Bought a Ledger from an official seller—and lost everything
People bought Ledgers from an official reseller and, according to analysts’ estimates, lost more than $86 million.
Since October 9, wallets have been emptied across Southeast Asia belonging to people who bought Ledger devices from the seller CryptoBilis. Ledger has stopped sales through the reseller and advises users to transfer everything to a new device with a new seed phrase. Researchers’ theory is that a chip in the casing reads the seed during setup. The cause has not been officially confirmed.
My take: a cold wallet protects you only if the journey from the factory to your hands is clean. A reseller, “almost new from OLX,” a box without the seal—that’s the same vulnerability. $BTC and $ETH have nothing to do with it: it wasn’t the blockchain that was compromised, but trust in the intermediary.
What I do: I don’t have a cold wallet yet; my funds are deposited on Binance. When I get one, I’ll buy it only from the manufacturer’s website and generate the seed myself.
I’ve already paid for trusting an intermediary: I gave a copy trader access to my account, and he turned out to be a scammer.
Where did you buy your hardware wallet?
Subscribe—I’ll break down Binance’s withdrawal address whitelist next.
#WayOfCryptos $BTC $ETH
People bought Ledgers from an official reseller and, according to analysts’ estimates, lost more than $86 million.
Since October 9, wallets have been emptied across Southeast Asia belonging to people who bought Ledger devices from the seller CryptoBilis. Ledger has stopped sales through the reseller and advises users to transfer everything to a new device with a new seed phrase. Researchers’ theory is that a chip in the casing reads the seed during setup. The cause has not been officially confirmed.
My take: a cold wallet protects you only if the journey from the factory to your hands is clean. A reseller, “almost new from OLX,” a box without the seal—that’s the same vulnerability. $BTC and $ETH have nothing to do with it: it wasn’t the blockchain that was compromised, but trust in the intermediary.
What I do: I don’t have a cold wallet yet; my funds are deposited on Binance. When I get one, I’ll buy it only from the manufacturer’s website and generate the seed myself.
I’ve already paid for trusting an intermediary: I gave a copy trader access to my account, and he turned out to be a scammer.
Where did you buy your hardware wallet?
Subscribe—I’ll break down Binance’s withdrawal address whitelist next.
#WayOfCryptos $BTC $ETH