Coldcard Victims Scrawl Messages on Blockchain
The Bitcoin blockchain has become a permanent message board for victims of the Coldcard hacker. The wallet connected to the attacker contains $36 million in stolen funds, and since the July 30 breach, multiple deposits have been made with written text attached.
Much of this writing is from hack victims pleading for their money back, while others are pure theater or even advertisements for money laundering services. This phenomenon is made possible by Bitcoin's OP_RETURN function, which allows anyone to attach a short text string to a transaction and have it timestamped on the chain.
The Coldcard breach has resulted in verified losses of over $100 million, making it one of the biggest self-custody failures on record. With no clear avenues for recovery, victims are resorting to scribbling notes on the blockchain as their last option.