‘Self-custody will die very quickly’ – Ledger wallet theft hits $91M

Ledger theft has hit $91 million, spanning nearly 500 addresses, and raises questions about the future of crypto self-custody. 

The Tron network is the hardest hit, with 276 victim addresses drained of about $64.5 million. The Bitcoin [BTC] addresses are the second most affected (276 addresses), losing $17.7 million, while the Ethereum [ETH] ecosystem suffered $8.8 million across 55 addresses. 

Because the impact on BNB Chain, Base, Avalanche, and other chains hasn’t been fully traced, Galaxy’s head of research, Alex Thorn, viewed the $91 million as a “floor” of total theft. Simply put, the figure could rise after Ledger completes a full audit in the coming days. 

Ledger attacker begins laundering funds

As of the 9th of October, about $73 million of the stolen funds sits in attacker-controlled wallets across Bitcoin, Ethereum [ETH], and Tron [TRX]. $3 million has been moved into Tornado Cash and other relay accounts. 

Some stolen USDT has been converted to USDD ($13.65 million). Surprisingly, the attacker has also moved some funds to Binance as security analysts press the exchange to freeze them. 

Both Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and the current CEO Richard Teng vowed to help whenever the need arises to recover the funds. In particular, Teng said,