Last week a Bitcoin user thought his Wallet of Satoshi had been hacked. His balance was draining in front of his eyes, with no outgoing payments to explain it.

On September 11, Kristaps Kaupe posted that something strange was happening with his Wallet of Satoshi. He had sent sats from his own Lightning node to the wallet. The deposit showed up in his transaction history but never appeared in his balance. Then his balance started dropping on its own, slowly, with nothing in his history to explain it.

His original post: https://twiiit.com/kristapsk/status/2098467605832958037

The post blew up and people started asking whether Wallet of Satoshi or the Spark system behind it had been hacked.

It had not been hacked. His app was out of date.

Wallet of Satoshi recently rebuilt its wallet on Spark, the new system from Lightspark. Kaupe had not updated his app, and the old version could not read his balance correctly after the backend changed. The money was never gone. The app was just showing him the wrong number.

He proved it himself the next day. He took his backup seed phrase and opened it in a different Spark wallet. His full balance was right there.

So: no hack, no missing money, nobody else affected. An outdated app showing the wrong balance.

But the panic points at something real. Wallets across the industry are moving users off custodial Lightning and onto Spark as the new self-custody standard, and those migrations have been bumpy. Balances not displaying correctly, features disappearing in the move, forced updates that change how the wallet works underneath you.

Two lessons for regular users: update the app before you panic, and keep your seed phrase safe. It is the thing that proves your money is still yours, no matter what the app on your screen says.