CVC23 Closing Keynote: Pascal Gauthier, Ledger

Transcript

[Applause] wow so so sorry I'm late uh I got a good excuse I was at a funeral funeral so I was this close to cancel but I thought that I would not do this to Emmy because she would have killed me um so I didn't cancel and I took the latest flight that I could take to to be here in front of you and to wrap this beautiful day sadly I couldn't listen to all the contents that was presented to you today so I'm just gonna tell you you know the the mood of the day and we're going to talk about Ledger recover no that's a joke We're Not Gonna We're not gonna talk about Ledger recover

however we we we're gonna talk about it in a in a way in the sense that I was thinking about uh what I would say to to you today to wrap this up and you know and it's something that struck me when Ledger recovery happened and and sort of the backslash that we saw online which is I think we sort of mistake crypto cryptocurrency Bitcoin other cryptocurrencies we mistake this for the sole case of speculation uh it is something that we saw in 2022

when you know the Celsius and the FTX of the world went under and the question from all the journalists is you know is crypto or is Bitcoin dead and our answer then was but look you know crypto and Bitcoin is not just the speculation use case I mean it's interesting that the price goes up and down but it is not exactly why Bitcoin has been designed actually the price of Bitcoin and the price of ethereum is a security feature if price of Bitcoin goes to zero then the Bitcoin public blockchain is not very secure if it goes to a million dollar it increases the security of State blockchain

and so since the beginning actually Ledger has always been focused on utility and not so much speculation actually every time I speak to a journalist I'm being asked what's going to be the price of Bitcoin can you predict the price of Bitcoin is Bitcoin gonna go up um and my answer is always you know we don't speculate at Ledger we're not here to speculate we're here to design products and experiences to make crypto secure and easy to use and it's very difficult to to innovate because you know the use case of Buy and Hold and a hardware about it being like cold storage you know it's something of

2015 2014. when I joined Ledger the use case then was you know I'm gonna hold to my hold on to my Bitcoin forever and I'm gonna wait for the next billion people to join crypto and eventually the price will go up and you know I'll be very rich it's actually not something that I ever say to myself I never got into Bitcoin to to be rich but I thought he was an amazing piece of technology to actually give some digital Freedom back to to people the fact you can own a digital asset the fact that you can use a peer-to-peer a digital money system

to transfer value I mean you know that is the Innovation and people ask for a long time you know what is the use case well it is the use case if you try to exchange digital value from one to another you always have an intermediary if you use your bank if you use your credit card if you use any kind of you know online payment system you have an intermediary with Bitcoin you don't so this is the killer app but the next layer of scalability comes probably from from lightning and and different things and we all know that you know most of these blockchains are still in their infancy so I think the problem that we need to have in mind and what we need to solve are sort of three things one is infrastructure

um I was I looked at the infrastructure of business in crypto and it's still very innocent you don't have much infrastructure in crypto if you think about the internet you know the internet has been developed through infrastructure you know the faster the internet goes the faster the applications can go Etc but the infrastructure layer is you know very important and there's a bunch of telcos that got built thanks to to the internet or providing infrastructure to the internet and therefore became big companies if you think about Cisco the question is like who is the Cisco of web3 today or who is this who is the Cisco of crypto the sad answer is it's actually Amazon

and AWS that is the real answer they make I think something between one and two billion dollars in Revenue with every web3 company that runs on AWS so that's who's making money but if you think about like a pure web 3 crypto company doing you know secure uh decentralized infrastructure you don't you don't really have many players in the space so infrastructure is you know should be a number one Focus for the industry and we should think about that actually it's interesting everyone that sales infrastructure is not getting paid like you know once we try to sell infrastructure in the crypto business nobody wants to pay it's a it's interesting I don't you know I don't think crypto is going to go very far if

we don't develop like a very strong secured infrastructure security centralized infrastructure layer okay that's not number one number two once you have that you need connectivity um your crypto on your phone doesn't work very well um today if you think about like the Hoops that you need to go through in order to connect to any app or dab Etc I mean it's very difficult I mean you know try to demonstrate this like do a video of it and then show it to your friends and see how they like it I mean you know it is very hard to use the connectivity of crypto web3 Etc is very difficult and most of the time very insecure I mean

you know you do this from your phone from your computer these are not security devices they have not been designed for this so you know of course you know losing the private key is is a problem but you know even if you forget about that problem you know the the ease of use that you have to connect to the utility of sort of crypto currencies from from your from your phone or computer it's a very difficult it doesn't work very very well so connectivity is the second problem uh that we need to solve and the third program that eludes me now but I'm gonna open my phone and I'm going to tell you the third program and then I tell you what I think is the solution

I could Oh My Maps open because I couldn't find here yeah of course the third problem I keep on repeating it is like sort of utility once you have infrastructure connectivity is like you know what are you going to use it for and you know I think um we at Ledger and and in general you know weather is because we've we're opening our platforms so third parties can develop on top of it or because we have an investment fund we're really really looking at these utility cases like you know what are you what are you going to use your crypto for there are many things that are actually coming if you think were but uh what Starbucks is doing with loyalty points is a great use case for for utility and you know they're not playing with this uh this is not really like a something that a

testing is not really a proof of concept it's really something that they're going for but if you think about you know all the utility cases that can be built on top of crypto this is what make crypto interesting and what gives value actually to a public blockchain not so much uh the speculative aspect of it and the fact that the coin can be pumped and dumped on you know the next Exchange um and so these three things uh combine that creates uh usage and actually you know the reason why it's important uh is probably even more important than than what we all think um because you know life is such that at the same time that crypto is created you know AI

is also coming uh full speed uh and if you think about what AI is AI is uh digital abundance there will be you know more digital content going forward than than ever and crypto and I'm not talking about cryptocurrency now I'm talking about crypto is uh digital scarcity and so the two things are the two sides of the same coin and so if we don't make crypto much easier to use if we don't enhance the experience um I mean we will but you know we have to

because how will you decipher a human being from a boat an AI boat or you know uh uh someone that is a spammer in the future it's already very difficult today actually you know most people are struggling with this you know what Elon Musk is trying to do with the blue check and you know where we're struggling with when it comes to social media is like we don't really know who's writing so we don't know if it's an attack from uh from a rogue State we don't know if someone is trying to manipulate the election we don't know if it's true and tomorrow we don't even know if it's human and so the use case of crypto is is very clear actually crypto is is very good to prove

something so I can send you a Bitcoin because I can prove that I'm the owner I've got the private keys I can prove I'm the owner so I can send Bitcoin from A to B but equally I can prove many things like this I can prove that I'm human I can prove that I'm above 18. I can prove that I'm French and yes nobody is perfect but I can prove I can prove that you know um and so this is coming but it's only coming if we can develop you know sort of great experiences and you know there is probably something that I think is you know is is wrong to think going forward is that

everything changes but nothing will change it's like oh you know all of this is happening but you know I'm gonna but I don't want to change my habits like you know I still want the web to sort of ease of use I I don't really want the control Etc I mean crypto in order to prove that you're someone you need to be in control of your private keys and so to be in self-custody is not just uh a philosophical stand of you know I want to be free and so therefore I want to have my money but it's also the only way that you can actually prove that you're you like if you don't have your private keys then how can you prove that you're you if you if you give your private keys to someone else it's the same way that you're doing today like you know this is

the difference between your Google account who's not exactly you and having your wallet with your private Keys connected to an experience and so you know the past 20 years we're probably Google connect this Facebook Facebook connect that and you know that was the way that we connected to things in the future is going to be wallets that's going to be connected to most of your experiences and you know don't think cryptocurrency too much I don't think speculation too much just think like you know to connect to any experience reading you're going to connect with your wallet even to connect to your Twitter that's going to be the best way

for Elon Musk to know if you're human or not and to give you a blue check maybe for with a discount you know because suddenly you can prove that you're human you can prove many things and this is how you will connect and all of the secrets that you have online anyways um and outside of cryptocurrency and especially your identity today they're at risk you know everything that is on your phone your computer is as good as gone and you know the the rise of uh cyber crime is not to be demonstrated there is one book that you all need to read and it's called This is either tell me the world ends it's a great book it explains exactly what's happening in you know um cyber security and cyber crime in this world and so it's not a problem

that is going away it's a problem that is exponential going forward and so whether it's cyber crime AI Etc you know who we are online is really a threat and the only way to actually protect ourselves really and to be human and to be individuals online is through crypto and so I think it's a problem that we should all have in mind because this is really the that the program over the next you know 10 to 20 years to solve and we cannot solve it if we don't build great infrastructure if we don't build great connectivity and if we don't build great utility on top of all these public blockchains because public blockchains will help uh in the process but we also collectively need to build an

application layer that sits on top of that that makes it possible for humans to prove that they are humans and if we can make that happen I think crypto will boom much more than what has been in the past again on the sole use case of uh speculation I don't think the market is doing extremely rare right now I mean I was talking to someone else the other day who was saying like oh my God if binance goes down like we all go down I mean that's a up statement oh my God nothing against binance and you know I wish them well but you know if the whole Market is financed then okay that's that's the real problem because

you know since when did we do Bitcoin to centralize it and give all our coins to a bank so anyways Innovation is very difficult as you could see in the past two weeks when you try to do something you know people um have issues comments Etc you know and I'm not denying that they aren't many ways of building the future but uh the speeches I wanted to give you today is to say that you know think crypto uh not so much always cryptocurrency don't think too much is about speculation but more about utility and if humans have a future online it is crypto and so we have to build this together

thank you for your attention [Applause]