As we’re getting a lot of concerned messages following the news surrounding CryptoBilis – a vendor based in a neighbouring Southeast Asian country, with no operations in Vietnam to the best of our current knowledge – here are a few points about BitcoinVN Shop:
- BitcoinVN has been serving customers in Vietnam since 2014. We are still owned and operated by our original founding team.
- We source our hardware wallets through the shortest supply chain available to us to minimize the associated risks.
- We have no involvement with CryptoBilis or its team.
- To date, we are not aware of any incident involving a tampered device sold through BitcoinVN Shop.
- BitcoinVN Shop is part of the same business that operates the BitcoinVN exchange service. Helping our customers securely store their coins has been a practical concern for us from the beginning.
We started supplying hardware wallets because our exchange customers needed reliable access to self-custody tools. Importing these devices into Vietnam can be cumbersome, and we wanted to make that process easier.
Frankly, if we wanted to steal your coins, encouraging you to leave them on our exchange and then conveniently “getting hacked” would be a much easier route.🙂
Don’t trust us to keep your coins – we’re not your bank!
Learn self-custody. If you need a helping hand, we provide free guidance on our website and support both community initiatives and paid professional custody consulting.
We are aware of tampered devices circulating in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam. Be particularly careful about obscure sellers on marketplaces such as Shopee and similar platforms. Don’t procure a device intended to secure your savings from a source you cannot verify.
We are also aware of plenty of “weird” buyer enquiries across Southeast Asia which do not seem to make commercial sense. Having handled imports ourselves for years, we know what genuine devices cost to purchase and bring into the country.
When offers fall substantially below those costs, asking questions about the authenticity and integrity of the devices is entirely reasonable. That alone does not establish wrongdoing, but it deserves enhanced scrutiny.
At the same time, supply chain risks are difficult to defend against. We have to plan for sophisticated, well-funded attackers – including potentially state-backed actors – seeking ways to compromise devices further upstream, where no downstream vendor has complete visibility or control.
A reputable seller and a short supply chain reduce risk. They cannot eliminate it.
For Bitcoin savings whose loss you would struggle to recover from, we consider properly configured multi-vendor multisig a non-negotiable requirement.
For example, a 2-of-3 setup using three different manufacturers and independently generated seeds requires two separate keys to spend. Compromising one device or its seed is not enough to steal the funds.
That would protect against the single-key compromise involved in the Coldcard incident earlier this year and the seed theft reported in the current Ledger reseller incident – provided the other keys remained secure and the wallet was correctly configured.
Using different brands is only part of the job. Independent keys, separate backups and a recovery process you understand are essential.
A single point of failure leaves no margin for that component to fail. Increasingly sophisticated attackers are looking for precisely those weaknesses.
We understand why customers are concerned. If you have questions about a device purchased from BitcoinVN Shop, please contact our team directly.
The investigation into CryptoBilis is ongoing. We will follow the findings closely and share relevant updates with our customers via our blog and social media.
Most importantly: Only the paranoid survive.
Risks that once seemed purely theoretical are rapidly becoming practical threats we need to defend against. If you’re not willing or able to put in the time and effort to get your defenses in place, you might be better off trusting a traditional financial institution with your savings.
This is not investment advice – but not everyone is cut out for “being their own bank,” and we should accept that reality. Insisting that people take on responsibilities they are not equipped, prepared or willing to handle can cause severe financial harm.