Ledger Recover with Pascal Gauthier, NVK, Matt Odell & Harry Sudock
 
 

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“The thing with security is it works today, the question is: is it going to work tomorrow? There are new attackers, there’s new ways to attack etc which is why security is an always-evolving technology. ”
— Pascal Gauthier

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Pascal Gauthier is the CEO of Ledger, NVK is the founder of Coinkite, Matt Odell is a podcaster and Bitcoin educator and Harry Sudock is Cheif Strategy Officer at Griid. In this interview, we host a group discussion, regarding Ledger’s Recover firmware update. We talk about the questions this update has raised about the trade-offs between mitigating seed recovery risk over state seizure risks. 

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Full disclosure, Ledger is a sponsor of the What Bitcoin Did Podcast. 

Just under a week ago, Ledger launched a seed recovery service called Ledger Recover. There was an immediate backlash on Twitter, with various prominent voices raising concerns about the security implications. Fundamentally, does this feature open up users to hacking or state seizure risks? Or, is this a useful service that will support efforts to get more users to self-custody? 

The purpose of this show was to enable Pascal Gauthier, the CEO of Ledger, to explain the aims of Ledger’s seed recovery service, and the methods employed to protect users. The show then enabled trusted independent and prominent voices within the community (including a Ledger competitor) to set out their concerns and discuss them openly with Pascal. 

Should security for Bitcoin be provided using open or closed-source software? Given the challenges in providing robust security, are there any acceptable trade-offs? Can we afford anything less than full transparency from commercial companies involved in Bitcoin security? 

The rudimentary issue is whether Bitcoin security should be regarded as a binary choice. Should we as a community should aim for a minimum expectation of security? Or, should we take the world as it is and pragmatically make incremental improvements to people’s security? Can we afford as a community to have the majority of people custody on exchanges? Or, do we strive for higher ideals than seeing self-custody as an end in itself?

TIMESTAMPS

00:01:36: Introductions
00:02:17: Ledger's new seed recovery service
00:09:13: Security certification
00:15:35: Security trade-offs
00:29:05: Ledger vs Coinkite debate
00:36:24: KYC regulations
00:46:56: Seed recovery process
00:48:55: Mitigating state actor risks
01:06:09: Final comments

 

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SHOW NOTES

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Connect with NVK:

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Mentioned in the interview:

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