Ledger CEO says everybody will be hacked at some point, Ledger included

Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier said on 10 November that nobody in crypto can count on staying safe from hackers, his own company included. In a Bloomberg Crypto interview he put this year’s thefts at $12 billion and named AI and quantum computers as the next threats.

“Everybody will be hacked at some point. Perfect security doesn’t exist.”

— Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger, Bloomberg Crypto interview, 10 November 2026

Quote source: crypto.news, 11 November 2026.

Gauthier gave about $9 billion for last year and $12 billion for this one. Trackers count less. DefiLlama recorded $8.78 billion across 328 hacks by 4 November, and Chainalysis put stolen funds in 2025 at $3.4 billion. The higher estimates also count scams and impersonation.

One exchange hack makes most of the year

On 29 October attackers emptied a Binance hot wallet of about $6.3 billion in under four hours, about 72% of everything DefiLlama counts for 2026. They had spent months on employees’ computers before they reached the internal signing service. The FBI tied the Binance hack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group, and the exchange said users would not bear the loss. Without it, the year’s hacks come to about $2.42 billion.

Why he still backs self-custody

Gauthier used Binance to argue for holding your own keys. When millions of owners hold their own coins, an attacker has to break into each wallet instead of one exchange. He listed FTX, Bybit and Binance as the big centralized losses.

Ledger has a case of its own. In October investigators found tampered Ledger devices sold through a reseller in Southeast Asia: a hidden implant captured the 24-word seed phrase and sent it out over a cellular link. Singapore police reported at least two cases in retail stores since 10 September.

Gauthier put losses tied to compromised Ledger devices at about $90 million, or 0.01% of the assets Ledger protects. By that ratio Ledger guards around $900 billion, by our calculation. The company has not published that base.

AI and quantum computers

Gauthier said AI makes attackers stronger. Crypto.news noted that this applies to phishing and impersonation more than to physical implants. Quantum computers could one day break the signatures that protect wallets today, and he named them as the threat after that.

Users on X pushed back: one wrote that Ledger sells its devices so that people do not get hacked. Gauthier has made the point before. In August he told U.Today that the industry should build systems that protect assets even when users make mistakes.

If you keep coins on a hardware wallet, buy it from the maker, never type the seed phrase into a phone or computer and read every transaction before you sign it. A cold wallet keeps the key offline; our checklist covers the rest.

Gauthier and Ledger supplied the $12 billion and $90 million figures, and independent trackers count thefts with their own methods. This is a news report, not advice on where to store your crypto.