Bitcoin Wallets Spike to Highest in Months as Coldcard Hack Fallout Spreads

Bitcoin logged 2.27 million new wallets and 751,000 active wallets this week, its strongest onchain activity in months, as holders raced to move funds off Coldcard hardware wallets following a firmware exploit that has drained more than $116 million.

A Security-Driven Surge, Not a Buying Spree

Santiment reported the onchain data, with active addresses peaking near 978,000 on July 31, about 1.6 times July’s daily average, before settling into a range of roughly 751,000 per day through the first week of August, versus a July average close to 610,000. Exchange inflows averaged about $1.55 billion daily, slightly below July’s $1.67 billion average, indicating wallet activity without a corresponding increase in selling pressure.

Inside the Coldcard Flaw

The spike traces back to Coinkite’s Coldcard hardware wallets, where a firmware bug (first introduced in March 2021 on versions 4.0.1 through 4.1.9) affected seed-phrase generation on certain Mk3 units, using a software random-number generator instead of the device’s dedicated hardware entropy chip. This reduced randomness from 128 bits to as low as 40 bits on worst-affected devices. Bitcoin.com News reports losses exceeding $116 million, with a fourth wave of thefts ongoing.

As word spread, security-conscious holders generated new wallets on unaffected hardware and swept funds to fresh addresses, explaining the rise in new and active wallets without a corresponding increase in exchange inflows. Coinkite has released a firmware fix and an entropy hotfix disclosure. Independent researchers identified nearly 5,000 vulnerabilities across hundreds of bitcoin-adjacent projects in related testing.

Not a Protocol-Level Problem

Experts stress the flaw lies in a single manufacturer’s firmware, not in Bitcoin itself. Geographic data shows Canadian users account for roughly a quarter of exploit losses, reflecting Coinkite’s base. The episode highlights how a narrow firmware bug can affect onchain metrics beyond affected devices.

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/featured/bitcoin-new-wallets-2026-high-coldcard-hack/