Former Criteo COO joins cryptocurrency wallet company Ledger

Ledger, the Paris-headquartered cryptocurrency and bitcoin hardware wallet provider has announced the nomination of Pascal Gauthier as President.

Launched in 2014, Ledger already sold over 300,000 hardware wallets used to manage cryptocurrencies securely, in 165 countries.

The company, which currently has 62 employees in Paris, Vierzon, and San Francisco, is also working on enterprise-level solutions for financial institutions willing to enter the cryptocurrency market.

Eric Larchevêque, CEO at Ledger, commented:

“Pascal has a strong, proven track record of taking start-ups to the next level. As we keep expanding our hardware wallet line internationally and introducing new solutions to answer existing and future needs in the market, we are convinced that Pascal will be a fantastic addition to the team.”

Pascal started his career at Kelkoo, a price comparison service acquired by Yahoo for EUR 475 million in 2004. He then joined the advertising company Criteo in 2008 where he worked for five years as COO, being instrumental in the pivot to advertising, which led to the company’s global expansion towards a EUR 2.17 billion market capitalization.

His first investment after Criteo was in Teads.tv, a premium viewable advertising marketplace which was acquired earlier this year by Altice for EUR 256 million.* Before being nominated President at Ledger, Pascal worked as Venture Partner in Mosaic Ventures, a London based venture capital firm focusing on Series A stage companies. Pascal is also non-executive chairman of Kaiko, a financial data website on Bitcoin.

Pascal Gauthier, President at Ledger, explained:

“I started working with Ledger early 2015, as a seed investor and non-executive board member. I have been impressed by the speed at which Ledger developed a unique technology over the past few years, filling in a gap in the market for a secure, yet user friendly solution to manage cryptocurrencies using a hardware wallet, and thus supporting the ecosystem growth.”

“I am excited by the opportunity to join a fantastic, passionate team working on a distinctive technology for which I envision multiple use cases, as an increasing number of industries are in the process of adopting cryptocurrencies.”

This announcement follows the arrival of Jean-Michel Pailhon, ex-NYSE, as VP Corporate Development, back in May 2017. Eric Larchevêque remains CEO, supported by Thomas France, VP Business Development and Nicolas Bacca, CTO.