Blockchain pioneer picks Hong Kong

Hong Kong was “absolutely the right choice” as Ledger’s Asia Pacific (APAC) home, the regional head for the French crypto-security giant Benjamin Soong asserted nearly one year after its October 2018 market entry into Asia.

Ledger came to Hong Kong as more companies deploy blockchain in their back-office functions, and just ahead of a new licensing regime which requires trading platforms and fund managers operating in the city to ensure their clients’ virtual assets are well protected. This calls for the services of digital-asset custodians, and the kind of solutions Ledger provides.

“We anticipated this was going to happen – we knew that for the cryptocurrency space to grow, traditional money from traditional asset managers has to start rolling in longer-term,” Mr Soong said.

Ledger’s hypothesis, which is also proving correct, is that even traditional funds and big commercial banks are exploring allocating a small portion of their assets into cryptocurrencies, he added. For this to happen, “custody is a must”.

Mr Soong said the expansion had let the company meet increasing demand for its enterprise solution, the Ledger Vault, and crypto hard wallet, the Nano S and Nano X.

“The Ledger Vault provides state-of-the-art-security by integrating the company's custom operating system, BOLOS, directly into the hardware security module chip – making it the only crypto-asset protection company to combine a secure chip with its own custom operating system,” Mr Soong said.

The Ledger Vault provided the information technology infrastructure for firms to completely manage and control their cryptocurrencies, allowing custodians, asset managers and traditional financial services firms to store and trade digital assets.

The Ledger Vault uses the same infrastructure as Ledger’s industry leading hardware wallets, the Ledger Nano S and Ledger Nano X. Ledger wallets isolate private keys from the owner's computer or smartphone, which are easily hackable, in order to protect the owner's cryptocurrencies. The wallets, which support more than 1,200 cryptocurrencies, let users check their accounts, and send and receive cryptocurrency payments with much less risk, Mr Soong said.
 
“Blockchain technology is evolving the financial system rapidly – it is critical that institutions and investors adopt security solutions that are equipped to face the new risks that come along with it,” he added.

“Secure storage of large multi-cryptocurrency funds is a highly complex challenge that cannot be solved by just implementing procedures. Institutions are looking for safer storage options along with integrated governance policies, but don't want to sacrifice operational efficiency – with our technology, investors don't have to compromise.”