One year after the October 10th crypto crash: reflections, storage security, and diversification strategy
A solo commentary from the Digital Asset News host marking the one-year anniversary of the October 10th cryptocurrency market crash.
Summary
The Digital Asset News host marks the one-year anniversary of the October 10th crypto crash, comparing it favorably to the far more destructive 2022 bear market. He plays a clip from Matt Hogan, CIO at Bitwise, who draws a parallel between Bitcoin's current trajectory and gold's post-ETF rise from $2 trillion to $30 trillion. The host then addresses the recent Ledger hardware wallet hack involving a compromised authorized reseller in Southeast Asia, arguing it qualifies as a genuine hardware hack and using it to make a broader case for diversifying crypto storage across multiple methods rather than relying solely on self-custody. He also raises concerns about Chinese manufacturing of cold storage devices, citing Palmer Luckey's account of surveillance electronics found in product samples from Chinese factories.
The host revisits his five personal storage rules — originally written in 2022 following the Celsius and Voyager collapses — and proposes updating them to reflect the current threat landscape, including treating all devices as potentially compromised until proven otherwise. He also walks through the practical mechanics of moving Bitcoin into a spot ETF, noting that BlackRock and Fidelity now allow in-kind Bitcoin transfers above a $1 million threshold, and explaining his own use of iTrust Capital, which custodies assets via Coinbase Prime — the same custodian used by BlackRock and Michael Saylor.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
One year since the October 10th crash
Well, everybody, we're still here and we made it. It was one of those bear markets that wasn't as volatile as the one back in 2022, but it was still difficult enough because at some points it was just pretty much boring. Today is October 10th, so we have a nice little celebration of one year post some of the biggest downfalls and crashes we've seen in quite some time.
This is a good graphical representation from Coin Bureau. They had a nice little video and I'm going to play it for you — just how fast things went down on October 10th. If you don't remember, it was quite something during that day. I remember thinking to myself, "Ah, it'll just bounce right back." But it just kept going down. And you can see that this wasn't over days or 24 hours — this was within seven or eight hours. It was pretty brutal to see. The official explanation was that it was all about leverage and the longs that got wiped out because there was just an overexuberance. Then Binance came out and said there was a problem with their technical functions as to how the exchange actually worked. But you can see right here — down almost 13% in eight hours. That is massive.
As I take a step back and look at it, I'm like, you know what? It went from $122,000 and then finished at almost around $115,000. Looking at that from here, I'm like, all right, not a big deal. It wasn't like it went down 50% in eight hours. I think this kind of allows people to have that weight taken off them as we get to this 365 days from the bottom, and then maybe we can reach out and have a nice little bull run.
Comparing this bear market to 2022
Taking a look at the four-year time frame — and again, if this is your first bear market, congratulations. To me it was pretty much boring. It was a lot of sideways chop and it wasn't a big deal. That last one — yeah, that was something. I thought we would bounce back a little bit faster than we did, but we didn't bounce back quickly. We just went into a bear market for essentially a full year, and now here we are.
If we take a look at four years prior, back to October 10th, 2022, that bear market was brutal. At that point we were 71% down from the 2021 high of $67,000. And 2022 was the year that everything crashed. First you had Celsius, then two weeks later you had Voyager, then right around now there were rumblings of FTX becoming insolvent. In November everything crashed down. Then you had Luna — correct me in the comment section, I actually forgot exactly when Luna crashed and went to nothing. Then you had BlockFi and Three Arrows Capital. It was just a big, huge mess in 2022. But it was, I got to tell you, it was exciting. This bear market, it is what it is. There have been some problems, but we are only 34% down from the 2025 all-time high on October 6th. This would mark the one-year anniversary from that crash.
ETF flows and current market conditions
So how did we do this week? Well, maybe the markets got spooked. Remember, it really is just about speculation. As of yesterday we had a nice inflow of $21 million, but the last couple of days beforehand — Thursday and Wednesday — you had almost a $500 million outflow plus a $244 million outflow. That's quite a bit. We can see those right here for Bitcoin, and then the $21 million — they throw us a little bit of a bone.
Looking at the flow tracker, as far as ETF flows go, we topped out funny enough on October 10th, then everything crashed down. We had a nice little rally, but it's still a lower high. I think we'll probably have a little bit of chop for quite some time, but things are moving in the right direction — they're not going straight down. Even with the hack that we talked about yesterday, and yes it was a hack and I'll get to that with Ledger — not too bad. We're almost at a $2.9 trillion market cap. Bitcoin is up 0.4%, almost at $83K. Over 24 hours I think everything's up for the most part except for Monero. Sorry, Monero. Near Protocol is up 13%, 121% for 30 days — a lot of rumblings about AI and all those things. SWE up 50%, very nice. Quant up 280%. So just sticking around is the hard part. Congratulations — you did the hard stuff getting through this bear market.
Matt Hogan on Bitcoin's long-term trajectory
This was personified as far as the ability and mentality to stick around and how hard it is, but it will pay off. This is Matt Hogan, CIO at Bitwise. He reminds us of some pretty basic things, but there was one thing I had totally forgotten about — the gold ETF comparison. We were roughly at the same market cap. Take a listen to this. It's about a minute and a half, especially the last part where he talks about just sticking around.
Matt Hogan: "Today we think of gold as like a $30 trillion asset, hugely institutionally owned. But when the first gold ETF launched — which was in 2004 — gold was a two to two-and-a-half trillion dollar asset, the whole thing. And it went to $30 trillion sort of before people really started freaking out about debt. I think people who don't think Bitcoin can follow the same pattern — we launched ETFs when it was about $2 trillion. I think it could easily do what gold did, which is run up to $30 trillion, and that arrives at a pretty nice price target.
The key for investors is that within that there's a lot of up and down, a lot of bouncing around. The biggest risk in Bitcoin has nothing to do with the protocol or quantum or anything. It's everything to do with the investors and whether they stick it out through those bull and bear markets alike. So I would just keep that in mind. It's been a great run. We've seen lots of investors hurt because they burn out or they get overleveraged. I think there's still significant upside in this asset — like really material, life-changing upside. And I think it'll play out over a decade. So at least have some of your capital — from my view, at least what I'm doing, not financial advice — but some of my capital is allocated specifically for that, to see where this thing turns out in 10 years. And I think it's going to be pretty fun."
I think he's right. It's going to be pretty fun. The thing is, can you stick around? And it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep.
Just to punctuate that comment about the 2004 gold ETF — you can see the historical price data for gold. It was pretty much flat for quite some time. Of course if you zoom in it wasn't so flat — there were nice little fluctuations between '86 and '88, and a little fluctuation between '93 and '94. But the big moves came right after the ETF in 2004, which we can see right here. A nice little jaunt up, then down, then up a little, chop sideways, and then — Valhalla. Look at that nice sideways chop.
If you come back and take a look at Bitcoin — it had its ETF moment in January 2024, somewhere around here. We haven't gone to Valhalla yet, up to the big pump, but you can see we have those instances and then it kind of goes down and chops sideways. Maybe that is the next play. That's what everybody would like it to be. We'll see how it all works out. But again, that was a pretty good one from Matt. Nice to put things into perspective.
Altcoins, Solana, and the next narrative
It's not just about Bitcoin. There are also some pretty good ones as far as altcoins. I know people will say, "Well, altcoins are all trash." Look, I've made a lot on altcoins. I will just say that. We need to identify the next narrative, which I think is going to be payments and tokenization of world assets. Because of that, I think Solana is going to be one of the winners.
Solana doubles block production speed to 200 milliseconds as the network prepares for the Alpenglow upgrade. The blockchain has completed its slot time acceleration plan, with Alpenglow targeting approximately 150 milliseconds finality under a redesigned consensus system. This was actually done already — yesterday. The October 9th upgrade reduces Solana's original 400 millisecond slot target by half, allowing the network to create five block production opportunities per second instead of 2.5. If you're looking for payments and tokenization, finality and settlements, this looks pretty good. I'm not saying to go all in on Solana. I'm just saying Solana's looking pretty good.
Tron's post-quantum cryptography
And then lastly, on top of my thesis — Justin Sun, who is a pretty darn good marketer. I didn't know this was a thing. This came out today: Tron's post-quantum cryptography is now live on testnet. They're closely tracking progress in quantum computing and AI and say they're ready to bring quantum resistance to mainnet at any time.
Before you start laughing about Tron, just remember — Tron on the rails of Tether for payments in most of the Asian markets is what everybody uses. If you take a look at Bunch Analytics like we've done many a time, they're in the top three all the time. So congratulations to Tron for making themselves post-quantum resistant, and maybe they can figure out other things with AI. I like those things.
The Ledger hack: what actually happened
There are some things in the background that we all must be aware of. It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. We talked about this yesterday as far as the Ledger hack, and I want to put some things into perspective and clarify what we talked about yesterday.
When we talk about storage and people say, "Rob, you said that 'not your keys, not your crypto' is totally dead" — it is dead as a universal rule. But what I meant is that when I say "not your keys, not your crypto," that was the mantra back in 2013, 2014, 2015 — the Mt. Gox hack — and also the 2022 FTX collapse. Everybody said, "You've got to self-custody it." And I think to myself, what if I hedge my bet? What if I self-custody with my Trezor, and yeah, I still have a Ledger wallet, but I also put some into ETFs and I use iTrust Capital for custodial services? Why don't I hedge my bet? Because if what Matt was saying is right — $30 trillion market cap — what if you put everything into some storage that you self-custody and there is some crazy thing where, I don't know, the manufacturer inadvertently put in a chip that spies on you, or there's some kind of massive fault, or you didn't roll the dice long enough and you're like, "Oh, I just lost $20 million. That sucks." Wouldn't it be great to maybe diversify just a little bit and have somebody custody for you? Do a multi-sig wallet here, do a cold storage wallet here, do an ETF here, and so on and so forth. Do you have to do self-custody only because somebody said it is the only way? I just don't think that's correct.
So the problem with the Ledger hack from yesterday — and I want everybody to make sure they understand this — it was an authorized reseller from the Southeast Asia region. Much in the same way we have authorized resellers like Best Buy and Amazon here in the States. Let me show you what I'm talking about. I used the Wayback Machine to go back to January 29th, 2025. There's Cryptobillis, which is their authorized reseller.
People say, "But Rob, you don't get it. If you want a Ledger, you just can't use a reseller." I know that. Here's the problem with these different places — Ledger can't ship there. This is right from Ledger's website, shipping availability by country and region: "Unfortunately, if your country is listed above, we can't ship Ledger." So here you go — Korea, Egypt, Fujian Province, Guangdong, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sudan, Vietnam — those types of places, parts of Southeast Asia. If they don't ship there, what's your option? Third party. And like I said, this was an authorized reseller — given the stamp of approval by Ledger.
And just to bring this home — you'll say, "Well, it wasn't a hack." Okay, let's define what a hack is. A hardware hack is the physical modification, analysis, or manipulation of a tangible computing device — such as its microchips, circuit boards, firmware, or internal radios — to alter its original function, bypass security controls, or extract data. That is exactly what happened with this authorized reseller. They broke into the Ledger and put in a chip and soldered it right into the mainframe. So when the user actually used it, it spied on them and stole everything. I don't know what else people want from me, because that is exactly what a hardware hack is. And these were authorized resellers — you just couldn't get away from it.
Palmer Luckey and Chinese manufacturing surveillance
There's one more thing I'd like to bring up. This is Palmer Luckey, and he reveals that his company repeatedly discovered hidden surveillance electronics inside product samples received from Chinese factories. Who is Palmer Luckey? He's an entrepreneur and billionaire who founded Oculus VR. He had a nice pipeline into Chinese manufacturing. This is what he says:
Palmer Luckey: "Here's another example. How many computers exist in the Japanese government, in critical utilities and infrastructure and military? Millions, at least millions of computers. So then the question becomes: how many of them are compromised by Chinese intelligence operations placing listening devices or false components in them? Some people would say zero, and I think they're crazy.
I actually have personal experience with China placing listening devices into sample products that I would receive from Chinese factories — at my previous company, Oculus VR. My first company was a virtual reality company I started when I was 19 years old. There were multiple times we discovered actual wiretap electronics in product samples that were given to us. They would listen to us and transmit the voice samples over a cellular radio. And so if I experienced that even as a small company, if I experienced them trying to steal our technology and our decisions even as a small company, surely they're targeting every government, every military, every company."
I will just say this to break this down — I'm not saying this is the reality, but these are where your cold storage devices are being manufactured. Safe — Shenzhen, China. Keystone — China. Ellipal — China. OneKey — China/Hong Kong. Ledger — designed in France but manufactured heavily in China. Trezor — assembled in China and Indonesia. Trezor — Czech Republic.
When I say stuff like this, I understand that there are things that could happen, and that's why I diversify.
Q&A and storage diversification rules
All right, let's go to the Q&A. Jonathan might be right — Trezor for the win. And as you can see, I'm traveling today so I have a different microphone that I have to keep super close to my face to get the best audio.
Don't buy from sketchy vendors. Everything's becoming sketchy. So I think I might have to change some rules. Let me pull these up. The rules I wrote were from 2022 when Voyager and Celsius collapsed back to back. The first rule is: it's all gone — don't invest more than you can afford to lose. The next one is: 100% are scams. I think what we should move this to is: everything's a scam until proven otherwise, and everything is compromised until proven otherwise. That's what I think we should be. I might have to add this in, because it's not just Ledger — it's Safe, ColdCard, and all the different data leaks that come from those. Rule number three: don't leave things on exchanges — which I might have to change as well. Number four: don't use leverage. And the last one I think will stay the same: take profits, because nobody ever went broke taking profits.
Pyro Justin is right — don't put all your eggs in one basket. And someone says all their crypto is in ETFs now. A couple of years ago everybody would have booed that. Like, how dare you put it into an ETF? We talked about this yesterday — how Plan B did that and everybody booed him. And he's like, "Well, I still have everything."
Clover says, "Rob, I can't buy ETFs or iTrust, so I've got to split between two hardware wallets and a small amount for use on exchange." Nothing wrong with that. I like that strategy because you diversify. The hard part is losing everything.
Someone had a good question: "Rob, how much would it cost if I just went straight to ETF? And don't I have tax liabilities if I wanted to sell my Bitcoin?" Yes and no. If you want to get into a Bitcoin ETF — and people say, "Well, that's not Bitcoin" — to be fair, a futures ETF, you're right, they're just pretty much selling blank pieces of paper and IOUs. But for a spot ETF, everybody who does a spot ETF has to buy Bitcoin and have it custodied. BlackRock does it. Michael Saylor says never sell your Bitcoin, right? He's got it custodied with somebody — and he uses Coinbase. So back to the question: if I have Bitcoin, how do I get into an ETF?
There are two ways. As of about six or seven months ago, BlackRock and a host of other spot ETFs — Fidelity as well — are allowing you to transfer in, meaning Bitcoin for Bitcoin into an ETF. It used to be $25 million minimum. If you had under that, they'd say, "Sorry, small fry." Now they've dropped that to a million. And people say, "Well, great, I don't have a million." Under a million, you've got to sell your Bitcoin to get into an ETF. I personally don't think I would do that, honestly.
What I did is I went through iTrust Capital and said, "Hey, I've got X amount of Bitcoin. I want to send it to you because you guys are using the same custodial services that BlackRock and Michael Saylor are using — Coinbase Prime — so I don't have to sell any Bitcoin. You guys can custody it for me." I did that a while ago when custody first came out. Then I had to sell some because I had a nice deal on some real estate. And again, as I've said, it is a pain to get your funds out of it. But I liked it because I knew I wouldn't get hacked.
So if you want to do an ETF, you can sell your Bitcoin and they'll custody it, or you can transfer it directly. Whatever you want to do.
And let me make this crystal clear, because I swear no one listens to me — when I say to diversify, I mean to diversify your storage. You can do a Trezor, you can do a Ledger, you could do an ETF, you can do a Trezor, fill in the blank, whatever you want to do. I am not your dad.
Closing thoughts
Joey says, "Happy mega crypto discount anniversary everyone." And someone mentions the 37th quarterly BNB token burn coming up next week. Buy the rumor, sell the news perhaps.
Majestic says, "In that one year, it showed all the so-called megabulls crawl back into their mom's basement." Jimmy's here — Palmer Luckey is heavily involved in drone warfare. There's an interesting interview with him on 60 Minutes a few months ago. Highly recommended.
Ben says he lost 80% of his capital on October 10th. Yeah, because I didn't want to be a total bummer of a video today, I didn't show you the video of altcoins going down. That one was pretty brutal.
I only get agitated when I see people losing a lot of their funds. It just goes back on me because some of it's preventable and some of it just isn't — some of it is just bad luck, wrong place, wrong time. I feel like it's my duty to make sure that everybody gets out of this alive and is actually able to keep the hard-earned gains that they sacrificed for. When I see these things come out, I'm like, damn it, these storage companies. And I'm sure it's not like they're nefarious — obviously they don't want these things to happen. But if we can just apply one little rule — don't keep all your eggs in one basket — it just makes a lot more sense than going, "I'm just going to raw dog it, put it into one cold storage device, make sure that doesn't get hacked, and I'll be good." I think we're at the point where we need to diversify. I think that's it.