By Business & Finance 
Digital wallet company Ledger SAS has obtained €61 million ($75 million) from investors. Among the investors is Draper Esprit.
Ledger CEO Eric Larcheveque said: “Everything blockchain depends on keeping the private key secure.
“If you keep this private key on your computer, it’s like buying gold bars and storing them in plain sight on top of your chimney.”
Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency in the world but has taken a hit over the last few weeks – compared to its huge surge in the markets at the end of 2017 – over halving in the space of a month.
Ledger makes USB dongles that contain chips for safely storing digital currency passwords and is currently raising money for security, hiring, R&D and expansion. The company is looking to sell three to six million hardware wallets in 2018. According to Larcheveque, Ledger has sold about a million.
With offices in Paris and San Francisco, Ledger made revenue of €46 million last year, which is split across the US, Europe and Asia. Revenue was €600,000 in 2016. Since 2014, it has raised €70 million (including this round).
Larcheveque said: “Eventually we’ll be able to put our software on other hardware – that’s a hint at our future roadmap.
“Ultimately we want to be a technology giant securing Bitcoin and blockchain infrastructure.”
One of the main investors in Ledger, Draper Esprit, has a Dublin office which focuses majorly on tech investment and encouragement of start-ups, outlined here by Nicola McClafferty, an Investment Director at Draper Esprit.
