Retail is pushing the Bitcoin price up, says Ledger CEO

As crypto prices recover after a slump last week, Pascal Gauthier, CEO of crypto wallet firm Ledger, addressed questions relating to the state of the crypto market.

In an interview taken by CNBC at the Crypto Finance Conference in St Moritz, Switzerland, Gauthier said the situation panning out with Bitcoin (BTC) comes as no surprise. The retail trend is prominent and it’s “always the same.” He explained:

“The number of addresses with the minimum number of BTC is actually growing compared to the number of whales. There is a profound retail trend everywhere in the world; they trust Bitcoin more and more. It’s the people that will push the price up.” 

Recent data from on-chain market intelligence provider Glassnode supports the claim. The number of BTC addresses with a non-zero balance is at all-time highs, topping out just short of 40 million. 

An insightful metric, the non-zero balance number offers a sitrep of Bitcoin adoption. More addresses infer more users are entering the Bitcoin network, a telltale sign that retail is on the march.

Related: Bitcoin wallet addresses created in November inched toward 1 million

On altcoins, Gauthier supplied a note of consternation about projects that have recently outperformed Bitcoin. He suggested that this year could be a year of consolidation for some cryptocurrencies:

“Last year they (cryptocurrencies) were projects coming into the light; this year they have to deliver in terms of applications running on top of these protocols.”

Gauthier said that Solana (SOL) has a good value proposition for nonfungible toekns, and is in a good place to compete with Ether (ETH). While some of the top 10 protocols enjoyed wild price speculation and price increases in 2021, the market anticipates “good things from these protocols.”

He concluded with a steadfast rule for blockchains: “The token of a blockchain is the security of that blockchain. The more expensive the token, the more secure the blockchain.”

Ledger hardware wallet currently supports over 50 different protocols. France's first crypto unicorn, Leger will launch a crypto debit card over the next three months. It will undoubtedly tap into its crypto experience in order to compete with the likes of Mastercard, who are also introducing crypto-linked cards.