Leer en Español
PHYSICAL cryptocurrency wallets, or hardware wallets, have regained popularity among crypto investors amid a bear market heavily impacted by inflation, recession prospects, and the Ukraine war.
Despite the downturn in the cryptocurrency market, some players in the ecosystem have benefited. As crypto brokers such as Coinbase have declared losses that could suggest they are nearing bankruptcy, holders have migrated to physical wallets to deposit their cryptocurrencies.
“Every quarter we are doing as much revenue as the whole of 2020, which was a very good year for Ledger. Right now year-on-year we are still up, which tells us that this bear market is different. It’s not a real bear market, but rather a bear market for centralized value propositions,” said Pascal Gauthier, managing director of cryptocurrency hardware wallet company Ledger in an interview with Cointelegraph.
According to Gauthier, while cryptocurrency broker Coinbase was posting losses in the millions, Ledger has recorded record orders in physical wallets not seen since 2020. “We did $2 million a day in revenue following the release of this report, but it was just a peak because nothing bad actually happened to Coinbase. People just realized that their crypto wasn’t safe”, he said.
According to Ledger’s CEO, the company has ambitious expansion plans and will have launches in 256 stores across the country in July.
The physical wallet market grows in the face of virtual brokers’ decline
Ledger is not the only hardware manufacturer to have benefited from the collapse of crypto brokers. Trezor has also seen its sales grow exponentially in recent months. “People are finding out that keeping their coins on exchanges and with custodians can be very risky, so they are naturally looking for self-custody options,” said Josef Tětek, Bitcoin analyst for Trezor.
The hacks of the accounts of several brokers have also exacerbated the confidence of many crypto investors, who have decided to transfer their savings to a crypto hardware wallet, as they reduce the investors’ exposure to the risk of malware attacks.
This migration of wallets among crypto-investors shows a process of adaptation of the crypto community in the face of adversities caused by a bear market and impacted by expectations of a possible recession in the United States.
Economist, writer and liberal. With a focus on finance, the war on drugs, history, and geopolitics // Economista, escritor y liberal. Con enfoque en finanzas, guerra contra las drogas, historia y geopolítica