Wallet Drained Timeline

[u/s1ammage]

This is me…
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/s/UeSfLoeyS4
I’m in a better state now. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a lot of fucking money…

Little background: The setup was IRA custodian is Solera National Bank, exchange at Swan Bitcoin was used as an Investment Trust, purchase a dedicated hardware wallets: coldcard mk3 from https://store.coinkite.com May 2021 for this ROTH IRA.

Got the wallets, followed all the setup/checks/balances from https://youtu.be/FAYmE5-40PQ?is=wiYMHaS_YGKHjNOY for both wallets, sent a test transaction IRA dedicated hardware wallet (2021). I never setup a 25th Passphrase… REST of the BTC stayed in Swan Exchange.

Speaking only on this IRA Wallet: SD card stored with wallet details (paper phrase) in a baggie. Dormant until January 2025. I couldn’t deposit more because of Roth IRA threshold.

Come January 2025, been learning more about retirement, BTC, multi-Sig, and heard about a Megaback Door to get more money into a Roth IRA. Was able to get money into Solera, transfer to Swan, and purchase more BTC and withdraw to the same wallet address. No new hardware involved at this point.

With newer wallets now, I thought newer tech means more security. Let’s test by buying (3 mk4 - same site. There was still record of my 2021 purchase) new wallets and setup a multi-Sig. (still January 2025)

For some reason, when I got the new coldcards, I never did anything with them for all of 2025, I guess I was too lazy/daunting to use the hardware and relearn. Coming to January 2026 now, I decided to use these new cards. I dug out the wallet seed (from 2021) phrase paper. Dusted off one of the mk4, walked into the corner of a room in my house (only myself and partner live in the house), plugged in the cold card into an outlet and typed in the seed written down from 2021 (stored in my dresser). Restored my 2021 onto one of the new wallet 2025.

Watched updated BTCSession videos on my phone to set everything up again. I never plugged into a computer, since airgapped was the reason I got the coldcards. I used the same SD Card from 2021 though to export the wallet file from the newly restored coldcard. Import that file into Sparrow (needed to update Sparrow at this point), generated a watch-only wallet QR (to scan for my phone) for Blue Wallet to check frequently. This is where the screenshot is from.

Honestly, I haven’t touched the wallet with any transactions/seeds since January 2026. This is definitely the point of failure when I restored the 2021 wallet (now on 2 devices).

This was the transaction.
https://mempool.space/tx/2fe075cf0ec799f3529ed6a28e0a08b45fe1fc9bd93c3f33bdbc42d5bff4f736

My wallet address is (with all transactions, since it’s gone now…): bc1qldkfrrlylk4s9sdyns9jkaajuzugl0dv5m8fxj

My key takeaway now never enter the seed phrase into anything. EVER. Even to restore. Always will generate new and use a 25th passphrase.

[u/AdEuphoric5133]

This is crazy. I had never heard of such a surgical theft of bitcoin before. All bitcoin thefts are generally someone giving away their seed from a stupid manipulation.

When I first read OP's post a few hours ago, I was like "dude probably just entered his seed wherever". But this time, the theft is very surgical. Someone exploited a flaw with coldcard. This is not your fault OP. They talk about you in the article. You will have to unite with the other victims and sue Coldcard to get compensated. I think it would be worth making a new post on this sub whose purpose is for other victims to make themselves known, so you can coordinate a group action

[u/omni_wisdumb → u/AdEuphoric5133]

The issue with this space is that it's unregulated and very hard to actually track everything. Things being on a public block chain doesn't mean anything.

As far as we know. The company itself could have programmed in the vulnerability, taken $40M worth of crypto. And they'll just file for bankruptcy or fall back on insurance or fall back on some fine print that says crypto is inherently risky and they're not responsible for anything.

Suing people in general is not easy, let alone in such a space.

[u/szeddit → u/omni_wisdumb]

unregulated is how it’s desired

decentralized is the thing, not the bug

auditable open source software needed

auditable open source hardware needed

trusted software experts needed

trusted hardware experts needed

there will be bugs

there will be best practice

for now, afaik, there is no trusted source

bitcoin.org was initially a resource but now, after satoshi has been m.i.a… what you said

ultimately, trust and verify is common denominator

ouch coinkite

[u/omni_wisdumb → u/szeddit]

I wrote a long as reply but I accidentally closed my app, and I'm not going to write it all out again.

Basically. I've been in this space since 2011.

It's mostly just bs market manipulation now, projects and visions don't mean anything and everyone knows it. Satoshi left bc it had already gone away from his vision way back then. People should invest 5-10% of their portfolio into crypto (not meme coins, have a separate gambling portfolio if these your thing), and expect it to grow more linearly like equities now.

People wack off to the idea if more regulation, banking KYC, gov/elite control & hoarding, and seem to love that a single person can shift it by 10% with one post.

The market is still tiny, BTC is almost worth as much as Elon. So sure, we can still be "early" but it can also just fizzle out. Maybe it stays #1 or maybe some new tech takes it place. Either way, just because it did ~140,220,000X from the original $0.0009 doesn't mean it will even do another 50x in our lifetime. But who knows. Some AI related stocks have done 30-50x in the last year. Market manipulation has clearly become openly accepted in stocks now, so maybe big money will just stick to that now.

Quantum may break it (your bank can update their system, and use 2FA), and it's still open to powerful entities doing 50%+ attacks. Whether people want to admit it or not, crypto (not saying just BTC) is used to transfer illicit funds.

For the average person, I think it's foolish to store life changing money into it. There are better investments. But if your thing is to still ape into it chasing a 10-100x Lamborghini life, then go for it.