100 Tokens By 2020: Ledger Pledges Big Expansion for Crypto Custody

The race among crypto custodians to secure high-end clients is growing fiercer by the day.

Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, the company will add support for new crypto assets on the first Tuesday of each month, starting in August, with a goal of having more than 100 supported by the end of 2019.

While Ledger, founded in 2014, is primarily known for its hardware wallet and corresponding app for individual bitcoin users, CEO Eric Larcheveque cited its newer business lines - which offer custody services to hedge funds and other big players - as the driver behind this "Token Tuesdays" initiative.

Thousands of wealthy accredited investors are on a waiting list for the crypto key management startup Casa, which is scheduled to release its self-managed bitcoin solution in August and eventually add other tokens.

Further, Ledger president Pascal Gauthier said bringing traditional players into the wider crypto ecosystem would bolster bitcoin's real-world value, even if these investors ultimately buy other crypto assets.

Unlike its predecessor, which was really several apps in one, the new Ledger Live automatically pushes updates to all parts of the app, so the company can add support for new tokens faster.

"The Live [app] is the first step in this direction because it will give us a new foundation, a new platform, where we can add as much crypto as we want."

Open-source tools for Ledger Live also allow external communities to build support features for their favorite crypto.

To some, the rush to offer token custody solutions to Wall Street incumbents may seem hard to square with the crypto community's "Be your own bank" philosophy.

The other is called the Vault, an enterprise-grade custody solution for teams at an institution, like traders at a hedge fund, to self-manage crypto assets, an arrangement that's more in line with the crypto community's ethos.