Coldcard Exploit Drives 7,300 BTC to Exchanges as Losses Reach $70-$90 Million
Updated
Updated · CoinDesk · Aug 2
Coldcard Exploit Drives 7,300 BTC to Exchanges as Losses Reach $70-$90 Million
3 articles · Updated · CoinDesk · Aug 2
Summary
7,300 BTC in sub-10 BTC transfers hit exchanges on July 31, the highest since Feb. 6, as smaller holders moved funds after the Coldcard wallet breach.
1,000-1,300 BTC has been stolen across more than 1,000 addresses since July 30 after a firmware flaw let some devices generate predictable seed phrases that attackers could reconstruct offline.
11,163 BTC of net exchange inflows went mainly to Binance, River, Kraken and OKX, while exchange-held bitcoin rose to 2.715 million from 2.703837 million before the exploit.
Nearly 1 million active addresses were recorded on July 31, up from 645,000 a day earlier, with analysts saying most of the increase came from users sending coins to exchanges.
The shift reverses the post-FTX pattern, when users fled exchanges for self-custody, and has reopened debate over hardware-wallet security even though the flaw appears specific to some Coldcard units.