A recent analysis of Bitcoin theft reports indicates that the majority of stolen funds originated from long-dormant wallets, with victims experiencing a median loss exceeding one Bitcoin.
Data published on X by Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn examined 250 victim reports, revealing that the typical stolen coin had remained untouched for approximately 3.5 years, with an alarming 88% of the stolen funds being at least a year old.
In terms of address losses, the data ranged from a median of 0.014 Bitcoin to a mean of 0.212 Bitcoin. Individual victims reported a median loss of 1.022 Bitcoin, with an average loss of 4.04 Bitcoin, while one unfortunate holder faced a staggering loss of 58.97 coins.
The hacking incident, which began last Thursday, led to the theft of over $35 million in Bitcoin from wallets. Coinkite, the manufacturer of Coldcard, stated that a firmware bug in Coldcard Mk3 devices—beginning with version 4.0.1 in March 2021—resulted in seed generation defaulting to a suboptimal software Pseudorandom Number Generator, rather than the hardware true random number generator. This vulnerability allowed hackers to effectively guess the seed phrases of investors.
The theft persisted throughout the weekend, as Coinkite and the Bitcoin community urged Coldcard users to promptly relocate their funds.
As of Friday, Galaxy Research confirmed that a total of $111 million had been stolen, although further investigation suggests that the actual figure could be significantly higher.
“We have numerous additional coins that are currently under scrutiny for confirmation; we believe total losses likely exceed $130 million,” the firm asserted on X.
In the aftermath of the attack, many cautious investors have begun transferring their assets to alternative storage solutions, including exchanges.
Coinkite released a statement this week indicating that the bug in its software “silently went unnoticed” and that “its potential impact grew with every release” of its products.
Days following the initial hack, the company advised investors to update their software or relocate their assets from the widely used hardware wallet.
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