Galaxy Research has now been in direct contact with 190 victims, whose reports have helped confirm with high confidence that 1778.84 BTC ($112.7m) has been stolen from more than 8,600 addresses. Notably, this number does not include several medium-confidence sets of possible thefts, such as the still unconfirmed “Wave 4.” If these candidate footprints and the suspected but unconfirmed Wave 4 were included, the loss would climb to 2,417.35 BTC ($153m).
That's a lot of corn. And it is sad to know that it mostly comes from people who are like us, not bug businesses or seven gamblers. And the result is even more sad:
The count of small transfers (<1 BTC) flowing into exchanges reached a local high following the incident; inflows to exchanges exceeded 22k BTC in just the first four days after the attacks began; and as of Aug. 8, exchange balances stood at 3.683m BTC, an all-time high. Some traditional financial firms seemed to jump on the moment, with BlackRock announcingthat the minimum to in-kind create IBIT ETF shares from native BTC had been lowered to $1m (from $25m).
As for the stolen Bitcoin, it seems that they largely haven't moved (although maybe some has been mixed?)
The bulk of funds have remained largely unmoved since they were stolen from victims. Of the at least 1,778 BTC that has been stolen, 1,531 BTC remains in attacker-controlled addresses unmoved. ~246 BTC has been moved by attackers after the theft, with 65% flowing into Coinjoin mixing transactions and 35% continuing to move onwards onchain, sometimes through carefully constructed peelchains. A tiny amount can be traced, at least in part, to deposits into exchanges or interchain bridges.
Alex Thorn seems to think that this has spelled the end of orangepilling via shitposting...a truly tragic outcome:
The era of “contributing” to Bitcoin and converting people into bitcoiners solely through philosophical explanations, memetic platitudes, and, frankly, s**tposting, is over. Bitociners need to do more: audit more code, educate more clearly and effectively, and be less judgmental of newcomers who may not feel technologically capable of securing their own coins.
I wonder how many people who lost funds were the type to make those "contributions". I wonder how many of them have told others to "Have fun staying poor"
Huge hit to self-custody. You think the losses are higher or are the numbers real? The seller's gotta take the hit for this!
Only a hit to the idiot sheep who bought the hype of third party HW gadgets.
https://twiiit.com/intangiblecoins/status/2088305623318298903
Definitely a wake-up call for Bitcoin security. The numbers are rough, but hopefully this pushes better education and security practices across the ecosystem.
If you are stupid enough to trust, buy and use third party HWs you deserve to lose all your Bitcoin.
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Was it North Korea?
https://m.stacker.news/152310
They have the skills base and experience.
Hardware wallet security is critical. As someone who audits smart contracts, I see similar patterns in software wallets too. The key issue is always key management — where are private keys stored, how are they derived, and what happens during transaction signing.
For DeFi protocols, I always recommend:
The Coldcard situation shows why independent security research matters.
everyone's staring at the 112m, but the 22k btc that sprinted back to exchanges in four days is the one that sticks with me. a hardware wallet bug chased people back into custody, and most of them won't come back out once the fear passes and the convenience sets in