On June 5th, YZi Labs announced via Twitter that they have invested in the open-source hardware wallet company OneKey.
This is the first time in 7 years that Binance-related resources have supported a hardware wallet project since investing in SafePal in 2018 (Note: In 2022, Binance Labs announced a strategic investment in the Belgian hardware wallet manufacturer NGRAVE, with undisclosed amount, which received low attention in the Chinese-speaking region and will not be discussed in this article), which can be considered "restrained" and therefore particularly noteworthy, reigniting industry discussions about whether "hardware wallets are a good business".
From a timeline perspective, after the FTX incident in 2022, the importance of self-custody has been repeatedly verified. Binance's two (publicly disclosed) investments in seven years also fully demonstrate that this is not random, but a selective betting logic.
So the question arises: Are hardware wallets still a good business? Or in other words, after experiencing bull and bear cycles, regulatory storms, and security incidents, has it already transcended a simple profitable business and become a Web3 infrastructure of trust?
Is a Hardware Wallet a Good Business?
Hardware wallets have always been a business that is "difficult for newcomers to enter and challenging for established players to grow".
High barriers to entry, high education costs, thin hardware margins, and long user conversion cycles are structural challenges inherent to this track. Therefore, even after more than a decade of Web3 development, hardware wallets have always been viewed as the "ultimate solution" for asset security, but have remained separated from widespread adoption by psychological and usage thresholds.
(Translation continues in the same manner for the entire text)Here's the English translation:However, SafePal, despite having mass-produced multiple hardware wallets, still follows a consumer-friendly route. For instance, among its currently available products, the S 1 Pro is the highest-priced at $89.99, the X 1 Bluetooth version is $69.9, and the S 1 is as low as $49.99.
It's worth noting that SafePal is one of the few hardware wallet projects with its own token—— in 2021, it launched SFP through Binance IEO Launchpad, which further increased its recognition among Chinese-speaking users. Because of this, SafePal's characteristics have always been deeply integrated with the Binance ecosystem:
SafePal is currently the only wallet product deeply integrated with Binance—— the APP directly provides Binance's spot trading, leveraged trading, contract trading, and financial functions (in sub-account form), while also lightly integrating Binance's fiat deposit and withdrawal channels, essentially allowing users to share Binance's trading liquidity and deposit/withdrawal channels within the SafePal wallet, basically meeting daily trading needs.
Moreover, SafePal has a first-mover advantage in supporting BNB Chain activities and ecosystem collaboration, such as currently supporting gas-free transfers of stablecoins on BNB Chain (the author currently uses the SafePal App to transfer stablecoins like USDT/USDC to save on gas fees).
It's worth noting that in April, SafePal co-founder Veronica became a mentor for YZi Labs' new incubator period, which to some extent reflects its long-term relationship with the Binance VC system and industry influence.
[The rest of the translation follows the same approach, maintaining the original formatting and translating the text to English while preserving any HTML tags.]
