Skip to content

EMERGENCY BITCOIN UPDATE: Coldcard Attack Explained | Rob Hamilton

August 1, 2026 · 42 min

Show notes

“This is as code red as it can get for Bitcoin self-custody.”

Rob Hamilton joins me for an emergency episode on the catastrophic Coldcard entropy bug that has exposed Bitcoin held in wallets generated on affected firmware.

A firmware change introduced in 2021 prevented Coldcard devices from generating the level of randomness users believed they were getting. The result is that attackers may be able to reconstruct seed phrases and drain wallets, even when the device was air-gapped and the seed words never touched the internet. Rob explains which Coldcard models and setups are at risk, why updating the firmware does not repair an existing vulnerable seed, and what affected users need to do now.

We also get into the risks facing single-signature and multisig wallets, whether passphrases and independently generated entropy provide protection, how attackers are finding and sweeping vulnerable wallets, and the role AI may have played in discovering the bug.

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

LEDN

SWAN

ANCHORWATCH

BLOCKWARE

BITKEY

CAPE

FOLLOW:

Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles

Rob Hamilton: https://x.com/Rob1Ham

All episodes of What Bitcoin Did

Settings

Display

Language

Decides which stations you see first on the home page.

History

Recently played stations and episodes and your latest searches are only stored in this browser.

Notifications

A short notice when a podcast you follow has a new episode. Turn off single podcasts with the bell on their page.

Account

Save favorites – in the app and on the website.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Open search
Space
Play or pause
← →
In the player: back 15 s, forward 30 s (episodes) · in a row: next tile
↑ ↓
In a row: target within the tile
Home / End
In a row: first or last tile
Esc
Close window or menu
?
This overview
Now playing

Go to station page

Play next

    Add episodes with “Play next” – they play after the current episode.