Bitcoin Active Address Count Surges Amid Coldcard Vulnerability Panic

A critical vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets has led to a surge in Bitcoin's active address count, not due to market enthusiasm, but panic.

The issue stems from a firmware update released in March 2021, which contained a flaw in the device's random number generator. Coinkite, the manufacturer behind Coldcard, issued an emergency security advisory on July 30, urging users who generated seeds on the affected firmware to treat those seeds as compromised and migrate funds immediately.

The network was flooded with precautionary movement transactions on July 31, with active addresses increasing from roughly 645,000 to approximately 980,000. This single-day jump of over 330,000 addresses is a direct readout of how many people were scrambling simultaneously.

Attackers didn't wait for users to act first and began coordinated draining of vulnerable wallets on July 30, targeting between 4,585 and 7,300 addresses across multiple waves. The confirmed losses from these attacks landed between $89 million and over $100 million at current prices.