Coinbase announces support for hardware wallets, starting with Ledger

Major exchange Coinbase has announced it will begin to supporting crypto hardware wallets, starting with Ledger. The two companies made the announcement at the Ledger Open conference, which is taking place in Paris on Dec 9 and 10.

Ledger is a major supplier of cold hardware wallets, which store users’ private keys more securely than hot online wallets.

Users of the Coinbase Wallet browser extension will be able to connect their Ledger hardware wallets, maintaining self-custody and full controlover their assets.

The partnership will be rolled out in phases, starting in the first quarter of 2022. Further down the track, the Coinbase mobile app will also support Ledger hardware wallets.

Max Branzburg, VP of Product at Coinbase said: “we're excited to share more announcements on how we're making Coinbase Wallet the safest and most secure way to participate in Web3 over the coming months.”

Coinbase stores 12% of all crypto

Meanwhile, Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas made some big statements in her testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services on Dec 8. She claimed that Coinbase stores about 12% of all crypto across more than 150 asset types and said crypto was moving beyond simple coin swaps.

“Nearly 50% of our transacting customers are doing something other than buying and selling crypto, which indicates to us that crypto is moving beyond its initial investment phase into the long expected utility phase,” she said.

Related: Why hardware wallets might not offer as much protection as you think, explained

Coinbase claims to have over 73 million customers globally, including 10,000 institutions and 185,000 application developers.