After the Ledger Reseller Hack, Austin Campbell Says Self-Custody Users Should Be ‘Over-Solving for Simplicity’

What happened

The Bits + Bips host said setups built on vendors and devices that individuals can't vet are where people got hurt, while co-host Chris Perkins said intermediaries "may be wanted." Austin Campbell , founder of Zero Knowledge Group, said the wallet drains tied to Ledger devices sold through the reseller CryptoBilis pointed to “a big misunderstanding of information security in this space.”

Campbell said on the show, Bits + Bips, recorded Oct. 12, that many tools people use to guard their own keys “rely upon a bunch of things like vendors you cannot really do diligence, or devices that you can’t easily take apart and understand, and this is where people have got themselves into trouble.”

He offered a hypothetical: a hot wallet whose private key was written down, stored in a fully encrypted password manager and never used to send a transaction. He said “nothing’s been stolen” from a wallet set up that way.