Coldcard Losses Near $114M as Small Bitcoin Transfers Spike
Small Bitcoin holders rushed to move coins on July 31 after news that Coldcard hardware wallets had generated guessable keys for years. Transfers under 1 BTC totaled 39,600 BTC, the highest since the FTX collapse, and daily active addresses nearly hit 1 million, driven mainly by sending activity. Exchange deposits from sub-10 BTC transfers also surged to 7,300 BTC, suggesting many users were moving funds to secure them rather than sell, since Bitcoin’s price barely changed. The Coldcard issue stemmed from a 2021 firmware bug that reduced seed entropy. Galaxy Research has tracked three theft waves totaling about 1,367 BTC, with signs of a possible fourth wave involving hundreds more BTC. Some affected transactions remain in the mempool and may still be outbid via replace-by-fee. Security experts called the incident a broader hardware-wallet wake-up call and urged independent validation of entropy sources and firmware-linked testing.
