Hardware wallet provider Ledger has confirmed its Discord server is secure again after an attacker compromised a moderator’s account to post scam links on May 11 to trick users into revealing their seed phrases on a third-party website.

“One of our contracted moderators had their account compromised, which allowed a malicious bot to post scam links in one channel,” Ledger team member Quintin Boatwright wrote on the Ledger Discord server. 

“The issue was quickly contained: the compromised account was removed, the bot was deleted, the website was reported, and all relevant permissions were reviewed and secured.”

Some members in Ledger’s Discord channel claimed the attacker abused moderator privileges to ban and mute them as they tried to report the breach, possibly slowing Ledger’s reaction.

Boatwright said the security breach was an isolated incident and that Ledger has taken additional measures to strengthen its security on Discord, a chat platform many crypto projects use to share protocol developments and engage with their community. 

Using the compromised Ledger community manager account, the hacker told Ledger Discord members that there was a recently discovered vulnerability in the firm’s security systems and strongly urged all users to verify their recovery phrases with a scam link, according to several screenshots shared on X. 

Ledger users were asked to connect their wallets and follow on-screen instructions.

Source: ecurrencyholder

It isn’t clear whether anyone was affected by the security breach. Cointelegraph has reached out to Ledger for comment.

Ledger scammers were sending physical letters last month 

In April, scammers were mailing physical letters to owners of Ledger hardware wallets, asking them to validate their private seed phrases in a bid to access and empty the wallets.

The letter used Ledger’s logo, business address and a reference number to feign legitimacy and asked users to scan a QR code and enter the wallet’s recovery phrase.

One Ledger user who received the letter speculated whether scammers were sending letters to Ledger customers whose data was leaked in July 2020.

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That incident saw a hacker breach Ledger’s database and dump the personal information of over 270,000 of its customers online, which included names, phone numbers and home addresses.

The following year, several Ledger users claimed to have been mailed fake Ledger devices that were tampered with and designed to install malware upon use, Bleeping Computer reported at the time.

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The White House announced that talks between the United States and China regarding a trade deal have made “substantial progress,” yet no official deal has been announced at this time, leaving investors in doubt.

According to a May 11 announcement from the White House, more details on the trade talks and the proposed “agreement” will be revealed on May 12.

“I am happy to report that we made substantial progress between the United States and China in the very important trade talks,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a joint statement with US trade representative Jamieson Greer.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells the media that the US-China trade walks were productive. Source: Fox News

“We will be giving details tomorrow, but I can tell you that the talks were productive,” Bessent continued, without mentioning the word “deal” once in his statement.

Greer made mention of the deal but did not give any details on the talks, leaving investors in doubt about the substance of the announcement, as market participants continue to monitor the ongoing trade tensions for signs of relief for financial markets.

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Trump’s tariffs cause chaos in markets and draw widespread criticism

Although traditional financial and digital asset markets have recovered and retraced some of the value lost following the initial price shock brought on by US President Donald Trump’s sweeping trade tariffs, investor uncertainty still looms over asset markets.

The Trump administration has flip-flopped on its tariff policies, reversing course on trade proposals or softening its rhetoric several times, leaving investors on edge and uncertain about investing in riskier assets like tech stocks and crypto.

In April 2024, the US Customs and Border Protection, at the behest of the Trump administration, announced that select tech products would be exempt from tariffs including, smartphones, processing chips, computers, and other electronics.

However, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick walked back the electronic tariff exemptions one day following the announcement.

Lutnick said that the tariff exemptions would only be temporary until administration officials decided on a comprehensive tariff regime that featured different tariff rates for economic sectors.

The lack of a comprehensive, decisive trade policy has called the Trump administration’s plans into question, with many observers saying that the trade tariffs will only create more discord in financial markets and the broader economy.

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Tech company Microsoft and artificial intelligence firm OpenAI are reportedly in talks to renegotiate the investment deal between the AI firm and Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s biggest financial backer.

According to a report from the Financial Times, Microsoft may give up a portion of its equity in OpenAI for continued access to the AI company’s products and models beyond 2030, when some of the original terms of a deal signed between the two companies expire.

Microsoft has invested over $13 billion into OpenAI since 2019, when it first acquired an interest in the artificial intelligence firm.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman takes the podium at the White House in January 2025 to discuss AI infrastructure investment in the United States. Source: The White House

OpenAI is attempting to restructure the company to shift its focus to profit-making. However, those plans have met with pushback from co-founders like Elon Musk and early investors.

The deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is critical to OpenAI’s restructuring and the future of the US-based AI startup company. Advancing artificial intelligence has also become a key policy objective for global leaders as the AI arms race heats up.

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OpenAI faces staunch pushback against for-profit shift

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit entity in 2015 by businessman Elon Musk, tech entrepreneur Sam Altman, and AI researcher Ilya Sutskever.

However, in 2024, the company began mulling a corporate restructuring that would convert the company from a non-profit entity to a for-profit corporation.

Elon Musk has been one of the biggest critics of the plan, calling into question the legality of the proposed shift in a November 2024 legal filing.

Elon Musk and others file litigation against OpenAI to block its conversion to a for-profit company. Source: Court Listener

The tech billionaire also blasted the company’s focus on closed-source software development, which he said was not the original objective of OpenAI.

“OpenAI was actually started and was meant to be open source. I named it ‘OpenAI’ after open source, now it is, in fact, closed source. It should be renamed super closed source AI for maximum profit AI,” Musk told an audience at the New York Times DealBook Summit.

In February 2025, a group of investors led by Musk submitted a $97.4 billion bid to take over OpenAI. However, the deal was flatly rejected by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

More recently, on May 5, OpenAI announced it was abandoning its shift to a purely for-profit model and is choosing to shift to a public benefit corporation — a profit-driven structure with legal obligations to fulfill social or public goods objectives — controlled by a non-profit entity.

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