Crypto wallet maker Ledger has raised the bulk of its planned €100 million ($109 million) by closing its first funding round, according to Bloomberg. The company is now valued by investors at €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion).

In an official statement, Pascal Gauthier, Chairman and CEO of Ledger, said the funds raised will accelerate the company’s mission to distribute its devices to hundreds of millions of people in the crypto ecosystem. These funds will catalyze a new generation of devices built with security in mind when managing digital assets and other products using blockchain technology.

“Today Ledger announced a funding round. I am grateful for the continued support of our long-term investors and welcome new investors supporting the ongoing undeniable revolution in value and equipment. These funds will accelerate our mission to bring next-generation secure consumer devices to hundreds of millions of people exploring critical blockchain-enabled digital assets and technologies.”

According to the same Bloomberg agency, the French crypto wallet company plans to conduct a second and third round of capital raising simultaneously in April due to high investor interest.

Institutional investors participating in the latest funding round include Morgan Creek, Cité Gestion SPV, Digital Finance Group, VaynerFund, True Global Ventures and 10T.

“Suddenly, people thought that it was actually dangerous to leave cryptocurrencies on an exchange. 2023 is even better for us, because now you can’t even leave money in a Swiss bank,” said Pascal Gauthier.

According to him, Ledger had its best sales in November 2022 after the FTX crash. Ledger Live, an app for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, grew 200% year-on-year in revenue. According to Ledger, now more than 20% of all cryptocurrencies in the world and 30% of NFTs are stored on its devices.

Galaxy S23 smartphones helped Samsung regain its leadership in the smartphone market in February. Prior to this, Apple led the market for several months thanks to the new iPhones.

According to Counterpoint data cited by Business Korea, Samsung captured 21.1% of the market, up 3.5 percentage points from a month earlier. Apple’s share dropped from 20.9% to 20.2%. Next came Xiaomi (11.5%), Oppo (8.9%) and Vivo (8.2%).

In total, 89.6 million smartphones were sold in the world in February, which is 15% less than a year earlier. At the same time, the situation is better in the USA: sales fell only by 4% in annual terms. At the same time in Europe, the figure fell by 22%!

Xiaomi and Redmi president Lu Weibing has officially confirmed that the Redmi Note 12 Turbo Harry Potter Edition smartphone has gone on sale in China today along with the standard edition.

Buyers are offered the only version of Redmi Note 12 Turbo Harry Potter Edition, which is equipped with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of flash memory, for $ 350.

Redmi Note 12 Turbo Harry Potter Edition received a unique back design, an exclusive system theme with matching icons and sound effects, and a gift box with various bonuses.

Inside, in addition to the smartphone itself, buyers are waiting for an original case that hides only half of the back of the smartphone, a clip for the SIM card tray, reminiscent of platform 9 and 3/4, a letter from Hogwarts and a map of marauders. Of course, the package includes a charger and a cable.

As for the standard version of Redmi Note 12, the smartphone became the best-selling mobile device in the price range from $290 to $440 in China, and the version with 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of flash memory set a historical record in the industry: exceeded the total sales in 5 minutes of all smartphones with the same amount of memory over the same period of time. The new batch will go on sale April 6th.

Previously, Lu Weibing announced the achievements of the Redmi Note series of mobile phones. The cumulative sales volume over the past 10 years has exceeded 320 million units.