The third quarter of 2026 has certainly been one of the most challenging for the hardware wallet market in recent years, with the exposed flaw in the RNG in Coldcard firmware spanning several years – resulting in major reputational damage to devices once especially favoured among the “Bitcoin Maximalist” crowd.
Following the incident, Coldcard’s market share plummeted to near zero in the most recent quarter. This was partly driven by BitcoinVN Shop’s decision to delist the devices until further notice following the disclosure that their factory-installed firmware had been vulnerable to exploitation, with a high risk of loss of funds for users who relied on seed phrases or keys generated on the Coldcard device. It was also partly because Bitcoiners were simply no longer too keen to spend their money on devices made by Coinkite, as a major loss of trust occurred following the incident.
And that does not yet take into account the partially successful supply chain attack involving Ledger devices. In neighbouring Malaysia, an authorised reseller was covertly taken over by a crime-linked organisation, which managed to introduce maliciously tampered Ledger devices into the supply chain. The attack reportedly resulted in users losing close to $100 million worth of crypto.
The incident only became public earlier this month. Any resulting impact on purchasing decisions will therefore begin to show in the fourth-quarter sales figures, which we will publish in January 2027.
The third quarter of 2026 saw the introduction of Blockstream’s “Jade Core” to the current BitcoinVN Shop hardware wallet line-up – a stripped-down version of the Jade Plus for Bitcoin-only users, which places itself firmly between the upper-end Jade Plus and the entry-level Jade model.
Blockstream was able, for the first time since Q1/2024, to capture more than 10% of hardware wallet sales at BitcoinVN Shop and – following the temporary removal from our lineup pending resolution of the security concerns – of Coinkite devices from our lineup – dominate the Bitcoin-only device segment of our sales.
The Blockstream Jade Core works well as one component within a well-diversified multivendor multisig setup – which remains our strong recommendation for anyone storing any significant amount of Bitcoin in self-custody.
One of the more surprising developments is certainly the rapid market adoption of Keystone, which saw its devices surge to over 20% market share, putting it in hot pursuit of OG firm Trezor.
Keystone’s 3 Pro stands out as one of the few hardware wallets that support shielded Zcash – the coin that has seen one of the biggest bullish narrative shifts in 2025 and 2026, accompanied by a roughly 1,840% gain in US dollar terms over the twelve months to 30 September 2026.
As the hardware wallet market continues to reshuffle, we are already anticipating further developments going into the final stretches of 2026.
BitcoinVN Shop has added further devices to its lineup – more on this page soon – to provide additional choices for users putting together their MVMS setups, and we will see first results of what their uptake looks like. At the same time, we expect the Ledger incident and temporary sales suspension in Southeast Asia to dent its sales share, possibly handing the crown to another manufacturer for the first time.
Not only the software side, but also the hardware side of cybersecurity has had a rough year, with multiple notable exploits and successful attacks reported. The industry’s hardening and adjustment process is still ongoing.
Stay in touch with us for further information on that front – our colleagues at BV Insights also continue reporting on the latest developments in the cyber threat landscape.