If you own a Ledger Nano S or a Ledger Nano X hardware wallet, you might have noticed the phrase: “Vires in Numeris” appear in multiple places. Namely, engraved on the Ledger Nano S, and on the device’s lock screen.

But, what does it mean?

Vires in Numeris simply means strength in numbers. A very commonly used slogan from other brands. One of the most well known being one of the decade’s best NBA teams, the Golden State Warriors, and of course, the one and only Bitcoin.

But again, what does it mean?

While in the Golden State Warriors case, vires in numeris represents the remarkably enormous number of points the Golden State Warriors players acquire throughout the seasons, the meaning is a lot different in the case of Ledger and Bitcoin.

In Bitcoin and Ledger’s case, the meaning can differ from person to person. I mean, Bitcoin is decentralized right?

Mostly though, the phrase “Vires in Numeris” or “strength in numbers” gained popularity on an old forum thread on Bitcointalk, whereas majority decided to go with this slogan due to it’s simplicity compared to the alternatives.

It’s a sort of paraphrase from the phrases “in math we trust” or “trust in cryptography“, giving emphasis on one of the biggest selling points of Bitcoin: being that we wouldn’t need to trust a central bank or central authorities in general. Instead, we only need to trust Bitcoin’s code.

Another interpretation on “Vires in Numeris” is about how hard to crack Bitcoin private keys:

Imagine how many grains of sand there are on planet earth.

Now imagine if we had 20,000 planets. Visit any planet, go to any beach and pick up 1 grain of sand.

This grain is special because you chose it, you will hide your bitcoins under this grain of sand. No one will ever, ever find it unless you tell them where it is.

Think how long it would take for someone to find it without knowing where to look? The odds are 1 in a “quindecillion”. Daftspunky | r/Bitcoin

With central authority comes power and control, which ultimately can affect the lives of the masses when corruption or mismanagement occurs.

For a deeper dive unto Bitcoin, we heavily suggest reading Andreas Antonopoulos’ books, The Internet of Money Book Series.