Cryptocurrency
ETF filings changed the Bitcoin narrative overnight — Ledger CEO
Over the past 12 months, some investors learned the hard way why they needed to move their crypto offline. Those who kept Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins on crypto exchanges like FTX lost control of their assets, sometimes forever. Events drew a red line under the storied crypto adage: “Not your keys, not your coins.”
FTX’s loss was hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger’s gain, however. The Bahamas-based exchange’s November 2022 bankruptcy filing delivered to Ledger “our biggest sales day ever,” the firm’s chief experience officer, Ian Rogers, told Cointelegraph, and “November turned out to be our biggest sales month on record.”
Paris-based Ledger has been on a strong growth curve recently, though the past year has not been without controversy. In May, for instance, the firm drew industry ire when it launched a new secret recovery phrase storage service called Ledger Recover. Still, it remains one of the best-known and most-used crypto wallet makers in the world.
Cointelegraph recently caught up with Rogers and Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier in New York City to discuss the new crypto climate in the United States, the latest trends in crypto storage and differences in doing business in the U.S. and Europe, among other topics.
Cointelegraph: Many think that the crypto/blockchain sector is still in the doldrums or moving sideways at best, but you see reasons to be cheerful even here in the U.S.?
Pascal Gauthier: What happened in 2023 — and went virtually unnoticed — is a change of tone regarding Bitcoin. When the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] implied that Bitcoin was a utility and/or commodity — and not a security [like other altcoins] — this triggered two things: large companies like BlackRock began their ETF [exchange-traded fund] application process, and then the media narrative around Bitcoin changed almost overnight.
As 2023 began, Bitcoin was for drug dealers, terrorists, bad for the planet, etc. — and suddenly it became completely kosher. The biggest financial institutions in the U.S. are suddenly doing Bitcoin.
CT: The BlackRock application for a spot-market Bitcoin ETF was a turning point?
PG: Big money is coming into crypto; it’s been announced. It may take a few years to really finally arrive, but if you look at Fidelity, BlackRock, Vanguard…
CT: What about U.S. regulations? Aren’t they still a barrier?
PG: The next administration will decide the fate of crypto in the United States. If Biden stays in power, this administration could continue to be aggressive toward crypto. If it’s someone else, we’ll see what happens.
CT: Let’s talk about offline storage devices. Mark Cuban said in 2022 that crypto wallets were “awful.” Did he have a point?
PG: A lot of our early customers used our [cold wallet] product to “buy and hold.” You would purchase a Ledger [device], you put your Bitcoin in it, and then you put it someplace and forget about it. But that’s not what we recommend now.
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Today, you can connect your wallet to Web3 and use your private keys to do many things, including buying, selling, swapping and staking crypto, as well as engaging with DApps [decentralized applications] and even declaring your taxes.
CT: On a 1 to 10 scale, where would you put cold wallets today in terms of user experience (UX)?
PG: For the industry, it’s a three. For Ledger, maybe a four — and we’re striving to be a 10. The industry has a lot to do in terms of UX and UI [user interface].
Ian Rogers: Your hardware-software combo today is not just about hardware and software. It’s an end-to-end experience.
When you’re buying an Apple iPhone, for instance, you’re not buying a piece of hardware; you’re buying into the Apple experience. We would ultimately like that to be the same thing with Ledger. Our approach is to do the absolute best user experience possible without compromising on security or self-custody.
CT: Still, there’s these UX issues like the 24 seed words you need to recover your private key if you lose your Ledger device. Some users go to great lengths to safeguard those words, even engraving them in steel just in case their house burns down. Doesn’t that sound sort of extreme?
PG: It is a little backwards to have something like a metal plate in your home. It’s not very 21st century. But we came up with a solution for this.
When you use a Ledger product, you end up with your Ledger device and a PIN code. And you will also have those 24 words that become your master password, basically. You need to keep those 24 words safe, and this is a major barrier to entry for a lot of people. They don’t trust themselves with those 24 words. They don’t trust themselves not to lose them.
So, we came up with a service called Ledger Recover [i.e., an optional paid subscription service provided by Coincover that is expected to launch in October] to deal with that. It allows you to shard your private key into three encrypted shards and then send them to three different custodians. They cannot do anything with the [single] encrypted shard. Only you can bring your 24 words together again if necessary.
CT: Don’t we already have something like that with “social recovery,” where you entrust your cold wallet recovery to several friends or “guardians?”
PG: Social recovery doesn’t really work. We’ve done something that resembles social recovery — but with businesses [i.e., Ledger, Coincover and EscrowTech]. You will have to present your ID if you want to initiate the shard recovery.
CT: You were criticized when you first announced the Ledger Recover service in May. Then, the launch was postponed amid the “backlash.” There were security concerns. People said these three shard-holding companies could reconstruct your private key.
PG: There is still a lot of education to be done for people to understand really how security works. People said [at that time] that it might be a good product if it were more transparent and easier to adopt. So we didn’t go live in May, as planned, in order to make the product ‘open source,’ which adds something in terms of transparency though not security,
CT: But couldn’t three sub-custodial companies, at least in theory, collaborate and reconstruct your privacy key?
PG: It’s not possible. They don’t have the necessary tools necessary to decrypt and reconstruct.
CT: Moving on to Ledger’s business model, do you sometimes worry that as big institutions like Fidelity Investments or banks like BNY Mellon enter the crypto space that users may simply park their crypto with them? If they get hacked, those giant custodial institutions will then make them whole again. Or at least that is sometimes the thinking.
PG: We’re a pure technology company. So when Fidelity decides to become a [retail] crypto custodian, they’ll probably come to us and buy a part of our technology to build their own technology stack.
CT: Your business strides several continents. You’re based in France, but you sell many of your devices in the United States. You have first-hand experience of those two business climates — the U.S. and Europe. Are there key differences when it comes to crypto?
PG: Europe has a tendency to over-regulate or regulate too fast, generally speaking. Sometimes people say, well, you know, Europe has clarity because it has MiCA [Markets in Crypto-Assets, the EU’s new crypto legislation], while in the U.S., there is a lack of clarity and lots of lawsuits.
But in the U.S., the way that the law is designed is slow and bumpy. It takes time to change laws in the U.S., but when change finally does come, it’s often for the better.
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If you look at the biggest tech champions in the world, they’re mostly American or Chinese. Zero are European.
CT: Are you linking heavy regulation with a lack of innovation?
PG: It’s hard to say if they are directly linked, but Europe has always had a heavy hand in terms of taxation and regulation.
Ian Rogers: To me, there’s no question they are linked. At LVMH [the French luxury goods conglomerate where Rogers served as chief digital officer for five years], we worked with a lot of startups. Every European startup wanted to get to the U.S. or China to “get scale” before they came back to Europe. Europe is not a good market if you’re a startup.
CT: But Ledger remains positive about the future of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology overall?
PG: Things are not necessarily what they seem to be. It was our [late] French president François Mitterrand, who said: “Give time for time.” There’s something going on now, and only the future will be able to make clear what is happening.
Ethereum has shown strength by reclaiming the critical 200-day moving average at $2.5K, signalling growing bullish momentum. If buying interest remains strong, a continued push toward the $2.8K resistance zone appears likely.
By Shayan
The Daily Chart
ETH recently found solid support at the key 100-day moving average near $2K, triggering a surge in buying interest and a shift in momentum.
The asset has successfully broken above the pivotal 200-day MA around $2.5K, a level that has repeatedly acted as resistance in recent weeks. This breakout marks a notable bullish development.
However, to sustain this move, ETH needs to hold above the 200-day average. If bulls defend this area, the path toward the major resistance at $2.8K becomes more viable. For now, the price is likely to consolidate within the $2.5K–$2.8K corridor until a clear breakout determines the next major direction.
The 4-Hour Chart
On the shorter timeframe, ETH’s price posted a sharp rally after buyers stepped in around the 0.5–0.618 Fibonacci retracement zone, reclaiming the previously broken lower boundary of the bullish flag pattern. This recovery has invalidated the prior bearish breakdown, indicating that the move was likely a bear trap.
Currently, the cryptocurrency is gaining traction, but it’s approaching a key bearish order block between $2625 and $2670, a zone where sellers may re-emerge.
If the buyers can overcome this supply area, a move toward the $2.8K resistance becomes increasingly probable. Conversely, failure to break through could trigger another phase of consolidation or a mild retracement.
By Shayan
Ethereum has just marked a significant milestone in Liquid Staking, reaching its highest monthly growth since June. Over the past month alone, staking activity surged by approximately 1 million ETH, an impressive 2.83% increase, setting a new monthly record for Ethereum staking participation.
As of July 1, Ethereum achieved a fresh all-time high in Liquid Staking, with 35.56 million ETH now staked. This trend is largely driven by accumulation from institutional entities, including ETFs, large holders, and crypto funds. These participants are increasingly opting to earn yield through Liquid Staking protocols while they wait for long-term price appreciation.
This trend reduces the circulating supply and reflects a strong conviction in Ethereum’s future valuation. While a major breakout in ETH’s price has yet to occur, the consistent rise in Liquid Staking and institutional accumulation indicates that Ethereum may be on the brink of a significant upward move.
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Cryptocurrency charts by TradingView.
[PRESS RELEASE – Hong Kong, Hong Kong, July 3rd, 2025]
Cooking.City, a recently introduced fair-launch platform, emphasizes ecosystem sustainability and long-term development. The project is backed by institutional investors including Jump and CMT Digital.
Today, Cooking.City fully launched, revealing its core mechanisms and points system to better align incentives between traders and developers while creating new ways to participate in on-chain launches.
Bringing Back Value Redistribution to Solana Fair Launches
Cooking.City is more than just another launchpad. It is a community-first platform focused on value redistribution instead of value extraction.
With Referral System, Cooking.City shares platform revenues with users. Referrers earn fee rebates and points based on their invitees’ trading activities. As the only launchpad which hasn’t launched its official token, Cooking.City aims to attract early users through highly-anticipated airdrops, encouraging interaction between traders and quality token launches.
Users can check the rules of rewards and point history on the dashboard every day. Top referrers and traders will receive significant reward multipliers to further amplify their future rewards.
Cooking Points: A Multi-Layered Incentive System
The Cooking Points system is now live. It rewards users who actively engage with the platform across multiple dimensions.
- Trading on Cooking.City: Higher trading volumes bring more points. And high market cap with healthy trading volume tokens are designated as Michelin Tokens, and trading them can offer bonus points multipliers.
- Referrals: Users can share referral codes and earn up to 10x points multipliers based on referred users’ trading activity.
- Social Quests: Liking, commenting, sharing official tweets, or using the #CookingCity tag unlocks additional point rewards.
Each user has a personal dashboard that updates daily. Points are retroactively calculated based on activity since launch and will be tied directly to future airdrop events.
Conviction Pool: A Capital-based Launch Feature to Signify Good Launch
Cooking.City’s Conviction Pool is a new mechanism that holds developers accountable and helps traders to tell quality launches from random ones.
- Developer Commitment: To opt in, developers can choose to deposit some SOL and set a price that signals their conviction in the token.
- Soft Price Protection: If the token graduates, the conviction pool will activate. If the price drops to a set level, users can swap their bought tokens into SOL from the conviction pool, acting like an insurance, establishing benchmarks for quality in the market. If the price does not fall below the set level, the developer can claim back the SOL from the conviction pool.
This design filters out low-effort launches, protects traders, and signals serious commitment from builders.
The Birthplace of Onchain Conviction
Cooking.City is creating a marketplace of convictions, allowing builders and investors to actualize and capture their faith through launches and trading. The launchpad is the first step towards its greater on-chain nation, effectively allowing more convicted projects to enter crypto through Cooking.City.
The team expects to diversify approaches of asset issuance and capital matchmaking through their evolving launch infrastructure and mechanisms.
About Cooking.City
Cooking.City is a pioneering platform designed to revolutionize token fair launches. By aligning values between builders, believers, and traders, Cooking.City creates new opportunities to reward quality launches and early support on token projects, encouraging builders and investors to grow together.
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Cryptocurrency
Gate Launches xStocks Trading Section, Bridging Crypto Finance and Global Capital Markets
[PRESS RELEASE – Panama City, Panama, July 3rd, 2025]
In July 2025, Gate, a global leading digital asset trading platform, officially launched its xStocks trading section, covering both spot and futures markets. The initial listings include 8 popular tokenized stocks, such as COINX, NVDAX, CRCLX, AAPLX, METAX, HOODX, TSLAX, and GOOGLX, enabling global users to trade tokenized stocks directly with crypto assets like USDT. Gate Alpha has also rolled out support for xStocks, listing MSTRx, CRCLx, SPYx, NVDAx, TSLAx, and AAPLx, further expanding users’ access to on-chain assets and strategic trading options.
This initiative not only diversifies investment channels for crypto users but also marks a new phase in the convergence of crypto finance and traditional markets. Gate is now the first platform to launch a futures market for tokenized stocks, establishing a fully closed-loop trading infrastructure at the intersection of digital and traditional finance.
Removing Barriers: Connecting Global Users to Wall Street
Gate’s xStocks trading section adopts a compliant, asset-backed tokenization model. All tokens are fully collateralized and represent publicly traded U.S. stocks. These tokens are freely transferable and compatible across multiple blockchains and ecosystems.
Unlike traditional brokers that require regional accounts, complex KYC, and fiat settlement, Gate’s tokenized stocks services are globally accessible and require no KYC, allowing users to invest using USDT and other crypto assets. This borderless trading model significantly lowers entry barriers for global participants, offering a seamless path for cross-border capital movement and global portfolio allocation.
The platform also supports 24/7 trading, fractional investment, and on-chain liquidity, breaking down traditional time and regulatory constraints, and delivering a highly flexible, decentralized investment experience that links TradFi and DeFi.
World-First Futures Market for Tokenized Stocks, Redefining Derivatives Boundaries
As the first platform globally to launch the futures market for tokenized stocks, Gate enables users to apply leverage and execute two-way strategies on U.S. stocks, all under a USDT pricing system, empowering more dynamic risk and return management.
The trading infrastructure has been fully optimized for this launch, with upgrades to matching engines, pricing models, and risk control systems. Tailored to the liquidity profiles of U.S. stocks and the behavioral patterns of crypto-native traders, the system delivers high responsiveness, strong compatibility, and robust user experience across both spot and futures markets.
A Strategic Leap Toward the Next-Generation Crypto Exchange
Gate’s expansion into tokenized stocks represents a key milestone in its long-term strategy of bridging traditional and future finance. By building crypto-native infrastructure for traditional assets, Gate is redefining how users access and interact with global capital markets.
Dr. Han, Founder and CEO of Gate, stated: “Our mission isn’t just to add a new asset class, but to transform the relationship between users and assets. We aim to create a truly global, borderless investment platform that empowers everyone to access financial opportunities worldwide.”
In 2025, Gate completed a major brand upgrade and transitioned to the unified domain Gate.com, marking a new chapter in its global strategy. The platform currently ranks Top 2 globally in spot trading volume, with continued strength in derivatives, liquidity depth, and user activity, reinforcing its position as a leader in global crypto financial infrastructure.
As the digital transformation of global finance accelerates, Gate’s launch of tokenized stocks offers a model for the industry and demonstrates a pioneering approach to integrating decentralized infrastructure with traditional capital markets, propelling the platform toward its vision as the next-generation crypto exchange.
About Gate
Gate, founded in 2013 by Dr. Han, is one of the world’s earliest cryptocurrency exchanges. The platform serves over 30 million users with 3,600+ digital assets and pioneered the industry’s first 100% proof-of-reserves. Beyond core trading services, Gate’s ecosystem includes Gate Wallet, Gate Ventures, and other innovative solutions, while its global partnerships extend to top-tier sports brands like Oracle Red Bull Racing in F1 and Inter.
For more information, users can visit: Website | X | Telegram | LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube
Disclaimer:
This content does not constitute an offer, solicitation, or recommendation. You should always seek independent professional advice before making investment decisions. Gate may restrict or prohibit certain services in specific jurisdictions. For more information, users can read the User Agreement via https://www.gate.com/user-agreement.
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