Explore innovations in AI and blockchain with Michael Heinrich of 0G.AI. Join us for an insightful conversation with Heinrich, the chief executive officer of 0G.AI, as they delve into the transformative world of blockchain and AI at theCUBE + NYSE Wired event, Crypto Trailblazers. This video provides a comprehensive exploration of the latest advancements in layer-one AI technology and how they set to revolutionize the tech industry.
In this engaging discussion, Heinrich shares their expertise in establishing 0G.AI, a leading player in decentralized AI technology since its inception in 2023. They elaborate on the mission to create an AI ecosystem that ensures transparency and reduces the risks associated with AI black boxes. The video, hosted by industry experts from theCUBE Research, delves into topics such as AI for security, data supply chains, and the societal impact of these technological advancements.
Key takeaways from this conversation include the importance of verifiability and traceability in AI, as articulated by Heinrich, to safeguard against biases and data poisoning. The discussion also underscores significant insights into innovative solutions for scalability challenges in blockchain, according to industry analysts. Viewers gain a deeper understanding of how these advancements lead to significant societal and economic changes.
#0GAI #LayerOneAI #BlockchainTechnology #CryptoTrailblazers #ArtificialIntelligence #theCUBE #NYSEWired #TechInnovation #AIForGood
Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/
Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/
Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/
00:00 - Intro
00:06 - The Crypto Frontier: Exploring theCUBE, Layered Technologies, and 0G's Vision
02:40 - Navigating AI: Challenges in Transparency, Bias, and Accountability
05:42 - Societal Impact of AI and Decentralization
07:58 - Exploring Data Supply Chain and Blockchain Solutions
10:39 - Layer-One Infrastructure and Data Throughput Challenges
14:18 - The Vision for Scalable Decentralized AI
17:20 - Use Cases and Adoption of 0G Technology
21:00 - Decentralized Governance: Navigating Challenges and Future Innovations in AI and Blockchain
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Charles Guillemet, Ledger
Explore innovations in AI and blockchain with Michael Heinrich of 0G.AI. Join us for an insightful conversation with Heinrich, the chief executive officer of 0G.AI, as they delve into the transformative world of blockchain and AI at theCUBE + NYSE Wired event, Crypto Trailblazers. This video provides a comprehensive exploration of the latest advancements in layer-one AI technology and how they set to revolutionize the tech industry.
In this engaging discussion, Heinrich shares their expertise in establishing 0G.AI, a leading player in decentralized AI technology since its inception in 2023. They elaborate on the mission to create an AI ecosystem that ensures transparency and reduces the risks associated with AI black boxes. The video, hosted by industry experts from theCUBE Research, delves into topics such as AI for security, data supply chains, and the societal impact of these technological advancements.
Key takeaways from this conversation include the importance of verifiability and traceability in AI, as articulated by Heinrich, to safeguard against biases and data poisoning. The discussion also underscores significant insights into innovative solutions for scalability challenges in blockchain, according to industry analysts. Viewers gain a deeper understanding of how these advancements lead to significant societal and economic changes.
#0GAI #LayerOneAI #BlockchainTechnology #CryptoTrailblazers #ArtificialIntelligence #theCUBE #NYSEWired #TechInnovation #AIForGood
Find more SiliconANGLE news and analysis https://siliconangle.com/
Follow theCUBE's wall-to-wall event coverage https://siliconangle.com/events/
Learn about the latest theCUBE events https://www.thecube.net/
00:00 - Intro
00:06 - The Crypto Frontier: Exploring theCUBE, Layered Technologies, and 0G's Vision
02:40 - Navigating AI: Challenges in Transparency, Bias, and Accountability
05:42 - Societal Impact of AI and Decentralization
07:58 - Exploring Data Supply Chain and Blockchain Solutions
10:39 - Layer-One Infrastructure and Data Throughput Challenges
14:18 - The Vision for Scalable Decentralized AI
17:20 - Use Cases and Adoption of 0G Technology
21:00 - Decentralized Governance: Navigating Challenges and Future Innovations in AI and Blockchain
>> Hello, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE here at the NYSE Studios here. Of course, we have our Palo Alto studios. It's our Crypto Trailblazer series where we feature the leaders who are making it happen, bringing crypto mainstream, but also setting the table and building the infrastructure and the needed building blocks and primitives to have programmable money. And of course, bring in a new financial institutional network infrastructure as financial systems are being rewired for cross borders, new applications. And Ledger has been one of the leading companies in there. We have the CTO of Ledger, Charles Guillemet is here. CTO, thanks for coming on. Charles, thanks for coming.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, thanks for having me.
John Furrier
>> So first of all, I just want to say very impressed with Ledger. I was in your offices in Paris. You guys kind of built the product in a way that was not obvious, but actually was a good formula. You built a security first and then kind of rolled into where the market needs were, which is custody.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Okay. And so you have one of the most successful products ever in Nano. Now you got Gen5 launching. So that's the big news. Let's get into it right away. What is that product and why is it going to build on the best security product ever?
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. So as you said, crypto is a revolution. And the big part of this revolution is the permission-less money. With Bitcoin, you have permission-less money and it's made both possible thanks to two pillars. On one side, you have the decentralized consensus that enables censorship resistance, like no one can prevent you to transact. But on the other side, you also have self-custody. Self-custody, the second pillar that is really important. You can buy Bitcoin with an ETF or on Coinbase and so on, but you are just speculating on the price of Bitcoin. You don't really benefit from this permission-less aspect. So self-custody is really fundamental for crypto. But with self-custody, you have also a lot of responsibility. And you don't want to lose your crypto, you don't want to lose your key. You want to make sure that an attacker won't be able to get access to your keys because if the attacker access to your keys, it will drain your wallet and there is nothing you can do. There is no trusted third party that will refund you. It doesn't exist. So security is paramount, and this is what we do from the beginning of Ledger, creating security product. But at the same time, they must be easy to use. And this is really what we are trying to do.
John Furrier
>> The notion of self-custody, you mentioned that, and you mentioned Coinbase and other centralized storage. Self-custody is the most preferred. When you talk to anyone who has crypto, they want self-custody. But as it goes mainstream and as this Trailblazer series is highlighting, it's happening. The average user, it may seem complicated. So I like these solutions that essentially provides the benefits of self-custody while kind of making it easy. And you guys have done that. So I have to ask, what was the motivation behind Gen5? Why this version?
Charles Guillemet
>> So Ledger was created 11 years ago and a lot of product were designed and that was always the same idea. Having very secure product while always improving the user experience. So this is really what we did. A couple of years ago, we created Ledger Stax, which was the first device with the ink screen. And the idea of the Nano Gen5 is to have the same level of user experience with a nice ink screen, but also at a lower price point. So this is really the idea. And that was also the idea of the first Ledger Nano S that was the bestseller in the security system for crypto. And this is really the idea of Nano Gen5 having this upgraded, improved user experience with a high level of security, but at a lower price point. So this is really this idea.
John Furrier
>> As CTO, you oversee the product and the engineering teams. What was the breakthrough here? Talk about the secret sauce.
Charles Guillemet
>> So as you said, security is very important. So a lot of what we are doing is around security, always raising the bar some for security because security is not static. It's really a journey because attackers are getting more and more sophisticated and we are seeing more and more hacks like BYBIT, which is a very big exchanges was hacked a few months ago and they lost 1.4 billion. So the attackers are getting always more sophisticated. So security is really a cornerstone of everything we do when it comes to our product. Ad but at the same time, we really want to improve the user experience. So that's why we have created Ledger Wallet, which is the software that comes with the device and you can buy, sell, swap, stake, there was a credit card. And we are always trying to innovate, push the boundaries. This is something that is really important for us. Something that I can mention is when you are in self-custody, you are responsible for your crypto and your private keys. And there is this notion of creating a backup in order so that if you lose your device, you still can recover access to your crypto. And this can be a little bit frightening for users. So that's why we innovated and created different solution for user to create a backup of their 24 words. 24 words is the human-readable version of your private keys. And we innovated, for instance, with Ledger Recover, which is a distributed, decentralized way of securing your backup and you can access to your backup thanks your identity. And more recently, we created Ledger Recover Key, which is a key card, an FCT card that you will tap on the back of your device so that you can create a backup of your 24 words. So it's really about innovation, training to make the user experience as easy as possible and also to make it foolproof. Because sometimes crypto can be complicated and if users are not really aware of what's going on, they can make a mistake. So it's also part of what we are doing.
John Furrier
>> You guys have a reputation of millions sold, zero hacked. Okay. So that is the number one fear of a user. Well, just two fears. Lost my key.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> So where's that Bitcoin? I know people who have Bitcoin who are scrambling to find things like, where's that key? So they're sitting on just all this money and then there's the hacker side. The other thing is that in traditional IT, ransomware is very successful at penetrating quote "Backup and recovery" options. They just get root control and then take control of that. So they ransomware this, lock out the recovery. So okay, old, again, I'm referencing old technology. So talk about that. Losing the key, you mentioned a little bit of that. And then how do you guarantee that the hackers won't be smart enough to figure out how to get the backup?
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, definitely. So you don't want to lose the key, so that's why having a backup is paramount. So this is the first thing that you need to do. And then it really depends on what's your OPSEC, what's your strategy, but you need to think about worst case, like what happens if your house is burning, so this kind of thing. The first thing, the first recommendation I do is never take photos of your 24 words, don't have a digital copy of your 24 words. It must be like analog, like let's put this in a piece of paper of using the devices that we are creating for that. So this is for the backup.
It's also a good idea to have multiple of them so that just in case you have a redundancy. Also, you might want to think about your inheritance, what happens the day you disappear, how do you transmit your crypto to your heir. So it's something important. And for instance, the Ledger Recover Key is a good option. You can provide it to your children, for instance, and you don't tell them what's the pin code. And you give the pin code to your notary. So the day you disappear, the notary will give the pin code to your children and they will like-
John Furrier
>> It comes the Will and here's the pin.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> You've got the house. I mean, that's basically what it is.
Charles Guillemet
>> As simple as that, yes. Yes.
John Furrier
>> It's like the keys to the house or in the deed.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly. Exactly.
John Furrier
>> All right. So I have to ask about the, in the age of AI now, and obviously cybersecurity, identification, proof of ID, authentication, multi-factor's been around for a while. How do you know who's who?
Charles Guillemet
>> This is a big challenge. With the rise of AI, it provides plenty of new possibility, new opportunities. It's a big revolution, no doubt about that, but it also creates new challenges and we are already seeing them. We are going to see plenty of bots on every single platforms and it's very difficult to distinguish real humans from bots because AI is so efficient to fake humans. And in order to fight against this, we can use crypto. We can use cryptography, we can use blockchain. With cryptography, you can prove you are yourself by signing a message, signing a transaction. And this is cryptographic primitive and no AI can fake a signature because this is cryptography, this is math. So this is the first thing. And the second one is also creating proof of humanity. And this is something, proof of humanity is quite complex to achieve because again, it's very difficult from a theoretical standpoint to distinguish humans from machines. But with crypto, with a Ledger device, you have more grantees that there is a human behind a Ledger device. So this is the kind of feature we are working on. And the proof of humanity is really the combination of different features, but having a device, using the device as a human, signing messages, authenticating yourself are part of the primitives that you can use to prove that you are humans against the different bots and the AI that are trying to impersonate yourself.
John Furrier
>> So Charles, let's just take a hypothetical scenario. I get the Ledger device, I got my backup pin. And I'm lazy. I let someone use my apartment or I have a guest or someone breaks into my home. Can they take my pin and get my stuff?
Charles Guillemet
>> So the device itself, the backup, the recovery key for the backup also, both of them are including pin, pin codes. And they work exactly as your credit card, banking card pin code, meaning that if you input three wrong pin code, it will erase itself. So this is how pin codes are working. So if someone is stealing your device or your recovery key, there is very little chance that you will find out what is your pin. So.
John Furrier
>> Unless I wrote my pin down, say pin. Yeah. If I'm stupid enough to put a post-it on my desk.
Charles Guillemet
>> If you write down your pin and your device and the attacker, the guy at your house is getting both, he will be able to pretend he is yourself and spend your Bitcoin on your behalf. Yeah.
John Furrier
>> And that's where you worry about home invasions, that kind of thing, that you can't stop that.
Charles Guillemet
>> No. You can't really stop that, but frankly, this is not really something that is specific to self-custody. If you think about your Coinbase account, you have a login and password, and if someone is able to get your login and password, it will connect to your Coinbase account and it will drain your account. So it's not really common to...
John Furrier
>> It's just levels of security.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> All right. So what's clear signing mean? That's something that you guys are talking about.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> What does that mean?
Charles Guillemet
>> So as we were mentioning, backup is really important. Creating your keys in a specific device, not on your computer because of plenty of malware is also very important. And there is a third thing that is very important, it's clear signing. When you are signing a transaction, you need to understand what you are doing, basically. And this is why we have screens on our devices so that as a user, you can verify on the screen what you are doing. Because let's think about a hypothetical scenario where you are about to send 0.1 Bitcoin to me, let's say, and there is a malware on your computer and this malware will swap the transaction into a malicious one and instead of sending 0.1 Bitcoin to me, you will send your whole portfolio to the attacker. So that's why we have a screen on the device so that ultimately you can verify on the device what kind of transaction you are signing. And when it comes to signing Bitcoin transactions and receive, their transaction are pretty easy to understand and interpret by the device. But now we are seeing more and more protocols on-chain, like DeFi protocols. And when you are interacting with these protocols, you are basically interacting with programs and the idea on the device is to display what kind of interaction you are doing. So you are swapping 0.1 ETH to 300 USD and you can verify this on device and you have strong guarantees that this is the action that you are approving.
John Furrier
>> You guys have a great solution. So I have to ask about the ecosystem. Ledger Live, Ledger Wallet and the evolution of Ledger Live. How does your solution embed into the ecosystem and how do people participate around you?
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, very good question. So Ledger Live is really like an open platform where you can buy, sell, swap, have a credit card. There is a earned section when you can put your crypto as a collateral to get yield, this kind of thing. We are also supporting plenty of different blockchain. I don't even know the number, thousand of tokens. So all of this is possible inside Ledger Live. So you can interact with plenty of different ecosystem. We also have a discover section where you can interact with different protocols and you can also use your device outside of Ledger Wallets, either using the Ledger button. For instance, if you go on one inch, which is one of the biggest swap aggregator, now there is a Ledger button. You click on the button, you connect your device directly to one inch, and then you can swap. And alternatively, you can also use Wallet Connect, for instance, to interact with or even other wallet that are integrating Ledger devices.
John Furrier
>> And so this is important because one One of the things that's coming out of the Trailblazers, and I want to get your thoughts on this, is I have ownership. So it's self-custody. You solve that problem. Ledger Live, now you got an ecosystem. I want to stake that or I want to engage and leverage my ownership.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep. So-
John Furrier
>> You can.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, you can inside Ledger Live. So for crypto that are proof of stake based, Ethereum, , Solana, there are plenty of them, they are supported inside Ledger Live. And there is a button to stake. You click on the button, you approve the transaction and device and then you will have yield on your Solana, Ethereum and the yield depends really on the blockchain.
John Furrier
>> So you make that user experience consistent with what they want?
Charles Guillemet
>> Everything is consistent, very easy to use, and you have the high level of security.
John Furrier
>> Okay. So I have to ask the competitive landscape question. Your competitors out there, why you guys are differentiated. And also from an industry perspective, there's a lot of regulatory things. US is doing great. It's pro crypto. Thank you very much. Good job everyone in DC. Keep it going. Don't stop. Competition, industry, dynamics.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> How does that affect your world of CTO?
Charles Guillemet
>> So competition, if you only consider the hardware landscape, Ledger is by far at the most successful company. So we have less competition. We have a few other proposition in the space and I think it's good. It allows everyone to improve. So there is this, Trezor is one of them, ColdCard. There are plenty of smaller players. We also have competition within the software wallet landscape. Most of the time they have more users with very less value. Users, as soon as they have more values, they want to secure them. So they will use Ledger signers, Ledger devices. Also, solutions such as Coinbase or ETF can be seen a little bit as a competition. For me, the value proposition is very different and people are probably starting with Coinbase or with an ETF because they want to speculate on the price. But as soon as they start to really understand what's crypto, why it's a revolution.
John Furrier
>> Store of value.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, the store of value, but also the fact that you can interact with different protocols, then they will move towards self-custody. And when it comes to the ecosystem, I think this cycle, because crypto is really... We really have different cycles, these cycles is very different from the previous one because it is marked by institutional adoption and by Wall Street. Wall Street is embracing crypto.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. It's awesome here.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. And it's very different from the previous cycles. And I see this in two different directions. On one side, you have BlackRock with Fidelity and all the ETFs that are wrapping Bitcoin value into traditional finance product. So ETF options, derivatives. So there is this. And there is the other side that for me is even more interesting is that traditional finance is realizing that crypto can be used as a backend. It's far more efficient, cheaper, composable, transparent. You have so many benefits. Stablecoin is the first iteration of that. Anyone want to use Stablecoin because you can move millions in seconds paying one cent and the payment is final directly, which is a big revolution from what we have in traditional finance. And for me, this is only the first step. After we will have RWA, we are already talking about tokenized stock. You can use the tokenized stock to do 24/7 trading. You can use the composability of the blockchain, meaning that you can put the stock as a collateral to get the loan and buy house. All of this is possible and very easy because all of this is already options.
John Furrier
>> And that's what you mean by back office or backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Backend. Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. The backend.
John Furrier
>> That's the money side, like the tag.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. This is the money infrastructure that is on-chain.
John Furrier
>> So that brings ... First of all, I love that burst of enthusiasm, and I agree with 100%. There's two sides coming together.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> There's the backend where you hold your money, all that in the wallet where it's here or there, and then you get the products coming in. Okay. So I'm a user. I like the Ledger Live because that tells me, okay, if I have self-custody, say I got a million dollars in Bitcoin, I could store it on the wallet because that's a lot of money.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Okay. There's my Bitcoin. But now I'm like, "Okay, I want to actually connect it to my application." So I mean, I have an iPhone. It's got Apple Pay. That's not crypto. That's a bank.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> That's a financial front end with a backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> So I'm the backend with my crypto. So what if I love a product and they put a new feature that says pay with Apple Pay, credit card, Ledger. Is that possible today where you guys are integrating into apps? Because I would like to pay, if I'm the bank, because I'm the bank.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, definitely. Si.
John Furrier
>> I'm the bank. I could charge, I can do credit. I mean...
Charles Guillemet
>> It's a good one. So today you have different options to do that. The first one is the credit card. Within Ledger Wallet, you have an option to get a credit card. And what you will do is top up your card with Bitcoin or whatever Stablecoin or whatever crypto. And whenever you are paying, then at this event, your crypto will be swapped into Fiat in order to do the payment. You also have an option to only put Bitcoin as a collateral, and at the end of the month, either you refund your card with Fiat or your Bitcoin-
John Furrier
>> It's sold....
Charles Guillemet
>> is used to settle the-
John Furrier
>> Bitcoin goes up.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> It's free.
Charles Guillemet
>> So you can decide. Yeah, you can decide this.
John Furrier
>> I made money.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> Basically free product.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> If it goes down. That's really it.
Charles Guillemet
>> So there is this option that is already available. The card can be used within Apple Pay or Google Pay if you are using Google. So this option always exists and it's a good mix between crypto and the traditional Visa rails that are already used everywhere. And the feature will be completely on-chain. Visa will probably disappear or embrace crypto, probably both.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. All the middle man will go. There'll be services.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> Services as software. Programmable money.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. And doing a payment with your phone will just mean that you are signing a transaction on whatever-
John Furrier
>> You know what's interesting, Charles? Is that I just moved to New York, so our new studio, I'm learning all about the financial markets. And I went to business school, so I know a little bit of the language, but it's interesting. They use words like DeFi and TradFi. I'm like, that's just backend, front end. I mean, and so the middleware layer, I'm kind of going tech stack now, talk tech stack. You got infrastructure, middleware, app. Oversimplifying it, but DeFi is just backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> I mean, it's just the backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Totally.
John Furrier
>> And TradFi is just the front end.
Charles Guillemet
>> And TradFi was using it's own backend before, but now this backend is old, not so efficient. And so that's why TradFi will use DeFi as a backend.
John Furrier
>> And the middleware is essentially a decentralized fabric, decentralized layer that's managed differently.
Charles Guillemet
>> And as a user, you can decide to directly interact with the backend within self-custody, the middleman, or traditional finance, financial institution. We'll also offer you product application that are leveraging this backend.
John Furrier
>> And this is why I think I love Ledger because I think I just put it together in real time here. Ledgers, I'm the bank.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> You're the bank infrastructure.
Charles Guillemet
>> Be your own bank.
John Furrier
>> For me.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, definitely.
John Furrier
>> Bring your own bank. BYOB. So I am my own bank. I can do credit off that, I can manage it, do whatever I want with it, as long as it's secure. And you guys do that.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly. This is exactly our mission.
John Furrier
>> All right. Well, I think I just put together the value proposition differentiation for Ledger. Thanks for coming in.
Charles Guillemet
>> Thanks for having me.
John Furrier
>> Trailblazer. Love your office in Paris. If you've ever in Paris, check out the Ledger office. This is our office here at the New York Stock Exchange for the Cube, SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, and our NYSE Wired program and community, Crypto Trailblazer, the leaders who are making it happen. Crypto infrastructure is a complete rewiring of the financial institutions and infrastructure where users are their own bank. Services will be on the retail, will be front end, app based, all coming together. Just the beginning of a revolution. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.
>> Hello, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE here at the NYSE Studios here. Of course, we have our Palo Alto studios. It's our Crypto Trailblazer series where we feature the leaders who are making it happen, bringing crypto mainstream, but also setting the table and building the infrastructure and the needed building blocks and primitives to have programmable money. And of course, bring in a new financial institutional network infrastructure as financial systems are being rewired for cross borders, new applications. And Ledger has been one of the leading companies in there. We have the CTO of Ledger, Charles Guillemet is here. CTO, thanks for coming on. Charles, thanks for coming.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, thanks for having me.
John Furrier
>> So first of all, I just want to say very impressed with Ledger. I was in your offices in Paris. You guys kind of built the product in a way that was not obvious, but actually was a good formula. You built a security first and then kind of rolled into where the market needs were, which is custody.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Okay. And so you have one of the most successful products ever in Nano. Now you got Gen5 launching. So that's the big news. Let's get into it right away. What is that product and why is it going to build on the best security product ever?
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. So as you said, crypto is a revolution. And the big part of this revolution is the permission-less money. With Bitcoin, you have permission-less money and it's made both possible thanks to two pillars. On one side, you have the decentralized consensus that enables censorship resistance, like no one can prevent you to transact. But on the other side, you also have self-custody. Self-custody, the second pillar that is really important. You can buy Bitcoin with an ETF or on Coinbase and so on, but you are just speculating on the price of Bitcoin. You don't really benefit from this permission-less aspect. So self-custody is really fundamental for crypto. But with self-custody, you have also a lot of responsibility. And you don't want to lose your crypto, you don't want to lose your key. You want to make sure that an attacker won't be able to get access to your keys because if the attacker access to your keys, it will drain your wallet and there is nothing you can do. There is no trusted third party that will refund you. It doesn't exist. So security is paramount, and this is what we do from the beginning of Ledger, creating security product. But at the same time, they must be easy to use. And this is really what we are trying to do.
John Furrier
>> The notion of self-custody, you mentioned that, and you mentioned Coinbase and other centralized storage. Self-custody is the most preferred. When you talk to anyone who has crypto, they want self-custody. But as it goes mainstream and as this Trailblazer series is highlighting, it's happening. The average user, it may seem complicated. So I like these solutions that essentially provides the benefits of self-custody while kind of making it easy. And you guys have done that. So I have to ask, what was the motivation behind Gen5? Why this version?
Charles Guillemet
>> So Ledger was created 11 years ago and a lot of product were designed and that was always the same idea. Having very secure product while always improving the user experience. So this is really what we did. A couple of years ago, we created Ledger Stax, which was the first device with the ink screen. And the idea of the Nano Gen5 is to have the same level of user experience with a nice ink screen, but also at a lower price point. So this is really the idea. And that was also the idea of the first Ledger Nano S that was the bestseller in the security system for crypto. And this is really the idea of Nano Gen5 having this upgraded, improved user experience with a high level of security, but at a lower price point. So this is really this idea.
John Furrier
>> As CTO, you oversee the product and the engineering teams. What was the breakthrough here? Talk about the secret sauce.
Charles Guillemet
>> So as you said, security is very important. So a lot of what we are doing is around security, always raising the bar some for security because security is not static. It's really a journey because attackers are getting more and more sophisticated and we are seeing more and more hacks like BYBIT, which is a very big exchanges was hacked a few months ago and they lost 1.4 billion. So the attackers are getting always more sophisticated. So security is really a cornerstone of everything we do when it comes to our product. Ad but at the same time, we really want to improve the user experience. So that's why we have created Ledger Wallet, which is the software that comes with the device and you can buy, sell, swap, stake, there was a credit card. And we are always trying to innovate, push the boundaries. This is something that is really important for us. Something that I can mention is when you are in self-custody, you are responsible for your crypto and your private keys. And there is this notion of creating a backup in order so that if you lose your device, you still can recover access to your crypto. And this can be a little bit frightening for users. So that's why we innovated and created different solution for user to create a backup of their 24 words. 24 words is the human-readable version of your private keys. And we innovated, for instance, with Ledger Recover, which is a distributed, decentralized way of securing your backup and you can access to your backup thanks your identity. And more recently, we created Ledger Recover Key, which is a key card, an FCT card that you will tap on the back of your device so that you can create a backup of your 24 words. So it's really about innovation, training to make the user experience as easy as possible and also to make it foolproof. Because sometimes crypto can be complicated and if users are not really aware of what's going on, they can make a mistake. So it's also part of what we are doing.
John Furrier
>> You guys have a reputation of millions sold, zero hacked. Okay. So that is the number one fear of a user. Well, just two fears. Lost my key.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> So where's that Bitcoin? I know people who have Bitcoin who are scrambling to find things like, where's that key? So they're sitting on just all this money and then there's the hacker side. The other thing is that in traditional IT, ransomware is very successful at penetrating quote "Backup and recovery" options. They just get root control and then take control of that. So they ransomware this, lock out the recovery. So okay, old, again, I'm referencing old technology. So talk about that. Losing the key, you mentioned a little bit of that. And then how do you guarantee that the hackers won't be smart enough to figure out how to get the backup?
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, definitely. So you don't want to lose the key, so that's why having a backup is paramount. So this is the first thing that you need to do. And then it really depends on what's your OPSEC, what's your strategy, but you need to think about worst case, like what happens if your house is burning, so this kind of thing. The first thing, the first recommendation I do is never take photos of your 24 words, don't have a digital copy of your 24 words. It must be like analog, like let's put this in a piece of paper of using the devices that we are creating for that. So this is for the backup.
It's also a good idea to have multiple of them so that just in case you have a redundancy. Also, you might want to think about your inheritance, what happens the day you disappear, how do you transmit your crypto to your heir. So it's something important. And for instance, the Ledger Recover Key is a good option. You can provide it to your children, for instance, and you don't tell them what's the pin code. And you give the pin code to your notary. So the day you disappear, the notary will give the pin code to your children and they will like-
John Furrier
>> It comes the Will and here's the pin.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> You've got the house. I mean, that's basically what it is.
Charles Guillemet
>> As simple as that, yes. Yes.
John Furrier
>> It's like the keys to the house or in the deed.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly. Exactly.
John Furrier
>> All right. So I have to ask about the, in the age of AI now, and obviously cybersecurity, identification, proof of ID, authentication, multi-factor's been around for a while. How do you know who's who?
Charles Guillemet
>> This is a big challenge. With the rise of AI, it provides plenty of new possibility, new opportunities. It's a big revolution, no doubt about that, but it also creates new challenges and we are already seeing them. We are going to see plenty of bots on every single platforms and it's very difficult to distinguish real humans from bots because AI is so efficient to fake humans. And in order to fight against this, we can use crypto. We can use cryptography, we can use blockchain. With cryptography, you can prove you are yourself by signing a message, signing a transaction. And this is cryptographic primitive and no AI can fake a signature because this is cryptography, this is math. So this is the first thing. And the second one is also creating proof of humanity. And this is something, proof of humanity is quite complex to achieve because again, it's very difficult from a theoretical standpoint to distinguish humans from machines. But with crypto, with a Ledger device, you have more grantees that there is a human behind a Ledger device. So this is the kind of feature we are working on. And the proof of humanity is really the combination of different features, but having a device, using the device as a human, signing messages, authenticating yourself are part of the primitives that you can use to prove that you are humans against the different bots and the AI that are trying to impersonate yourself.
John Furrier
>> So Charles, let's just take a hypothetical scenario. I get the Ledger device, I got my backup pin. And I'm lazy. I let someone use my apartment or I have a guest or someone breaks into my home. Can they take my pin and get my stuff?
Charles Guillemet
>> So the device itself, the backup, the recovery key for the backup also, both of them are including pin, pin codes. And they work exactly as your credit card, banking card pin code, meaning that if you input three wrong pin code, it will erase itself. So this is how pin codes are working. So if someone is stealing your device or your recovery key, there is very little chance that you will find out what is your pin. So.
John Furrier
>> Unless I wrote my pin down, say pin. Yeah. If I'm stupid enough to put a post-it on my desk.
Charles Guillemet
>> If you write down your pin and your device and the attacker, the guy at your house is getting both, he will be able to pretend he is yourself and spend your Bitcoin on your behalf. Yeah.
John Furrier
>> And that's where you worry about home invasions, that kind of thing, that you can't stop that.
Charles Guillemet
>> No. You can't really stop that, but frankly, this is not really something that is specific to self-custody. If you think about your Coinbase account, you have a login and password, and if someone is able to get your login and password, it will connect to your Coinbase account and it will drain your account. So it's not really common to...
John Furrier
>> It's just levels of security.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> All right. So what's clear signing mean? That's something that you guys are talking about.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> What does that mean?
Charles Guillemet
>> So as we were mentioning, backup is really important. Creating your keys in a specific device, not on your computer because of plenty of malware is also very important. And there is a third thing that is very important, it's clear signing. When you are signing a transaction, you need to understand what you are doing, basically. And this is why we have screens on our devices so that as a user, you can verify on the screen what you are doing. Because let's think about a hypothetical scenario where you are about to send 0.1 Bitcoin to me, let's say, and there is a malware on your computer and this malware will swap the transaction into a malicious one and instead of sending 0.1 Bitcoin to me, you will send your whole portfolio to the attacker. So that's why we have a screen on the device so that ultimately you can verify on the device what kind of transaction you are signing. And when it comes to signing Bitcoin transactions and receive, their transaction are pretty easy to understand and interpret by the device. But now we are seeing more and more protocols on-chain, like DeFi protocols. And when you are interacting with these protocols, you are basically interacting with programs and the idea on the device is to display what kind of interaction you are doing. So you are swapping 0.1 ETH to 300 USD and you can verify this on device and you have strong guarantees that this is the action that you are approving.
John Furrier
>> You guys have a great solution. So I have to ask about the ecosystem. Ledger Live, Ledger Wallet and the evolution of Ledger Live. How does your solution embed into the ecosystem and how do people participate around you?
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, very good question. So Ledger Live is really like an open platform where you can buy, sell, swap, have a credit card. There is a earned section when you can put your crypto as a collateral to get yield, this kind of thing. We are also supporting plenty of different blockchain. I don't even know the number, thousand of tokens. So all of this is possible inside Ledger Live. So you can interact with plenty of different ecosystem. We also have a discover section where you can interact with different protocols and you can also use your device outside of Ledger Wallets, either using the Ledger button. For instance, if you go on one inch, which is one of the biggest swap aggregator, now there is a Ledger button. You click on the button, you connect your device directly to one inch, and then you can swap. And alternatively, you can also use Wallet Connect, for instance, to interact with or even other wallet that are integrating Ledger devices.
John Furrier
>> And so this is important because one One of the things that's coming out of the Trailblazers, and I want to get your thoughts on this, is I have ownership. So it's self-custody. You solve that problem. Ledger Live, now you got an ecosystem. I want to stake that or I want to engage and leverage my ownership.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep. So-
John Furrier
>> You can.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, you can inside Ledger Live. So for crypto that are proof of stake based, Ethereum, , Solana, there are plenty of them, they are supported inside Ledger Live. And there is a button to stake. You click on the button, you approve the transaction and device and then you will have yield on your Solana, Ethereum and the yield depends really on the blockchain.
John Furrier
>> So you make that user experience consistent with what they want?
Charles Guillemet
>> Everything is consistent, very easy to use, and you have the high level of security.
John Furrier
>> Okay. So I have to ask the competitive landscape question. Your competitors out there, why you guys are differentiated. And also from an industry perspective, there's a lot of regulatory things. US is doing great. It's pro crypto. Thank you very much. Good job everyone in DC. Keep it going. Don't stop. Competition, industry, dynamics.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> How does that affect your world of CTO?
Charles Guillemet
>> So competition, if you only consider the hardware landscape, Ledger is by far at the most successful company. So we have less competition. We have a few other proposition in the space and I think it's good. It allows everyone to improve. So there is this, Trezor is one of them, ColdCard. There are plenty of smaller players. We also have competition within the software wallet landscape. Most of the time they have more users with very less value. Users, as soon as they have more values, they want to secure them. So they will use Ledger signers, Ledger devices. Also, solutions such as Coinbase or ETF can be seen a little bit as a competition. For me, the value proposition is very different and people are probably starting with Coinbase or with an ETF because they want to speculate on the price. But as soon as they start to really understand what's crypto, why it's a revolution.
John Furrier
>> Store of value.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, the store of value, but also the fact that you can interact with different protocols, then they will move towards self-custody. And when it comes to the ecosystem, I think this cycle, because crypto is really... We really have different cycles, these cycles is very different from the previous one because it is marked by institutional adoption and by Wall Street. Wall Street is embracing crypto.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. It's awesome here.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. And it's very different from the previous cycles. And I see this in two different directions. On one side, you have BlackRock with Fidelity and all the ETFs that are wrapping Bitcoin value into traditional finance product. So ETF options, derivatives. So there is this. And there is the other side that for me is even more interesting is that traditional finance is realizing that crypto can be used as a backend. It's far more efficient, cheaper, composable, transparent. You have so many benefits. Stablecoin is the first iteration of that. Anyone want to use Stablecoin because you can move millions in seconds paying one cent and the payment is final directly, which is a big revolution from what we have in traditional finance. And for me, this is only the first step. After we will have RWA, we are already talking about tokenized stock. You can use the tokenized stock to do 24/7 trading. You can use the composability of the blockchain, meaning that you can put the stock as a collateral to get the loan and buy house. All of this is possible and very easy because all of this is already options.
John Furrier
>> And that's what you mean by back office or backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Backend. Yeah.
John Furrier
>> Backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. The backend.
John Furrier
>> That's the money side, like the tag.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. This is the money infrastructure that is on-chain.
John Furrier
>> So that brings ... First of all, I love that burst of enthusiasm, and I agree with 100%. There's two sides coming together.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> There's the backend where you hold your money, all that in the wallet where it's here or there, and then you get the products coming in. Okay. So I'm a user. I like the Ledger Live because that tells me, okay, if I have self-custody, say I got a million dollars in Bitcoin, I could store it on the wallet because that's a lot of money.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> Okay. There's my Bitcoin. But now I'm like, "Okay, I want to actually connect it to my application." So I mean, I have an iPhone. It's got Apple Pay. That's not crypto. That's a bank.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> That's a financial front end with a backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> So I'm the backend with my crypto. So what if I love a product and they put a new feature that says pay with Apple Pay, credit card, Ledger. Is that possible today where you guys are integrating into apps? Because I would like to pay, if I'm the bank, because I'm the bank.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, definitely. Si.
John Furrier
>> I'm the bank. I could charge, I can do credit. I mean...
Charles Guillemet
>> It's a good one. So today you have different options to do that. The first one is the credit card. Within Ledger Wallet, you have an option to get a credit card. And what you will do is top up your card with Bitcoin or whatever Stablecoin or whatever crypto. And whenever you are paying, then at this event, your crypto will be swapped into Fiat in order to do the payment. You also have an option to only put Bitcoin as a collateral, and at the end of the month, either you refund your card with Fiat or your Bitcoin-
John Furrier
>> It's sold....
Charles Guillemet
>> is used to settle the-
John Furrier
>> Bitcoin goes up.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> It's free.
Charles Guillemet
>> So you can decide. Yeah, you can decide this.
John Furrier
>> I made money.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> Basically free product.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> If it goes down. That's really it.
Charles Guillemet
>> So there is this option that is already available. The card can be used within Apple Pay or Google Pay if you are using Google. So this option always exists and it's a good mix between crypto and the traditional Visa rails that are already used everywhere. And the feature will be completely on-chain. Visa will probably disappear or embrace crypto, probably both.
John Furrier
>> Yeah. All the middle man will go. There'll be services.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly.
John Furrier
>> Services as software. Programmable money.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah. And doing a payment with your phone will just mean that you are signing a transaction on whatever-
John Furrier
>> You know what's interesting, Charles? Is that I just moved to New York, so our new studio, I'm learning all about the financial markets. And I went to business school, so I know a little bit of the language, but it's interesting. They use words like DeFi and TradFi. I'm like, that's just backend, front end. I mean, and so the middleware layer, I'm kind of going tech stack now, talk tech stack. You got infrastructure, middleware, app. Oversimplifying it, but DeFi is just backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> I mean, it's just the backend.
Charles Guillemet
>> Totally.
John Furrier
>> And TradFi is just the front end.
Charles Guillemet
>> And TradFi was using it's own backend before, but now this backend is old, not so efficient. And so that's why TradFi will use DeFi as a backend.
John Furrier
>> And the middleware is essentially a decentralized fabric, decentralized layer that's managed differently.
Charles Guillemet
>> And as a user, you can decide to directly interact with the backend within self-custody, the middleman, or traditional finance, financial institution. We'll also offer you product application that are leveraging this backend.
John Furrier
>> And this is why I think I love Ledger because I think I just put it together in real time here. Ledgers, I'm the bank.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah.
John Furrier
>> You're the bank infrastructure.
Charles Guillemet
>> Be your own bank.
John Furrier
>> For me.
Charles Guillemet
>> Yeah, definitely.
John Furrier
>> Bring your own bank. BYOB. So I am my own bank. I can do credit off that, I can manage it, do whatever I want with it, as long as it's secure. And you guys do that.
Charles Guillemet
>> Exactly. This is exactly our mission.
John Furrier
>> All right. Well, I think I just put together the value proposition differentiation for Ledger. Thanks for coming in.
Charles Guillemet
>> Thanks for having me.
John Furrier
>> Trailblazer. Love your office in Paris. If you've ever in Paris, check out the Ledger office. This is our office here at the New York Stock Exchange for the Cube, SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, and our NYSE Wired program and community, Crypto Trailblazer, the leaders who are making it happen. Crypto infrastructure is a complete rewiring of the financial institutions and infrastructure where users are their own bank. Services will be on the retail, will be front end, app based, all coming together. Just the beginning of a revolution. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.
John Furrier