Subscribe to our Telegram channel!
Trezor, a manufacturer of hardware crypto wallets, is ending its partnership with several resellers effective January 1. The reason is a scandalous investigation by competitor Ledger, which discovered that its Asian partner had been selling modified devices with hidden spy modules for years.
Trezor’s Chief Commercial Officer, Danny Sanders, stated that the «affected partners» will no longer receive new shipments of products as of January 1 and will lose their status as official representatives. Trezor has not disclosed the names or number of these companies. Resellers with whom Trezor will continue to work will have to adhere to stricter rules regarding the purchase, storage, and handling of products.
Sanders emphasized that the termination of the partnership does not imply an admission of any violations on the part of these companies. According to him, Trezor devices were not compromised. However, company management acknowledges that the main threat arises during logistics—when the wallet is in transit from the manufacturer to the buyer.
The scandal erupted after analysts from Ledger’s Donjon division discovered a hidden chip in wallets sold by the Asian company CryptoBilis. The chip read the seed phrase—the master key to the funds—and transmitted it to unknown attackers via mobile internet using a built-in eSIM card. According to estimates by an anonymous analyst from Specter, owners of the compromised wallets lost over $ 86 million; analyst Yfarmx estimates the losses at $ 103 million. Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, has already frozen $ 10 million in assets linked to the incident.
Wallet manufacturer OneKey has also severed ties with CryptoBilis. Customers who purchased OneKey products from this retailer between March 1 and October 12 can replace their device free of charge—even if it has already been activated. Owners of unused Ledger wallets purchased from CryptoBilis are advised not to set them up. Those who are already using such devices are advised to transfer their funds as soon as possible to a wallet with a seed phrase generated on a device purchased directly from Ledger.
The scandal has shaken the market, which Mordor Intelligence analysts estimate at $ 720 million this year, with the potential to grow to $ 2.25 billion by 2031. It is telling that Trezor itself was at the center of an incident back in September: hackers breached the company’s email provider’s system and sent phishing emails to wallet owners, posing as Trezor engineers.