices; it also introduced Ledger Security Key, an app for both devices built on the FIDO2 specification that supports two-factor authentication and passkey logins. Gauthier said Ledger devices secured more than 20% of the world’s digital assets.⁠[22][22][22][22][22][22][22][22][22][22]

Early on January 21, 2025, Ledger co-founder and former employee David Balland and his partner were abducted from his home in France; the kidnappers sent a video to fellow co-founder Larchevêque with a demand for a large cryptocurrency ransom, and Larchevêque alerted police. Police freed Balland the next day, and his partner was found at a separate location; part of the ransom was paid during police-led negotiations, but most of the crypto assets were later seized and frozen. A total of 230 police and gendarmes, including the GIGN tactical unit, took part, and on January 23 police arrested 10 suspects, with prosecutors considering charges of gang-related kidnapping, torture and armed extortion. Gauthier said he was “deeply relieved” that the two had been freed.⁠[23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23][23]

In June 2025, Ledger announced it would stop providing security and software updates for the Ledger Nano S launched in 2016; CTO Guillemet explained that the device’s limited memory had become a significant constraint as crypto grew rapidly.⁠[24][24]

On October 23, 2025, at its Ledger Op3n event at its Paris headquarters, Ledger unveiled the Ledger Nano Gen5, the first touchscreen device in the Nano range, priced at $179, with a 2.76-inch E Ink display, Bluetooth 5.2 and NFC and an EAL6+ certified secure chip; board member Tony Fadell and graphic designer Susan Kare created iconography for its personalization badges. At the same time the company renamed the Ledger Live app Ledger Wallet, began calling its devices “signers” instead of “wallets,” and launched Ledger Multisig for enterprise clients. Gauthier called the Nano series “the most successful digital asset security device of all time, with millions sold and none ever hacked.”⁠[24][24][25][26][24][26][26][26][26][26][25][26][26]

In early January 2026, Global-e, the e-commerce partner that handles cross-border payments for Ledger’s website, notified customers that its systems had been accessed without authorization and that the names, postal addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and order details of some customers who bought on Ledger.com with Global-e as merchant of record had been copied; the number affected was not confirmed. Ledger and Global-e both said payment information, crypto assets and 24-word recovery phrases were unaffected; Ledger warned customers to watch for phishing that exploited the incident and for so-called replacement devices arriving by mail.⁠[27][28][27][28][28][28]

In January 2026, the Financial Times reported that Ledger had hired Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Barclays to test market appetite for a New York listing that could value it at more than $4 billion; Ledger declined to comment on a potential IPO. Gauthier had earlier told the Financial Times that “today, the money for cryptocurrencies is in New York. It’s nowhere else in the world, and certainly not in Europe.” Ledger was also the jersey sponsor of the NBA’s San Antonio SpursSan Antonio SpursThe San Antonio Spurs are an NBA basketball team based in San Antonio, Texas, playing at Frost Bank Center.Open the full entry at the time.⁠[25][25][25][25][25]

On October 9, 2026, Ledger announced it was investigating fund losses reported by users in Southeast Asia who had all bought devices from the Malaysian reseller CryptoBilis; it asked CryptoBilis to pause sales and shipments, advised users who had bought from the reseller in the past 90 days not to set up their devices, and told those who had to move assets to a new device with a new seed. Blockchain investigator Specter estimated losses at more than $86 million. Ledger said the incident was isolated to that reseller and its market, that no reports involved products bought directly from Ledger, and that its infrastructure, systems and services had not been compromised.⁠[29][30][31][30][30][31][31][31]

On October 10, Ledger confirmed that one affected user’s device contained an unauthorized hardware implant, and CryptoBilis stopped selling all hardware wallets. Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès and the research firm Tibane Labs opened devices and found the implant hidden under the Nano X’s screen or battery, with a microcontroller, an eSIM and an LTE module; Karpelès said his device arrived in intact shrink wrap and passed Ledger’s Genuine Check because the security chip inside was real. On October 13, Ledger explained that the implant reads the 24 recovery words shown on screen during setup and sends them over LTE using an eSIM, without modifying the secure chip, operating system or transaction signatures; it said every fund loss it had verified involved devices bought through CryptoBilis and that it had not confirmed the total number of affected users or the total losses. Blockchain analytics firm Bitquery estimated suspected losses of about $102 million across 324 wallets, a figure Ledger has not verified.⁠[32][29][33][29][29][29][29][34][30][30][30][32][32]

Ledger reminded resellers and distributors to source products only through authorized channels and never to restock returned products, and advised users not to buy from unauthorized sellers; it also explained that as long as the original secure chip is intact, the Genuine Check cannot detect an added implant.⁠[30][30][29]

On October 11, X user Johannes posted photos of a Ledger device he said he had bought a few weeks earlier from the German electronics chain MediaMarkt, showing extra cables and electronic components that appeared to be an earlier version of the spy implant, though his funds had not been taken; the next day, a new device he bought at another MediaMarkt in Germany was also found to contain an implant. On October 13, MediaMarktSaturn removed Ledger products from its stores and online shops in all its countries as a “precautionary measure”; Ledger said the decision was coordinated with it after a customer in Germany reported an implant, with no fund losses reported in that case. Karpelès said the same day that a Ledger Flex bought at Singapore’s airport also contained a spy implant.⁠[35][36][36][35][35][36][37][37][37][37][37][37]

The same day, Ledger asked resellers and distributors in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong to suspend sales and take its devices off shelves. It said the only confirmed incidents remained in Southeast Asia, that it had not verified any drain linked to a device bought elsewhere, and that the investigation was still determining who tampered with the devices and where in the distribution chain, adding that it had no indication its infrastructure, systems, services or direct sales channel had been compromised.⁠[38][38][38][38][38]

On October 14, 2026, Ledger published an update from its security team Donjon on Germany: following a report from one person in Germany, the team inspected devices from retail and distributor stock across the country, including units from the stores that person named, and none showed any sign of tampering; no loss of funds related to implants had been reported anywhere in Europe. Ledger added that it had not yet been able to examine the devices shown online and invited their owner to send them to its security team for analysis so it could share its findings.⁠[39][39][39][39][39][39]

Ledger devices keep private keys in a secure chip running the company’s own operating system; as of October 2026 the devices on sale include the Ledger Stax, Ledger Flex, Ledger Nano Gen5 and the classic Nano line, and the company says it has sold more than 8 million Nano devices. The companion Ledger Wallet app manages assets and connects to Web3 apps, while Ledger Enterprise provides institutional self-custody with multi-party authorization for exchanges, companies and treasuries.⁠[4][40][41][24][41][41]

Ledger’s security research team, Donjon, tests the company’s products and others across the wider ecosystem, runs a bug bounty program, and publishes security bulletins, a threat model and open-source tools; it has published attack research on other makers’ hardware wallets, including COLDCARDCOLDCARDCOLDCARD is a line of hardware wallets from the Canadian Bitcoin hardware company Coinkite. It supports Bitcoin only and is built around air-gapped offline signing and open-source firmware; it was announced in December 2017, and as of October 2026 the models on sale are the COLDCARD Q and Mk5. In July 2026, attackers exploited a seed-generation randomness flaw that had sat in its firmware since 2021 and stole more than $100 million worth of bitcoin.Open the full entry and Tangem.⁠[41][42][42][42][42][43]

Ledger: Official website: https://www.ledger.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[40][4]

Ledger Donjon: Official website: https://donjon.ledger.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[42]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Ledger (opens in a new window)⁠[44][40]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ledgerhq (opens in a new window)⁠[40]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/Ledger (opens in a new window)⁠[40]