--- title: "Hackers Figure Out a Trick to Steal Bitcoin From Cold Wallets, Grab $110 Million" description: "Hackers made away with more than $100 million worth of Bitcoin from thousands of secured \"cold\" wallets thanks to a glaring software bug." date: "2026-08-08" modified: "2026-08-08" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/hackers-steal-innocent-people-bitcoin" categories: - "Bitcoin" - "Blockchain" - "Cryptocurrency" - "Future Society" --- # Hackers Figure Out a Trick to Steal Bitcoin From Cold Wallets, Grab $110 Million ![A photo illustration of a Bitcoin hacker.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* Hackers made away with more than $100 million worth of Bitcoin from thousands of supposedly secured "cold" wallets hosted by Canada-based company Coinkite. As [*Bloomberg* reports](), the hackers managed to infiltrate the wallets despite clients having a physical hardware key associated with their accounts, which was supposed to provide nearly impenetrable security. "The moment it loaded I knew I was screwed because I saw red lines for withdrawals," one of the victims, Johnathan Goodman, told *Bloomberg*. "Between 9:36 and 9:43 pm on July 29th, all three of my wallets were completely drained." Crypto insights company Galaxy Research estimated that around $110 million worth of Bitcoin had been drained from around 5,000 wallets last week, a figure that [grew to at least 7,300 by Monday](). The incident highlights persistent lapses in security plaguing the largely unregulated cryptocurrency industry. In the case of Coinkite, it was a particularly egregious lapse in security. The firm [warned its customers on July 30]() that hackers were exploiting a software bug that allowed them to reconstruct wallet "seed phrases," which are sequences of random words that act as a master key to "cold" — or offline — wallets. Coinkite [promised in an email to *Bloomberg*]() in a followup story that it was racing to get a full picture of the embarrassing situation, saying it was working on "helping affected customers." However, the company refused to estimate the scale of the losses, vowing to conduct a "post-mortem" at an unspecified future date. "We’re not in a position to independently confirm total losses or validate the specific figures being reported by third parties," the company told *Bloomberg*. "We won’t speculate on a number we can’t verify directly." The company also kicked off an "ongoing ecosystem-wide security audit" which has revealed "numerous critical bugs in key software systems across the ecosystem using frontier AI models." The cryptocurrency firm has since gone into full damage control mode as it investigates the major slipup. In an "[update on customer data retention]()" published on its website today, the company said that "due to legal obligations arising from the security incident, including the preservation of records that may be relevant to ongoing and anticipated legal proceedings, we have temporarily suspended our automated data-blanking process." "This means that customer records that would otherwise have been blanked under our standard schedule will be retained until further notice," the company wrote. **More on crypto:** [*Trump Boasts That He Can Profit Off Presidency as Much as He Wants: "I Found Out That Nobody Cared"*]() ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()