BTCC co-founder Bobby Lee has started another crypto venture, called Ballet, and launched a hardware wallet with support for multiple digital currencies.
Announced at Coindesk’s Invest: Asia event on Thursday, the hardware wallet will initially support four Cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and XRP - along with dozens of ERC20 tokens.
Unlike most hardware wallets, Ballet will generate public addresses and private keys for every wallet before shipping to the buyer. This, per the company, will increase its adoption outside of the crypto enthusiast scene.
Moreover, addressing the security concerns of this pre-setup, Lee assured that the company deletes the data after the generation process.
Push to attract non-crypto users to hardware wallets
The wallet also features a minimal design with a piece of metal and a QR code on the top, resembling a credit card. It also hosts two strings of encryption code - one of which is coated and users have to scratch it off to reveal.
To compete against popular hardware wallet platforms like Ledger, Lee’s company also kept the price of Ballet on the lower side - buyers can get one for as low as $29 if pre-ordered.
Lee is well known in the crypto sphere and also headed BTCC, which is one of China’s earliest crypto exchanges, after joining the company in 2013. The exchange was sold in 2018 to a Hong Kong-based Blockchain investment fund amid the Chinese government's crackdown on digital asset exchanges and initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Headquartered in Las Vegas, Lee’s new venture employs 20 staffers across the globe. The company also raised an undisclosed sum in its seed round from Rabbit Capital, a venture capital firm which also backed Coinbase.
Similar to Ballet, another startup called Status launched a credit card-shaped crypto hardware wallet with a price tag of $29.
