Galaxy Research Head: Coldcard Incident Shakes Bitcoin Community, Signaling a Turning Point in Security Philosophy
Odaily News, Galaxy Research Head Alex Thorn stated on the X platform that attacks exploiting the Coldcard hardware wallet vulnerability have noticeably declined, but cumulative losses continue to rise as more victims come forward. The impact of this incident on the Bitcoin community is significant, as the victims are primarily long-term BTC holders who adhered to self-custody cold storage principles, rather than those who lost assets due to high-risk trading or DeFi activities.
At a scale of $112 million, this incident ranks among the top 20 largest hacks in crypto history and is one of the most severe security breaches in the hardware wallet self-custody sector to date. Bitcoin culture may be entering a new phase—the era of relying solely on ideological advocacy and extreme self-custody promotion is coming to an end. The community needs to place greater emphasis on technical security, lower the barrier to entry for users, and avoid simply shifting the burden of security responsibility onto ordinary users. This crisis may ultimately drive the Bitcoin ecosystem to establish a more mature security framework.
Galaxy Research has directly contacted 190 victims and has confirmed with high confidence that the exploit has led to the theft of 1,778.84 BTC (approximately $112.7 million) from over 8,600 addresses. This tally does not yet include certain moderately credible suspicious attack records, such as the unconfirmed "Wave 4." If these potential attack scopes are incorporated, total losses could expand to 2,417.35 BTC (approximately $153 million).
Meanwhile, the incident is reshaping market perceptions of self-custody security. Galaxy noted that multisig wallets have emerged as the "winners" of this event, with no stolen transactions traced to multisig wallets so far. Multisig service providers including Casa, Unchained, Nunchuk, and Anchorwatch have all observed a notable increase in user registrations and BTC inflows.
