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France also has its crypto unicorn with hardware wallet maker Ledger. The firm raises an additional 380 million dollars.
France, a crypto-nation? Maybe not yet, but it nevertheless hosts its first unicorn in this sector. As a reminder, a unicorn is a company whose valuation exceeds one billion dollars.
Ledger can now claim this status. To reach this level, the manufacturer of hardware wallets, including the Nano S, has completed a very significant fundraising. Through a series C, the manufacturer is indeed raising $380 million.
This operation now allows it to claim a valuation of 1.5 billion dollars, and thus the rank of unicorn. This very substantial capital should help “strengthen its position as the world’s leading secure crypto-asset management platform.”
Ledger estimates that its technologies currently secure about 15% of all cryptocurrency assets globally. How? Through record sales. The manufacturer totals over 3 million wallets in 190 countries.
In addition, Ledger Live, a crypto asset management platform, has more than 1.5 million users each month. But the company is also well positioned in the institutional market with Ledger Enterprise Solutions.
Unlike many unicorns and large digital platforms, Ledger is also “profitable.” But the company is also showing strong growth. In the first quarter of 2021, its sales jumped 500%.
However, this growth was part of a booming crypto market. Since May, the trend is clearly down. Will it still be able to sustain this rate of growth? For Ledger, as for others, crypto-assets and DeFi are here to stay.
In addition, the French unicorn intends to continue its diversification into services. Ledger announces that it is preparing “new transactional services” for Ledger Live. In particular, its platform will integrate decentralized finance solutions.
“These ambitious plans will be implemented on a global scale, as Ledger continues to expand its operational and geographic presence to address the global cryptoasset market,” its CEO Pascal Gauthier writes further.