Ian Rogers tells me I need a crypto wallet

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Tv & Film, Business News, News

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I wanted to talk to Ian Rogers about his fascinating career. He wanted to talk to me about Ledger, the crypto wallet company he’s working at now. So we did both things. Background: Rogers was an important figure in the digital music business, back when the music business was being fundamentally reshaped by digital. He helped the Beastie Boys get on the internet, long before every band did that. Then he helped bring digital music to millions of people in the MP3 era - first at AOL, then Yahoo — and then in the streaming era — first at Beats, and then Apple Music. Then he did digital stuff at LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate. Now he’s chief experience officer at Ledger, a French company that has sold 7 million physical storage devices for crypto. I remain confused and skeptical about crypto, but I’m always open to hearing from folks who are passionate about it — to see if they can convince me that I’m missing something. And the most persuasive argument I hear is usually from folks like Rogers — people who were around when the internet was novel and exciting in the 90s, and think they’re seeing the same kind of tectonic shift this time around. It’s a pitch that’s part FOMO — you wouldn’t want to be one of the people who thought the internet was a fad in 1995, right? — and part blue-sky optimism: What if it was 1995 and you could get in on the ground floor of the internet? Take a listen and let me know what you think. Help us plan for the future of Channels by filling out a brief survey: ⁠⁠voxmedia.com/survey⁠⁠. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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1:33.1	tis and see supply from the vox media podcast network this is channels for peter kof That is me. I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider.
1:47.5	And today I'm talking to Ian Rogers, who is now the chief experience officer at Ledger, which may not make sense to some of you.
1:55.4	But some of you may know who Ian Rogers is because Ian was a pioneer in digital music. He started out helping the
2:02.8	Beastie Boys get onto the web, ended up at important jobs at AOL, and then Yahoo, and eventually
2:08.3	co-founded beats music, which Apple bought. That is why I know Ian, and I wanted to talk to him about
2:13.6	some of those experiences and what he thinks about them now and if there are lessons to be
2:18.1	learned from what now seem like arcane fights, fights like whether MP3 should have DRM.
2:24.3	Trust me, this was a very big deal 20 years ago and I was curious whether it resonated with
2:28.8	Ian today.
	...

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