...It turns out such a hardware wallet was in the works, but the company decided to scrap the project, fearing the kind of hacks that have recently hit the industry...
That's a weird decision. Using that logic, there should no longer be any open-source software because AI could be prompted to find vulnerabilities in the code and abuse it. There is probably more to this story than just them being afraid of getting hacked.
This actually aligns with a statement from Pascal Gauthier (CEO of that beloved company) that
"Everybody Will Be Hacked At Some Point". By the way, is he just mentally preparing his customer base in case the company itself gets hacked?
Ledger has already succeeded in getting its customer data hacked. They don't like to talk about that and would rather focus on saying how customer funds were never exposed. Since private keys are generated locally on each individual device, there can't be a centralized record with access to their users' crypto. Unless, of course, they are lying about that as well or someone figures out how to take advantage of the Ledger Recover seed extraction feature to steal keys and crypto.
What caught my attention in this news was the following:
~80% of the (pre-)purchases for this HW-device were made on the blockchain, and refunds will be issued in USDC. Many people wonder: what is the actual use case for blockchain? Well, here it is: any refund for a purchase is sent directly back to the buyer’s original address. There’s no need for any intermediaries (according to the good old buyer-seller concept), such as banks, no red tape, no waiting around - just click a button, and you get your refund.
What if I don't want the refund to be sent to the same address I paid from? What if the address belongs to an exchange or instant swaps platform? What if it belongs to someone else who paid it for me? Etc., etc.
Users should always be allowed to select how to be refunded. Automatic refunds are not a good idea.
