Crypto Hacks Hit New Highs, Fueling Ledger’s Best Year Yet

The head of Ledger, Pascal Gauthier, who founded the Paris-based company in 2014, said its revenues for 2025 had already hit "triple-digit millions." The growth has been fueled by a wave of hacking globally affecting companies and individual users. "We're being hacked more and more every day … hacking of your bank accounts, of your crypto, and it's not going to get better next year and the year after that," Gauthier told the Financial Times.

According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, approximately $2.2 billion in digital assets were stolen in the first half of 2025 alone, more than the total for all of 2024. About 23% of those breaches targeted individual wallets-a trend the firm described as "increasingly significant." The findings underscore a shift in the threat landscape: retail investors, not just exchanges, are now prime targets.

The rising attacks come at a time when bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have reached new record highs, helped by policy support from U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration has actively promoted the domestic digital-asset industry. That optimism has drawn new investors into the market, and in turn, more criminal attention. The single largest theft this year involved $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit, marking the biggest crypto heist on record.

Hardware-based “cold wallets,” which keep private keys offline, are becoming the most trusted line of defense. Sleek USB-style devices from Ledger, along with rival offerings from Trezor in the Czech Republic and Tangem in Switzerland, enable users to secure crypto holdings without having to entrust funds to exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, which have been subject to breaches.

Gauthier added that most consumer devices are fundamentally unfit for crypto security. "Smartphones and computers have been designed for communication and entertainment, not security," he said. "Our growth is coming from the realisation that hackers are getting more aggressive, and so you need to upgrade your security."

The company, which secures about $100 billion in bitcoin for customers, was valued at $1.5 billion in 2023 after attracting backing from 10T Holdings and True Global Ventures of Singapore. With sales accelerating ahead of the Black Friday and Christmas season, Gauthier confirmed Ledger is preparing for another fundraising round next year. Options on the table include a private placement or a possible listing in New York.

Industry observers say the broader security boom mirrors how investors' behaviour changes during bull markets, when rising token prices encourage both speculative trading and illicit activity, forcing users to take protection more seriously.

The push to expand Ledger's U.S. footprint comes amidst a broader narrative of consolidation in crypto infrastructure. As investors become more security-conscious, demand for hardware and custody solutions rises in tandem with institutional adoption. Financial institutions entering the tokenization and custody space-from Fidelity to Nomura's Laser Digital-are fostering a maturing ecosystem that values secure storage as much as trading performance.

For Ledger, that maturation represents both opportunity and responsibility. The company finds itself at the intersection of consumer hardware, financial technology, and cybersecurity, a not very common combination in a sector that still grapples with trust and regulation issues. According to analysts, the company's next funding round may hint at how investors value crypto-infrastructure providers today relative to speculative trading platforms.

Larger context: as crypto prices go up along with deeper mainstream participation, asset security is becoming intrinsic to market infrastructure itself. The losses of billions to hacks in 2025 alone, together with the shifting of more users to cold wallets, means that the distinction between digital security and financial self-sovereignty is blurring very fast.

Ledger's trajectory-from niche hardware start-up to billion-dollar custodian-captures this transition. Whether through a private raise or public listing, its next move will be a test of investor confidence not just in the company but in the idea that crypto's future depends on bringing security back into the hands of its users.