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The CEO and Chairman of Ledger, Pascal Gauthier, has urged hardware wallet makers, exchanges and custodians to adopt shared security principles and stop engaging in public point-scoring when rivals suffer breaches.
The call comes in the wake of a hack targeting Coldcard hardware wallets, with Bitcoin losses estimated at above US$150 million. Rather than capitalising on a competitor’s vulnerability, Gauthier issued an open letter to industry peers pressing for cooperation on responsible disclosure, open standards and honest communication about the trade-offs in every product’s security design.
“Every time security fails in crypto, the timelines fill with vendors dunking on each other,” Gauthier wrote. “It’s petty, and it’s free labour for the thieves: state-sponsored teams, criminal groups, lone scammers. A whole economy of them, stealing billions.”
Gauthier argued that the self-custody sector must build security that works for ordinary users, not just experts. He warned against shifting blame onto users or adding complexity in the name of safety.
“Discipline cannot fix a flawed design. And good design removes the mistake instead of demanding a lifetime of perfect discipline,” he wrote. “Making the setup more complex, or pushing more responsibility onto the user, is not security. It is security theatre.”
He pointed to Ledger’s own internal security team, the Donjon, which has identified and reported vulnerabilities in competitors’ products including Trezor and Trust Wallet before public disclosure. Ledger also developed an open standard for clear signing – designed to stop users blindly approving transactions – and handed it to the Ethereum Foundation for industry-wide adoption.
Gauthier extended a direct invitation to fellow CEOs across the wallet, exchange and custodian sectors, calling for responsible disclosure between security teams as the norm, adoption of open standards regardless of which rival wrote them, and education efforts that extend beyond any single company’s customer base.
“Honest security claims: every design has trade-offs, so name your own, not just your rival’s,” he added. “A setup only experts can operate is not safer for the person who can’t operate it, and a rival’s bad week is not proof that your product has no weaknesses of its own.”
He stressed that claims of total safety should be treated with scepticism, describing security as “a direction: safer every year, easier every year, tested by people who try to break it.”
Bitcoin Trades Flat As Bear Market Bottom Signals Emerge
Meanwhile, Bitcoin finished the week flat at US$64,341, trading within a narrow US$2,000 band around the Median Realised Price of US$63,200.
Since June, Bitcoin has been range-bound between the long-term realised price floor of US$52,699 and the short-term holder realised price of US$67,200. Spot trading volumes have fallen back to 2019 levels, and on-chain transfer velocity has hit a seven-year low.
Ethereum gained 1.9 per cent to trade around US$1,909, while XRP lost 1.1 per cent and is trading just under the US$1 mark. Solana and Dogecoin were both relatively flat.
Bitcoin ETFs recorded US$390 million in outflows last week, while Ethereum ETFs experienced US$2 million in outflows. Quant trading firm, Jane Street, revealed in filings that it holds more than US$1 billion worth of Bitcoin ETFs.
There is growing consensus that the bear market may be approaching its end. Analyst, Benjamin Cowen, put the current cycle at day 1,365, noting that the past two cycles each bottomed around day 1,434.
Investment manager, VanEck, indicated its GEO framework metrics are showing “signs of near-bottoming that we believe may warrant beginning to scale in.”
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October is the most commonly cited turnaround point, although Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul offered a contrarian view: “The fact that everybody says by October the markets are going to turn, means it will probably turn sooner.”
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index sits at 31, in Fear territory.
SEC Cancels Crypto Rules Meeting After White House Pushback
The US Securities and Exchange Commission abruptly cancelled a planned meeting to discuss proposed new crypto rules following pushback from the White House.
The SEC had been set to vote on exemptions that would allow crypto startups to raise capital without complying with traditional securities offering rules. However, a source told CoinDesk that the White House was concerned any move by the SEC on crypto regulations “could kick a hornet’s nest” while negotiations continue to pass the CLARITY Act.
White House To Host Its Own Crypto Gathering
The White House will hold its own crypto meeting, with President Donald Trump expected to attend alongside SEC Chair, Paul Atkins, and representatives from the NYSE, Nasdaq, Coinbase, a16z, Ripple, Chainlink, Kalshi, Paradigm and the Digital Chamber.
The gathering is scheduled the day before the first meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee, which will discuss crypto, AI and prediction market rules.
Galaxy Research has cut the odds of the CLARITY Act passing this year to just 10 per cent, while prediction market Polymarket puts the odds at 20 per cent. The Genius stablecoin rules have entered a 60-day comment period before they take effect on January 18.
Ethereum Researchers Announce Zero-Knowledge Proof Breakthrough
Ethereum Researcher, Justin Drake, has outlined a breakthrough that will enable the blockchain to adopt the more established SHA or BLAKE hash functions as part of its post-quantum upgrades, rather than the more experimental Poseidon.
Poseidon had been designed to work well with zero-knowledge SNARKs, which are being used to compress the large file sizes of post-quantum signatures. The new development instead enables ZK SNARKs to work with any hash function.
“In hindsight, the key was not SNARK-friendly hashes, but hash-friendly SNARKs,” Drake remarked.
Separately, Ethereum Co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has indicated the network may incorporate elements of Bitcoin’s UTXO model to help speed up the chain, as the system requires about 99.8 per cent less state storage.
The Glamsterdam hard fork has been released on the Plataberget testnet, while developers are debating what should be included in the next Hegota hard fork, which has been pushed back to 2027.
Strategy And Metaplanet Face Fresh MSCI Index Removal Threat
MSCI has reopened its push to exclude non-operating companies from its Global Investable Market Indexes, a proposal that could result in Strategy and Metaplanet being dropped once again.
The index provider first floated excluding crypto treasury companies specifically in October 2025, before announcing in January it would not exclude such companies “for the time being,” opting instead to examine non-operating companies more broadly.
This time, the criteria are broader still, covering any company that primarily holds assets rather than runs an operating business. Uranium investment firm, Yellow Cake, is also affected. Based on May 2026 data, all three companies would have been removed under the proposed rules.
JPMorgan analysts estimated last year that removing Strategy from MSCI indexes could trigger about US$3 billion in passive outflows.
MSCI is accepting feedback until September 30, with a final decision due October 16 and any changes taking effect in the November index review.
Solana Narrowly Avoids Chain Halt After Hosting Provider Glitch
Solana’s decentralisation credentials are under scrutiny again after a routing glitch at a single hosting provider, Terraswitch, knocked 29 per cent of staked SOL offline.
CoinDesk reported the chain came within 19.9 million SOL of the one-third threshold that would have halted the network entirely.
Solana Co-founder, Greg Fitzgerald, described the incident as “an uncomfortable reminder that the hardest problem in crypto is incentivising decentralisation.”
Tether Secures Big Four Audit From KPMG
Stablecoin issuer, Tether, has secured a full audit from big four accounting firm, KPMG.
The auditor issued a clean, unqualified opinion confirming Tether’s reserves exceed its liabilities by US$7 billion as of the end of 2025. Until now, Tether had only produced attestations, and a New York court found in 2021 that Tether was not fully backed for periods of 2017-2018.
The full audit report has not been released publicly.
Singapore And Hong Kong Advance Crypto Regulatory Frameworks
Singapore has published final regulations requiring crypto platforms, brokers and exchanges to collect and report detailed user transaction data to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS).
The rules implement the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) into Singapore’s domestic law and will take effect on January 1, 2027 for new users, or on December 31, 2027 for existing users.
In Hong Kong, Standard Chartered-led Anchorpoint Financial has begun a limited rollout of its Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin, HKDAP. The token is initially focused on institutional payments and could expand to retail users by the end of the year.
ASX Blockchain Replacement Saga Rolls On
An ASX shareholder is seeking leave from the Federal Court to sue former ASX officers and directors over the exchange’s ill-fated blockchain-based CHESS replacement project.
The project began in 2016 and was delayed year after year to the point where ASIC sued the ASX for misleading the market by claiming the project was “progressing well.”
Separately, ASIC has also taken action against Yepbit-related websites for operating without the required licences, following reports that customers were unable to access their funds.
Last Updated on August 18, 2026 by Nick Ross
