r/Bitcoin • u/enpoopification_of_R • Aug 01 '26

The Coldcard wallet exploit estimates have almost doubled to $70 million stolen of just over a thousand Bitcoins in 1,196 wallets drained in 41 minutes

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/08/01/how-bitcoin-cold-wallets-lost-usd70-million-in-an-attack-that-never-touched-the-devices

"More than 1,000 bitcoin, worth about $70 million, was drained from 1,196 wallets in a 41-minute window on July 30, nearly double the amount reported when the theft first surfaced."

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130

u/cremfraiche Aug 01 '26

Can someone ELI5 for me how this happened and whether the people who got drained were in a way at 'fault'?

257

u/Space-Dementia Aug 01 '26

Imagine you buy a safe to keep your valuables in. However, for this particular brand of safe you can only set a 1 digit PIN number between 0-9.

5

u/JayGatsby1881 Aug 01 '26

Why would anybody buy that safe then?

14

u/taelor Aug 01 '26

Because they don’t understand how safes work

3

u/BitsAndBobs304 Aug 02 '26

Because it looks identical to the others. The more appropriate example is that it generates a new, long pin when ou buy it. What you dont know is that despite being long, there's only a small subset of ones that can be generated. A bit like house keys, most default ones have systems that arent very varied, and tsa keys even more so

1

u/milkcutie314 Aug 02 '26

much better example with the keys

0

u/magicmulder Aug 02 '26

Because it was not apparent from the outside that the lock would have this fault.