Another Wallet Hack. The ETF Went Up Anyway.

From Yesterday's Simply Bitcoin Live | Episode 1610

The Numbers

Price is clawing back toward 83K after a leverage flush this week, even with ETF outflows still dragging as a lagging signal.

The News

Ledger is investigating the theft of more than $86 million from hardware wallets bought through a Southeast Asian reseller called CryptoBilis. Onchain investigators traced the losses across dozens of wallets on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron: roughly $17.6 million in Bitcoin, about $42 million in Ethereum, and $16.5 million in Tron-based USDT. Ledger halted the reseller, which sells devices in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and is telling recent buyers not to set up their devices.

The leading theory is a supply chain attack. Former Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpelès flagged that Ledger devices sold through resellers have shown up tampered with, implanted with spyware built to steal passkeys. This is the second hardware wallet blowup this year, after more than $116 million drained from Cold Card wallets in August. BlackRock's IBIT ticked higher on the news anyway, which is either a coincidence or the best ad campaign self custody's attackers never got paid for.

Buy the hardware wallet from the manufacturer. Not the reseller, not the conference table, not the guy you trust at the meetup.

Glassnode co-founder Rafael Schultze-Kraft put a hard number on a debate Bitcoiners have had for years. About 6.26 million Bitcoin are held in addresses whose public keys are already visible on the blockchain, which comes out to 31.2% of the circulating supply. Of that, 4.33 million comes from plain address reuse, another 1.94 million from script types like P2PK and Taproot, and roughly 1.1 million of that P2PK exposure is attributed to Satoshi himself.

Exchanges are not helping. Coinbase sits at around 10% exposed, Binance at roughly 83%, and Bitfinex at 100%. Exposed supply has grown by 222,000 BTC since May alone, with exchanges accounting for 123,000 of that increase. None of this is an active exploit. It is a migration problem nobody has started solving.

The fix is boring: stop reusing addresses, and stop leaving coins on exchanges that reuse them for you.

Businesses bought 193,000 Bitcoin so far in 2026, and roughly 175,000 of that came from Strategy and Strive alone, per River Financial's year end report. That brings total business holdings to 1.64 million Bitcoin, about 7.8% of supply, even as total business inflows fell to $15.7 billion, down two thirds from last year.

Individuals sold a net 93,000 Bitcoin this year while governments added 10,000. SpaceX and Robinhood joined the list of public Bitcoin holders after going public in June, disclosing more than $1.5 billion between them. The number of public companies holding Bitcoin is up 10% year over year, and merchants accepting it grew 36%.

The Culture

A caller on Dave Ramsey's show said her husband holds enough Bitcoin to pay off their mortgage and then some. She wants to sell it now. He wants to wait because he thinks it keeps growing. One of Ramsey's co-hosts asked her the obvious question, "then why would you ever sell it if it's going to grow indefinitely," then answered it for her: because the tax bill grows too.

The hosts spent the rest of the call comparing Bitcoin to Beanie Babies and tulips, and telling her the real issue was control in the marriage, not the asset. It is the same conversation Bitcoiners have been having with outsiders since 2017. The numbers attached to it just got a lot bigger.

Stick to your guns. Pay off the mortgage with purchasing power, not principal.