A Trader Loses $6,600,000 Worth of Bitcoin After Purchasing a New Ledger Wallet

On Friday, October 9, 2026, a crypto trader lost 80 Bitcoin (BTC), worth about $6.6 million, in a single transfer. The coins had sat for 10 days on a new Ledger hardware wallet, a device sold to keep crypto safe offline. Lookonchain said the trader bought the device from CryptoBilis, also rendered CryptoBillis in Lookonchain's post. Hours after the theft, Ledger told the Southeast Asian reseller to halt sales while it investigates lost funds.

How the 80 BTC Left a 10-Day-Old Ledger Wallet

Lookonchain said the trader bought the coins about four months ago at roughly $65,000 each, costing around $5.2 million. Public Bitcoin records on mempool show all 80 BTC reached the trader's wallet on September 29. They left in one transfer at 05:54 UTC on October 9.

With Bitcoin price trading above $83,000, Lookonchain put the trader's paper profit at $1.38 million before the coins disappeared. The gain was unrealized, meaning the trader had not sold the coins for cash before the transfer.

The same block of transactions carried at least six other large transfers into addresses that blockchain analysts link to the drain. That places the 80 BTC movement within a broader set of on-chain transfers, while Ledger has not said whether any devices were tampered with.

Ledger Stops a Reseller as Loss Estimates Rise

Ledger has paused the reseller's sales and told recent buyers not to set up their devices. It has not said whether any devices were tampered with. The company said it will share updates as its investigation progresses.

Estimates of the total keep rising. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham put losses above $80 million and said the cause is unconfirmed. MistTrack, the tracking service of security firm SlowMist, offered a higher figure, saying losses could possibly reach $90 million.

MistTrack also said Tether, which issues the USDT dollar-pegged stablecoin, froze USDT at addresses linked to the theft. Tether can block its tokens from moving. The freeze is relevant because USDT is a dollar-pegged token, and blocked addresses can stop some linked stablecoin value from continuing to move.

Why This Matters for Hardware Wallet Buyers

Hardware wallets are sold to keep crypto safe offline. This incident shows that a newly bought device can still be associated with a large loss before its setup process is fully verified. Ledger's instruction for recent buyers not to set up their devices is the clearest immediate step disclosed in the source.

The episode also follows another hardware wallet scare this year. In August, a Coldcard firmware bug let thieves drain about $70 million in Bitcoin. That comparison does not confirm a common cause; it only shows that hardware wallet buyers are facing a period of repeated security incidents.

The original report appeared first on BeInCrypto. For now, the reported public facts are the 80 BTC transfer, the $6.6 million value, the 10-day hold on a new Ledger device, the halt on the reseller's sales, and loss estimates above $80 million and possibly reaching $90 million.