Ledger is the global leader in the production and sale of hardware wallets, and Ledger Nano S Plus is its best-selling product, as it is the cheapest of its range.
A recent research by ResearchAndMarkets.com dedicated to the hardware wallet market in the USA states that an increase in the need for hardware wallets is expected in the coming years, due to greater awareness about security, and in particular regarding adequate practices for storing secret keys.
One thing that many cryptocurrency holders often ignore is that the tokens are not physically inside the wallet, but are always and only on the public blockchain.
What is stored in the wallet are the private keys of the public addresses where the tokens are deposited, and thanks to which it is possible to move them.
This means that anyone who owns those private keys can move the tokens to another address, which is why private keys must be stored with extreme care.
Hardware wallets such as the Ledger Nano S actually store them internally, so as not to make them accessible to anyone except the user of the wallet itself, but they also allow the seed with which these keys can be recreated to be recorded on other media.
In this way, in the event of loss of the wallet, all the private keys can be recovered by inserting the seed in another wallet.
Therefore, it is sufficient to keep the seed in total security to be practically certain that no one can steal the tokens kept on public addresses whose private keys are registered only in the hardware wallet.
Only those who were able to discover the seed could steal those tokens, and given that the seed is not needed to use those tokens and those addresses, because the private keys stored in the wallet are sufficient, it is possible, for example, to lock it in a safe and return it in this way untraceable.
However, the situation changes completely for the wallets of centralized exchanges, such as FTX, whose private keys are not kept in any way by the user, but only and exclusively by the exchange itself. If the latter closes, the user completely and definitively loses the possibility of moving his tokens.
In fact, precisely with the bankruptcy of FTX there was a significant boom in token withdrawals from exchanges, most likely moved to self-custody solutions such as hardware wallets.
This dynamic is destined to continue in the future, because it is not so rare that those who hold their tokens on third-party wallets, such as those of centralized exchanges, can lose access to them.
Although it requires more effort and more care, the alternative solution is the self-custody of the private keys and the seed, and among the various solutions that allow self-custody, the absolute favorite seems to be the hardware wallets.
In fact, it is considered the safest self-custody solution, because the private keys are not accessible to anyone, and the seed can be kept safe offline without affecting the use of the device.
Ledger is the world’s leading company in this market, and the Ledger Nano S Plus is its best-selling product, although it is not the flagship. The fact is that the cost of a Ledger Nano S Plus is significantly lower than the alternatives offered by the company, and the functions it offers are very similar to those of more expensive devices.
Suffice it to say that the Ledger Nano S Plus supports more than 5,000 cryptocurrencies and tokens on different blockchains, allows staking, also supports NFTs, and is connected to an exchange that also allows trading. It is therefore not surprising that it is the best-selling product, even if in the Ledger range it is the one on the lowest rung.
Research by ResearchAndMarkets.com claims that the US hardware wallet market will grow at a CAGR of 26.5% in the coming years, thanks to the ever-increasing demand for secure self-custody.
The experience accumulated over the years by Ledger, thanks also to the millions of Nano S devices now in operation around the world, means that giants like Samsung decide to rely on them for issues related precisely to the safe storage of crypto tokens.
However, we must not forget that such a growing market also inevitably attracts new competitors, and that therefore in reality Ledger’s market share could also decrease in the future. Furthermore, the Ledger Nano S has already been replaced by the Nano S Plus, and the company has already also launched new higher quality products.