Bitcoin Magazine

Poetic Justice: Scammer Lost $5M in Bitcoin After Being Targeted by Ledger Thieves

Call it poetic justice: one of the biggest victims of last week’s Ledger theft happened to be a scammer themself, according to blockchain analysts, and lost nearly $5 million in bitcoin. 

In a post Thursday, Chainalysis wrote that a crook lost 60 bitcoins worth about $4.8 million they’d stolen via a so-called task scam. 

According to Chainalysis, the address was linked with a con where people were paid to fake sales and reviews of real items. They were told to add their own money in order to get paid — and then stolen from. 

One of the biggest victims of the Ledger theft was a scammer themselves. They lost more than 60BTC, about $4.8M. The funds were from a task scam.

In this task scam, people were paid to fake sales and reviews of real items. Then a "negative balance" appeared, and they were told… https://t.co/IJX4tx9ib3 pic.twitter.com/pGXNJkZJUi

— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) October 15, 2026

But the mastermind behind the task scam moved the stolen money to Ledger addresses which were then targeted by different scammers last week.

“On Sep 22, the person behind the scam moved the proceeds into three separate Ledger addresses,” Chainalysis said. “On Oct 9, thieves emptied all three. One transfer each, into the same wallet. The wallet is reported as stolen funds.”

Paris-based Ledger last week said it had started an investigation after customers in South East Asia reported they’d lost funds after buying from Malaysia-based reseller, CryptoBilis. 

Ledger has since said that the scam was a massive organized crime operation where a group installed implants into devices and put them back on the market. The implants could read users’ seed phrases so criminals could then drain wallets. 

Calling it one the most “sophisticated attacks” the digital asset industry has experienced, Ledger is yet to reveal how much money has been lost — but blockchain investigator Specter said $86 million had been drained. 

And the task scam conman, according to Chainalysis, was one of the victims.

Ledger has said that it is working with law enforcement to “follow the funds and dismantle the attackers’ infrastructure” and has made sure no other vendors have been targeted by scammers. 

CryptoBilis has stopped selling Ledger products, the company said. 

Criminals have targeted bitcoin hardware sellers this year, with a huge attack taking place in July on the popular Coldcard products. 

Crooks were able to steal close to $120 million in bitcoin from Coldcard users because the devices had a firmware bug which led to faulty seed generation, allowing hackers to guess investor seedphrases. 

This post Poetic Justice: Scammer Lost $5M in Bitcoin After Being Targeted by Ledger Thieves first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

US Hoovers up Bitcoin While the World Runs on Its Digital Dollars: Report

America is accumulating bitcoin while exporting dollar-pegged stablecoins to everyone else, according to a new Chainalysis report. 

The blockchain data said in its Wednesday report, “North America: Inside the Growth of Agentic Commerce,” that the U.S. became a net importer of Bitcoin in 2026 — for the first time since 2022.

According to the data, institutions this year have been buying bitcoin while retail largely sells. 

“A dollar stablecoin is a way to hold dollars without an American bank account, and Americans already have one,” the report read. 

“The rest of the world is pivoting to a digital dollar because it meets a need that American users don’t share. Meanwhile, Americans are leaning harder on bitcoin as an infinitely scarce store of value.”

It added that U.S. dominance keeps climbing: Since the 2024 launch of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, America’s share of global Bitcoin activity has risen every single reporting period — even as the overall U.S. crypto economy ($2.78 trillion) contracted 2.2% in a brutal bear market, retaining most of 2025’s near-doubling.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 after a decade of denying the products. 

Managed by Wall Street titans like BlackRock, Fidelity, and most recently, Morgan Stanley, the funds had the most successful debut in the history of ETFs. 

Institutions and Wall Street can now buy shares of the funds which track the price of bitcoin and take care of buying and selling the digital coin. 

The approval of the ETFs has helped the industry mature, the report noted, and helped the U.S. become an overall bigger bitcoin investor. 

Stablecoins, meanwhile, have turned U.S. debt into a “currency-of-choice for peer-to-peer economies as well as businesses working across borders,” the report continued. 

“In the 2026 period we continued to see stablecoins enter new use cases most especially abroad, benefitting the U.S. companies, and the U.S. government, with billions of dollars in economic activity,” it added. 

Since Donald Trump became president, he has signed a number of pro-crypto laws and executive orders. The GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, allows banks and other entities to issue stablecoins if they back the tokens with assets like U.S. Treasuries and provide monthly disclosures of their reserves.

This post US Hoovers up Bitcoin While the World Runs on Its Digital Dollars: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.