Coldcard Bitcoin loss estimate rises to $70M after Galaxy analysis

Coldcard wallet incident's financial damage has been revised upward by Galaxy Research to an estimated $70.2 million. The analysis, conducted by the crypto research firm's investigation team, revealed that 1,196 addresses lost a total of 1,082.65 Bitcoin during a 41-minute period on July 30. This finding expands the previous estimate of 594.48 Bitcoin, worth $38 million, provided by AnchorWatch.

Galaxy Research traced the Bitcoin transactions between 1:10 AM and 1:51 AM UTC, across blocks 960,183 to 960,191, 30 hours before Coldcard published its initial security advisory. The firm identified a common pattern in the transactions, including identical 30 satoshis per virtual byte fees and no change outputs. Coinkite co-founder Rodolfo Novak acknowledged the company's responsibility for the firmware bug and released a hotfix to remove the software fallback path.

However, he cautioned that the update does not safeguard seeds generated on the vulnerable firmware and advised users to move their funds to a new seed.