The classic crypto playbook is playing out again: something scary happens, retail sells, and bigger wallets quietly load up. Since July 29, Bitcoin wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC have collectively added 19,610 BTC to their stacks, a 0.14% increase, according to on-chain data from Santiment.
Meanwhile, the smallest retail wallets, those holding under 0.01 BTC, have trimmed their positions by 0.55% over the same window. The catalyst separating these two groups isn’t some macro event or Fed decision. It’s a firmware bug in a hardware wallet.
The Coldcard exploit changed the mood
On July 30, exploitation of a critical vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets began in earnest. The damage was significant: over 1,367 BTC stolen from compromised addresses, valued at roughly $87 to $89 million at the time of the thefts.
The underlying flaw originated from a firmware update pushed back in March 2021, primarily affecting the Mk3 model line, with lesser impacts on the Mk4, Mk5, and Q models.
