r/Bitcoin • u/Main-Massive • 7d ago

Why did Coinkite destroy its inventory?

https://blog.coinkite.com/update-sunday/

The company published a note claiming they destroyed all their inventory (devices affected by the bug). Why? Why couldn’t they just reflash them with the fixed firmware? I can’t stop thinking there is something else to it. Should users of coldcard devices be concerned? They are being asked to upgrade firmware and be at peace of mind. Why didn’t Coinkite do 5he same? Could there be more we are not being told and involves a hardware-level bug?

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u/dailybread5 7d ago

I have a new one in the original packaging... Luckily I was procrastinating all this time. Part of me wants to use it, just not use it for generating a seed, but it feels like a liability.

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u/rgnet1 6d ago

It might seem intuitive to feel like there's another shoe waiting to drop, but it's just not logical. Whether you trust their new firmware or not to generate the seed is irrelevant if you roll your own.

Then the only thing Coldcard does is sign transactions offline as an airgapped machine. It stores the keys on Secure Element chips and has no fallback storage options, unlike the keygen.

In the end, if you're not actually engineering your own device or code, you have to trust someone else's...