Tony Fadell, a prominent Silicon Valley executive known as the father of the iPod, unveiled his latest project on Tuesday – a hardware wallet used to store cryptocurrency offline. Fadell, 53, spent nearly a decade at Apple under Steve Jobs, where he oversaw the design of the portable music player and later helped create the company’s most iconic device, the iPhone.
After quitting Apple In 2008 he founded Nest Labs, a smart home device company. Nest was later acquired by tech giant Google for US$3.2 billion (around Rs.26,400 billion).
Now Fadell has teamed up with Ledger, the French tech company, to design a new offline cryptocurrency wallet.
Trading crypto requires the use of complex cryptographic keys used to authorize transactions. These keys are usually stored online, for example at an online exchange, which can make them more vulnerable to hacking or theft.
The recent collapse of crypto exchanges FTXin which more than $1 billion in customer funds (approx.
Previous models released by Ledger like Nano S and Nano S came in the form of USB memory sticks. Fadell’s new design, the Ledger Stax, is a credit card sized device with a curved back and electronic ink display.
“All secure hardware up to that point was like all MP3 players before it iPodand it was time for an iPod,” Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at Ledger, told Reuters.
Fadell had previously expressed skepticism about some elements of “Web 3.0,” a collective term that encompasses a variety of next-generation decentralized technologies, including cryptocurrency and the Metaverse.
The Ledger Stax will be sold online in early 2023 for $279 (approx. Rs. 23,000).
© Thomson Reuters 2022
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