Bitcoin wallet additions hit 2026 high as Coldcard firmware flaw tied to $116M loss

ME News reported that on Aug. 8 (UTC+8), Bitcoin added 2.27 million new wallets this week, with 751,000 active wallets, marking the strongest on-chain activity in months. Active addresses peaked at nearly 978,000 on July 31, about 1.6 times July's daily average. In the first week of August, active addresses averaged roughly 751,000, above July's average of about 610,000. Average daily exchange inflows came in at $1.55 billion, down from $1.67 billion in July, and the data did not show a notable pickup in exchange buying. The activity spike has been linked to a firmware vulnerability affecting Coinkite's Coldcard hardware wallets. The issue impacts certain Mk3, Mk4, Mk5 and Q devices, where seed generation relied on a software-based random number generator, cutting effective entropy to around 40 or 72 bits. Since July 30, more than $116 million in Bitcoin has reportedly been lost as a result. Affected users have moved funds to new addresses and replaced compromised devices. Coinkite has issued a firmware patch and published an entropy remediation disclosure. The company said the problem stems from firmware-level random number generation and is not a flaw in the Bitcoin protocol. (Source: ODAILY)