Recently, there’s been a crypto theft incident involving Ledger’s distributor channels. According to third-party estimates, the losses might be close to $100 million, though the official amount hasn’t been confirmed yet. A lot of people buy hardware wallets to give their assets some peace of mind: private keys stay offline, seed phrases don’t get leaked—should be safe, right? But Ledger has confirmed that at least one affected device contained unauthorized hardware implants. It’s hard to guard against everything. You carefully store your seed phrase and double-check every transaction, but you might not expect that the device could’ve been tampered with before it even reached your hands. According to Ledger’s current statement, all confirmed cases involve the Southeast Asian distributor CryptoBilis. Their internal systems and direct sales channels remain unaffected. The exact attack mechanism is still under investigation, so it’s premature to conclude that all Ledgers are unsafe. However, this incident has exposed an often-overlooked issue: when we buy a hardware wallet, we’re not just trusting a piece of hardware—we’re trusting the entire chain from production to delivery. We often say, “Not your keys, not your coins.” That’s true, but once you control your private keys, responsibilities like purchasing devices, backing up seed phrases, verifying authorizations, and planning for recovery all fall on you. Hardware wallets can reduce the risk of private key exposure, but they can’t solve every security problem for us. For me personally, I usually use hardware wallets as cold wallets to store some assets long-term and rarely connect them to applications. For daily transactions, I use a separate small wallet. When it comes to crypto asset security, being too lazy or too diligent isn’t ideal—too many unnecessary operations can also lead to issues. The key is risk isolation and reasonable asset distribution. If a black swan event happens, you need to keep the losses within an acceptable range. No one can guarantee absolute security for crypto assets. The best we can do is think a step ahead and leave room for both operational mistakes and unforeseen risks.