Coldstorage drama. Tokens lost?

[WeThePe0ple]

A friend of mine is a BTC whale. We have never met in person as he freaks out about privacy. We just talk on social media with nicknames.
I do respect his knowledge about self custody and safety.

The man had about 1% of his portfolio (representing a lot of money) allocated to a top 20 altcoin.
It was stored via ledger nano s.

At some point he updated ledger live (browser extension?) and it turns out that his token is no longer supported by ledger nano s.
It had to do with ledger nano s being too old.

He now believes that access to these tokens, representing an amount of money that most people have to work 1 year for, is permanently lost.

Is this possible? Does Ledger take any accountability for their older wallets no longer working for certain altcoins?
Why is there no policy that legally forces ledger to warn their customers at least 1 year before support stops?

To me this is like the bank calling me and saying that my funds are missing because their software is outdated.
I would sue the bank and demand my money back.

When I heard this, I wondered how safe my own tokens in coldstorage really are.
I am not using Ledger though, but an airgapped hardware wallet mainly for BTC and XRP.
I don't know if this could ever happen to me if I don't use the wallet for the next few years.

[lornadane]

If your tokens were in cold storage and you lost access (seed phrase, keys, device), then yeah — they’re basically gone. Cold storage doesn’t have a recovery service like an exchange. That’s why backups and redundant seeds are critical. No drama fixes a lost seed.

[pliego]

if he is a whale he can definitely afford a new ledger plus lol