Bitcoin on-chain activity hits 2026 peak as Coldcard flaw tied to $116M BTC losses

Odaily Planet Daily reports that Bitcoin wallet activity accelerated this week, with about 2.27 million new wallets created and roughly 751,000 active wallets, the strongest on-chain pace in months. Active addresses spiked to nearly 978,000 on July 31, around 1.6 times July's daily average. In the first week of August, the daily average was about 751,000, above July's roughly 610,000. Despite the on-chain uptick, exchange inflows softened. Daily deposits to exchanges averaged about $1.55 billion, down from $1.67 billion in July, and there was no clear matching increase in spot buying activity on exchanges. The report links the activity surge to a firmware vulnerability affecting certain Coldcard hardware wallets made by Coinkite, including some Mk3, Mk4, Mk5 and Q devices. On impacted units, seed generation relied on a software-based random number generator, cutting effective entropy to about 40 or 72 bits. More than $116 million in Bitcoin has been lost since July 30 in incidents tied to the issue. Affected users have been moving funds to fresh addresses and replacing potentially compromised devices. Coinkite has issued a firmware patch and published an entropy repair disclosure document. The problem is described as a firmware-level random number generation weakness and not a flaw in the Bitcoin protocol.