229 - Coldcard: The Devastation Begins

A Torchlight Chat about one of the scariest hacks ever: the Coldcard Bitcoin wallet hack of late July 2026 that has evaporated hundreds of millions of dollars and counting. The carnage will not stop. We discuss what happened, what you should do, and what the conspiracies are….

LINKS → https://x.com/realUrbanHacker (Urban Hacker) → https://escapethetechnocracy.com/product-invisible-seed-backup-bundle (our own backup bundle) → https://x.com/realUrbanHacker/status/2083933234774032415 (Free brief backup) → https://x.com/MissBitcoin_/status/2083355299587756188 (Simpler explanation of the problem) → https://www.instagram.com/aleguajardo_sv (posting about this)

WATCHMAN'S TORCH PREMIUM NEWSLETTER → https://watchmanstorch.com

ESCAPE THE TECHNOCRACY PRIVACY TUTORIALS → https://escapethetechnocracy.com (including consulting) → https://twitter.com/watchmanprivacy

TIMELINE 00:00 – Introduction 2:35 – The details of the Coldcard exploit 10:30 – Steps to take 18:30 – Creating a new wallet 24:45 – Don't update your Coldcard (before sending your funds out) 26:25 – More detail about the random generation flaw 29:00 – Who is draining the Coldcard wallets? 31:55 – Coinbase the solution?!? 34:30 – Is Coldcard anti-FOSS positioning what caused the problem? 39:50 – Should we condemn the Coldcard shills? 44:40 – Is this problem only for Coldcard – is AI a problem? 52:05 – Coldcard retweeted Urban? (Destroying their current devices) 55:30 – Was the commit that changed the seed phrase generation a conspiracy? 1:03:15 – Coldcard hack will wreck the history of Bitcoin privacy 1:07:20 – Final thoughts

Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio