If You Can't Trust Strangers Online, Who Can You Trust?

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Happy Monday, folks.

To the Moon, baby!

Except, this time, I'm (unfortunately) not talking stonks. In fact, far from it, as the market has been kinda shit this year with the S&P still down 17.5% YTD despite the bleeding slowing in recent weeks. This week might shake things around even more with both an impending Fed meeting + rate hike on Wednesday and a massive number of hours lost from people sitting in a theater for 30 hours to watch Avatar 2 on Friday.

No, I'm talking the actual Moon.

First, NASA decided to check if that little wheel of cheese in the sky missed it yet as the long-awaited Artemis I mission finished up its Tour de Luna, 25-day lap around the celestial body yesterday.

Nobody was in the Orion capsule when it scored a 9/10 on its dive back into the Pacific Ocean, but the plan is to use the success of this mission to prepare to run it back in 2024 with astronauts and then hit the trilogy in 2025 with plans to actually land on the Moon.

Never one to be overshadowed, the attention whore who is Elon Musk caught headlines not for raising the prices of Twitter Blue (well actually he did) nor for potentially killing thousands of monkeys while conducting research for his brain microchip company Neuralink (wait which he also did), but for launching his own mission to the Moon with a SpaceX mission carrying Japanese lunar lander, the ispace vehicle.

If all goes according to plan, ispace will become the first private company ever to land a vehicle on the Moon in April of 2023. Quite the roadtrip. Tbd whether the lander is programmed to ask "Are we there yet?" or "Can we stop at McDonalds?" every five minutes for the duration of the journey.

All of the PlayStation owners out there are breathing a sign of relief. 

Earlier this year, Microsoft (maker of Xbox) announced one of the largest corporate acquisitions of all time when it had agreed to terms for video game studio Activision Blizzard in a $69 billion deal. Now, the likelihood of that deal going through is about as likely as a Yankee fan admitting Big Papi was better than Jeter. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted last 3-1 in favor of halting the purchase, citing concerns over anti-competitive practices.

What makes the studio so valuable? Primarily, it makes this game series which you might have heard of: Call of Duty. In total, the title has sold 400 million copies across 16 mainstream releases, making it one of the the most popular (and valuable) franchises of all time.

The deal was originally announced after major rival Sony (PlayStation maker) acquired five gaming companies last fiscal year alone, including the studio behind the popular Demon Souls franchise. This would have added to an already loaded slate of Sony exclusives such as God of War and Spiderman.

It was expected that the AB acquisition meant that CoD would eventually be made an Xbox exclusive going forward, something which seems even more essential when considering Sony exclusives made up about half of the nominated games at last week's gaming awards.

However, at least for now, you can still play Black Ops or Modern Warfare on your PS4. I'd say PS5, the newest console in the PlayStation series, but with the shortage on these devices extending into its third year, we all know that nobody actually has one.

With so many fascinating industries in the world today, I often find it challenging to focus on just one to talk about. Thus, the power of different perspectives often comes to mind. That's why I recommend checking out my friends at StarKeys, another weekly startup feature newsletter that I've personally gotten a lot of value out of. The team's analysis is top-notch, and one can never get too much insight into the companies that are going to blow up in the next few years.

One of the biggest concerns for many with regards to getting involved with crypto is the issue of security. Well, that and the fact that Bitcoin has lost 63% of its value in about a year.

But security is a major issue, and the recent FTX fraud certainly doesn't help these concerns. While SBF's actions were criminal and warrant every consequence that comes his way, much of this loss was preventable as it resulted from the fact that the exchange was centralized (CEX), meaning that customers' funds were not really in their control.

CEXs are popular given their ease of use, particularly for beginners looking to simply trade crypto to try to make a buck. Users can easily connect their bank account, buy crypto, and let it be without the hassle of remembering seed phrases and wallet IDs. However, as the phrase goes, "not your keys, not your coins."

A safer alternative is a decentralized exchange (DEX), examples including Uniswap and dYdX, which requires a bit more work on the part of the customer, but with such a platform, only the user has access to the contents of the wallet, so no funny business can occur with execs loaning this money to themselves and then back to themselves again and then b...

Even these noncustodial wallets come with risks, though. Whenever a user grants wallet access for a transaction or contract agreement of some sort, there is always a chance that what they are signing off on isn't as advertised. It could grant a malicious actor access to the wallet, allowing them to drain it because of some kink in the underlying contract. This is why it's always important to know exactly what you're signing and never trust an actor until you've verified the deets of the underlying contract.

Sounds easy, right? This thought is still a pretty terrifying one. Even if an online wallet is technically in a user's control, many would still feel better if their crypto wasn't sitting online somewhere at all, and this fear is what inspired the development of the cold wallet.

These are devices which take your crypto offline and store them in a physical gadget, most of them looking sorta like USBs. Then, when a user wants to use their crypto, they can simply plug the device into their computer and move it back online.

This model has become pretty popular, and many point to the growing need for tighter security measures even among DEXes, but the newest entrant to the cold storage market might be the most secure, "coldest" wallet yet. In fact, that is exactly NGRAVE's claim.

The NGRAVE zero is a crypto hard wallet which doesn't connect to the internet at all. Instead, users have to scan the QR code to send information to other devices while the device itself remains as removed from "online" as dorm wifi.

Another important feature of "noncustodial" wallets, aka those held on either DEX or cold wallets, is that they require a seed phrase. These protective features are 12 word, nonsensical combinations which are required when accessing your wallet to ensure it's you. The only problem is that in the past, the only way to preserve this "password" was to write it down on pen and paper, not exactly very tech-forward for an industry as innovative as crypto. What if your dog came back for seconds after eating your homework?

zero has improved upon this model, too. Your device can come with its own "Everlasting Backup" fire- and water-resistant, stainless steel sheet to record and protect your seed phrase. These bad boys are castles, though they do cost an extra hundred euros.

Founded in 2018, the company has reportedly sold $2.2 million worth of its golden ticket product across 90 countries. Much of this has been aided by the well-discussed FTX collapse last month which has sparked a frenzy of hard wallet interest. Larger competitors such as Ledger and Trezor have similarly reported their highest week of sales ever, reflecting a general distrust of any exchange, decentralized or not.

The company also recently announced a $15 million Series A fundraising effort targeting a $75 million post-money valuation, led by Binance as part of the centralized exchange and avid web3 investor's crypto recovery campaign.

In 2020, the hardware crypto storage market was worth $167.7 million, and that number is expected to compound at 33.7% annually to top $1 billion by as soon as 2027, potentially even faster with the rapid growth in demand for CEX alternatives. Ledger currently owns about an eighth of that with $20.7 million in revenue, but this leaves plenty of room for growth for other competitors, both in absolute terms but also in eating into Ledger's lead.

It's a large and rapidly growing market, and for a company that differentiates itself as starkly as NGRAVE does, this means plenty of market opportunity going forwards.

The hard wallet industry is dominated by one big name, the aforementioned Ledger ($1.5 billion valuation), but also features other upstart competitors such as Trezor, BitBox, and KeepKey.

Being the youngest of these companies places NGRAVE at a severe disadvantage. This obstacle is particularly detrimental in an industry such as security where consumers are looking for trust, something that is often associated with well-known and established brands.

None of these other companies offers the offline security that NGRAVE does, though.

Being the most expensive of the group might be a negative thing in most industries, but in security, it can actually be a plus. Consumers often associate price with quality, warranted or not. Seeing the four-double-zero euro price tag on the zero subconsciously tells customers that they're paying for the best of the best.

The devices take security to even greater lengths than the major competitors, too. Beyond the lack of internet access and Death Star-like seed storage, the devices are actually the only ones to feature biometric security measures such as Touch ID and even cameras to ensure that you're the one trying to send $6k worth of ETH for that giraffe NFT.

Overcoming the entrenched brands will be challenging, but the far superior security measures in place should allow the company to excel despite having an uphill climb.

The Brussels-based company was founded by a team of avid crypto believers, and they claim that their early conviction in the space led them to become victims in some of the more notorious hacks in the history of the sector.

They have startup experience across crypto, business, and algo trading, meaning they absolutely have the technical expertise to build a great product. However, it was their own experience with suffering from hacks that inspired them to dive into founding NGRAVE. Startups are hard. You need some serious conviction to weather the storm. Experiencing the pain point as personally as they have, I am confident that this dedication is present.

TLDR, NGRAVE is building the strongest, most secure crypto hard wallet on the market. Its innovative offline model allows it to offer security that no other wallet can offer, even in a market that is growing as rapidly as this one, particularly with the recent shockwaves sent through the crypto space. While overcoming entrenched competitors will be challenging, the superiority of the zero product and the conviction of the strong founding team set the company up for a strong future. NGRAVE, YGMI.

Cheers to another day,

Trey

P.S. Interested in the business of college football? Make sure to check out Pigskin Economics, a once-per-week breakdown of the biggest topics going from the sideline to the executive suite.