Cryptocurrency wallet providers are getting more sophisticated, but so are bad actors — which means the battle between security and threats is at a deadlock, says a hardware wallet firm executive.

“It will always be a cat and mouse game,” Ledger chief experience officer Ian Rogers told Cointelegraph when describing the constant race between crypto wallet firms adding new security features and hackers finding more advanced ways to access victims’ wallets.

Rogers said, unfortunately, the most straightforward scams work best because scammers rely on people making simple mistakes.

“People give their 24-word phrases to people every day, so as long as that happens, then they are going to go for the low-cost tax,” he said, adding:

“Anyone who asks for your 24 words is a criminal.”

Rogers highlighted a common crypto scam where victims get tricked by replies under “any post on Twitter about crypto,” with messages like “DM me, and I’ll help you.”

“You know that scammers are always asking you for your 24 words,” Rogers said. CertiK chief business officer Jason Jiang recently told Cointelegraph that being aware of phishing attacks on social media can drastically increase a user’s crypto security.

Sometimes, scammers hijack the accounts of well-known industry figures to post malicious links, making it even harder for users to spot the scam.

In September 2023, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s account was compromised, leading to a fake NFT giveaway that tricked followers into clicking — only to drain over $691,000 from their wallets.

Source: CertiK

Rogers emphasized that this will always be the case, just as bad actors aren’t limited to crypto — scams like fake emails from the “Nigerian president” have been around for years.

“The cost of the attack is always commensurate with the size of the prize, right?” Rogers said. In 2024, crypto hacks jumped 15% from 2023, with over $3 billion stolen.

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Meanwhile, pig butchering scams have emerged as one of the most pervasive threats to crypto investors, with losses on the Ethereum network costing the industry $5.5 billion across 200,000 identified cases in 2024.

Pig butchering is a type of phishing scheme that involves prolonged and complex manipulation tactics to trick investors into willingly sending their assets to fraudulent crypto addresses.

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Gold-backed stablecoins will outcompete US dollar-pegged alternatives worldwide due to gold’s inflation-hedging properties and minimum volatility, according to Bitcoin (BTC) maximalist Max Keiser.

Keiser argued that gold is more trusted than the US dollar globally, and said governments of foreign nations with an adversarial relationship to the United States would not accept dollar-pegged stablecoins. The BTC maximalist added:

“Russia, China, and Iran are not going to accept a US dollar stablecoin. I predict they will counter the USD stablecoin with a Gold one. China and Russia have a combined 50,000 tonnes of Gold — more than what is reported.”

The potential for gold-backed stablecoins to outcompete dollar-pegged tokens in international markets would upend plans to extend US dollar dominance through stablecoins proposed by US lawmakers.

Source: Max Keiser

Related: Gov’t can realize gains on gold certificates to buy Bitcoin: Bo Hines

Gold-backed stablecoins fulfill the original promise of USD?

Stablecoin issuer Tether launched a gold-backed stablecoin called Alloy (aUSD₮), backed by Tether’s XAU₮ — a token that provides a paper claim to physical gold — in June 2024.

According to PointsVille founder and former VanEck executive Gabor Gurbacs, “Tether Gold is what the dollar used to be before 1971.”

“XAU₮ is up 15.7% year-to-date, while the broad crypto market is in the red. Foundations and businesses should hedge their holdings with XAU₮,” the executive wrote in a March 19 X post.

XAUT is now at all-time highs following a historic rally in the gold market. Source: Gabor Gurbacs

US policymakers have a different idea

United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the Trump administration would focus on using dollar-pegged stablecoins to protect the dollar’s reserve currency status and ensure US dollar hegemony in global financial markets.

Speaking at the March 7 White House Crypto Summit, Bessent indicated that this stablecoin regime would be a top priority for the administration.

Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller also voiced similar comments and expressed support for using stablecoins to prop up the US dollar before Bessent made the remarks at the summit.

US lawmakers have also introduced several stablecoin bills to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for tokenized fiat assets, including the Stable Act of 2025 and the GENIUS stablecoin bill.

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The current Bitcoin (BTC) bear market, defined as a 20% or more drop from the all-time high, is relatively weak in terms of magnitude and should only last for 90 days, according to market analyst and the author of Metcalfe’s Law as a Model for Bitcoin’s Value, Timothy Peterson.

Peterson compared the current downturn to the 10 previous bear markets, which occur roughly once per year, and said that only four bear markets have been worse than the price decline in terms of duration, including 2018, 2021, 2022, and 2024.

The analyst predicted that BTC will not sink deeply below the $50,000 price level due to the underlying adoption trends. However, Peterson also argued that based on momentum, it is unlikely that BTC will break below $80,000. The analyst added:

“There may be a slide in the next 30 days followed by a 20-40% rally sometime after April 15. You can see that in the charts around day 120. This would probably be enough of a headline to bring weak hands back into the market and propel Bitcoin even higher.”

Crypto markets experienced a sharp downturn following United States President Trump’s tariffs on several US trading partners, which sparked counter-tariffs on US exports, leading to fears of a prolonged trade war.

Comparison of every bear market since 2025. Source: Timothy Peterson

Related: Is Bitcoin going to $65K? Traders explain why they’re still bearish

Investors flee risk-on assets over trade war fears

Investor appetite for speculative assets is declining due to the ongoing trade war and macroeconomic uncertainty.

The Glassnode Hot Supply metric, a measure of BTC owned for one week or less, declined from 5.9% amid the historic bull rally in November 2024 to only 2.3% as of March 20.

According to Nansen research analyst Nicolai Sondergaard, crypto markets will face trade war pressures until April 2025, when international negotiations could potentially lower or diffuse the trade tariffs altogether.

A recent analysis from CryptoQuant also shows that a majority of retail traders are already invested in BTC, dashing long-held hopes that a massive rush of retail traders would inject fresh capital into the markets and push prices higher in the near term.

The trade war also placed Bitcoin’s safe haven narrative in doubt as the price of the decentralized asset collapsed over tariff headlines alongside other risk and speculative assets.

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This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.