Original Title: "BTC Halved, But Bitcoin Wallet Still Valued at 4 Billion"
Original author: Lin Wanwan, Beating
Bitcoin's price has halved, but a company selling BTC shovels has announced plans to list in the US.
January 21, 2025, early morning, the small town of Vierzon in central France.
David Balland was dragged awake from his sleep and, before he could figure out what was happening, was stuffed into two cars with his wife. Ten minutes later, the two cars drove off in two different directions.
What happened in the next 48 hours was like a shoddy kidnapping movie. The kidnappers cut off one of Balland's fingers, took photos, sent them to his former colleagues, and demanded a $10 million ransom in Bitcoin.
More than 90 members of the French special forces GIGN carried out simultaneous operations at two locations and finally rescued the couple.
Balland is a co-founder of Ledger.
The story later had a good ending. The kidnappers received part of the ransom in USDT, but Tether cooperated with law enforcement to freeze 95% of the funds. The on-chain transfer records were clear and undeniable. All ten suspects were arrested and face life imprisonment.
The kidnappers were able to find Balland because in 2020, Ledger had a customer data breach, with names, addresses, and phone numbers posted on the dark web. As a founder, Balland's information was naturally included.
The reason why kidnappers don't directly steal coins from the blockchain is because they can't. Private keys are stored in offline devices, and without an internet connection, they can't be stolen. Therefore, they can only use the most primitive method: kidnapping people and forcing them to transfer the coins themselves.
This exactly illustrates one thing: hardware wallets are useful. The online hacking methods are ineffective against it, so they can only escalate to offline crimes.
But Balland's experience also serves as a reminder to all cryptocurrency holders: protecting your private keys is just the first step; protecting your personal information is equally important. No matter how deeply you hide your coins, if others know who you are and where you live, trouble might come knocking on your door.
Decoupling assets and identity is exactly the core logic of self-custody Bitcoin wallets. It is also the reason why Ledger exists as a business.
After the kidnapping case, the UK's Financial Times reported that Ledger was preparing for an IPO in the United States. Three investment banks, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays, are jointly underwriting the offering, with the listing venue chosen as the New York Stock Exchange.
At the same time, the price of Bitcoin is undergoing another sharp adjustment. It has fallen below $70,000 from the high of $126,000 in October 2025.
The halving of BTC did not affect the industry's progress; in January 2026, Ledger's valuation exceeded $4 billion.
I. Shovel Sellers
The cryptocurrency industry is full of rags-to-riches myths and stories of assets becoming worthless. Some people make hundreds of millions overnight, while others wake up to find their wallets emptied.
Ledger is an oddity in this industry. It doesn't issue coins, doesn't operate a trading platform, and doesn't do any DeFi. It only does one thing: sell a small device that looks like a USB stick, telling you to store your private keys inside, where hackers can't steal them.
What does the company Ledger do?
Selling hardware wallets, simply put, wallets that help people store Bitcoin private keys.
79 dollars each, sold over 7 million in ten years.
There is an old saying in the entrepreneurial world: during a gold rush, the most money is not made by the gold diggers, but by those who sell shovels and jeans. Simply put, Ledger is the one selling shovels in the crypto world.
The best thing about this business is that it doesn't require betting on whether the price of cryptocurrency will rise or fall.
During a bull market, new users rush in and need to buy a wallet to store the coins they just received. During a bear market, experienced users who have gone through crashes value the remaining coins they have even more and also need a secure place to store them.
When the price of cryptocurrency rises, your assets become more valuable, so it's worth spending 79 dollars to protect them. When the price drops, you especially don't want to make things worse by being hacked, so it's still worth spending 79 dollars for peace of mind.
No matter how you calculate it, Ledger wins.
In November 2022, during the week FTX collapsed, Ledger's official website servers were almost overwhelmed by traffic. "Not your keys, not your coins"—if the private keys are not in your hands, the coins are not yours. This old saying that has circulated in the cypherpunk community for years suddenly became a consensus among the general public overnight.
The trading platform may run away, the project team may run away, but an offline hardware device won't betray you.
When others are afraid, that's when their business is best.
The ability to go through cycles is the story Wall Street likes best.
The list of Ledger's investors reads like a directory of top-tier institutions: 10T Holdings, Samsung Venture, Morgan Creek, Cathay Innovation. They have raised a total of 575 million dollars. The valuation was 1.5 billion in 2023, and now it's going public on the NYSE at a 4 billion valuation. In less than two years, it has nearly tripled.
This account is actually very easy to calculate. The total market value of global crypto assets, even during this adjustment period, is over 200 billion US dollars. Ledger says that it holds about 20% of that, with over 10 billion US dollars worth of Bitcoin stored in users' devices.
Is a company that manages 100 billion USD in assets and is valued at 4 billion USD expensive?
Compared to custodians in traditional finance, this number is quite restrained.
II. Navigating the Cycle
Ledger didn't emerge overnight.
In 2014, several French engineers founded this company in Vierzon. At that time, the price of Bitcoin was fluctuating in the hundreds of dollars, and most people thought it was a Ponzi scheme.
Ten years have passed, and the company has gone through three complete bull and bear cycles. The frenzy of 2017, the crash of 2018, the frenzy again in 2021, the crash again in 2022, the ETF rally at the end of 2024, and the current adjustment.
In every cycle, Ledger survived, and became even bigger.
The secret is simple, it sells a necessity.
No matter if the coin price is 100,000 or 30,000, as long as you have coins in your hands, you need a secure place to store them. This demand will not disappear due to good or bad market conditions.
In 2025, the company's revenue reached a record high, hitting the "hundreds of millions of dollars" level. This was stated by CEO Gauthier himself. Compared to over 70 million dollars in 2024, the growth is substantial.
More importantly, the income structure is changing.
In the early days, Ledger sold hardware for $79 each, making a profit on each unit sold. Now the product line is more diverse. The entry-level Nano S Plus is still $79, the mid-range Nano X with Bluetooth is $149, and the high-end Stax with E Ink touchscreen is $279.
There is also software beyond the hardware. The Ledger Live app allows users to directly buy, swap, and stake coins, with the company taking a cut from each transaction. There is also Ledger Enterprise, a business service that provides custody solutions for institutional clients, serving more than 100 clients and managing assets in the billions of dollars.
From selling hardware to selling services, from one-time revenue to recurring revenue. It took Ledger ten years to take this path, and now the results are finally visible.
CEO Gauthier is not a founder. He previously served as COO at the French ad tech company Criteo, helping the company reach a market value of 2.1 billion euros and successfully go public. After that, he worked in venture capital for a few years and was invited to lead Ledger in 2019.
A professional manager with IPO experience, managing a company that is going for an IPO. The configuration is very reasonable.
After Gauthier took office, he did a few things. He brought in Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod, to help design new products, upgrading the product line from geek toys to consumer electronics. The Ledger Stax, priced at 279 dollars, looks like a Kindle and can display your NFT collection.
He has given the category of hardware wallets a touch of luxury.
In October last year, the company held a press conference called Ledger Op3n, and launched the new generation product Nano Gen5. It features a touch screen and a greatly enhanced interactive experience. Also released at the same time was the new version of Ledger Live App, which integrates more functions.
From products to services to ecosystems, what Ledger wants to do is be the gateway to the crypto world.
Three, ringing the bell
Ledger's going to the NYSE to ring the bell is not an isolated incident.
In 2025, crypto companies raised a total of $3.4 billion through IPOs. Stablecoin issuer Circle raised over $1 billion, and trading platform Bullish also raised over $1 billion. Trading platform Gemini rose 14% on its first day of trading. In January of this year, custodian service provider BitGo listed on the NYSE, rising 24.6% on its first day and reaching a market cap of $2.6 billion.
A window that had been closed for three years was opened again.
In the harsh winter of 2022, almost no one dared to mention an IPO. Luna collapsed, FTX exploded with bad news, Three Arrows Capital went bankrupt, and the entire industry was in disarray. At that time, it was already a relief to just survive, who still thought about going public.
The turning point came in 2024. The Bitcoin spot ETF was approved, and Wall Street money officially entered the market. Trump, during his campaign, promised to support the crypto industry and signed an executive order after being elected. The SEC changed its chair, and the regulatory stance clearly shifted.
The list of companies now queuing up to ring the bell is long, and successful ones are everywhere, from Circle to various trading platforms. There's also Kraken, the second-largest U.S. cryptocurrency trading platform, valued at $20 billion, aiming for the first half of this year. ConsenSys, the parent company of the MetaMask wallet, valued at $7 billion, has hired JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs as underwriters. South Korea's Bithumb has engaged Samsung Securities and is preparing for a listing in Seoul.
The crypto industry is undergoing a collective "coming-of-age ceremony."
In the past decade, this industry has grown in a savage way. ICOs, DeFi, NFTs, Meme coins, one wave after another of frenzies, with many making quick money and few doing solid work.
It's different now. Companies that have reached the IPO stage are survivors that have weathered the cycles. They have real revenue, auditable financial statements, and compliant operational systems.
This is the sign of a mature industry.
Ledger is a bit special among these companies. It is not an exchange, and its revenue does not rely on trading volume. It is not a stablecoin, so there is no need to worry about reserve audits. It is infrastructure, the "utilities" of the crypto world.
No matter which coins you trade or which chains you use, you always need a secure place to store your private keys. As long as this industry exists, and as long as people still hold crypto assets, Ledger's business will be there.
This certainty is the most important thing in the capital market.
Gauthier said a sentence: "The money in the crypto industry is in New York today, there's no second place in the world."
A French company chooses to list in New York. The founding team is in Paris, but the capital is in Manhattan. This has been a common path for global tech startups over the past decade.
When Bitcoin was born, Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to create a payment system that didn't require trust in any institution. Sixteen years later, the companies that have grown around Bitcoin are going one after another to the world's largest capital markets to receive the most traditional trust endorsements.
This shouldn't be considered a betrayal of the original intention; it's just that the industry has grown up.
The phase of savage growth has passed, and the next stage is institutionalization, compliance, and mainstreaming. For those still in this industry, this is actually good news.
The price of Bitcoin is still fluctuating. But the infrastructure built around Bitcoin is gradually moving into the mainstream world.
After all, the price of the coin being halved is just a brief comma in this cycle's progression.
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