Coldcard third-wave attacker moves 45% of stolen Bitcoin
Written by Zoltan Vardaistaff writerReviewed by Yohan Yunstaff editorGalaxy said 82% of Bitcoin stolen across all Coldcard attacks remains in the original addresses, with 18% moved in apparent laundering.
The exploiter behind the third wave of the Coldcard wallet hack has moved about 45% of their Bitcoin (BTC) haul, routing the funds through THORChain or into CoinJoin transactions, according to Galaxy Research.
In a Monday update, Galaxy said the exploiter began moving funds to Ethereum through THORChain on Sept. 2. The latest movements sent Bitcoin into CoinJoin rounds, which combine multiple users’ payments into a single transaction to make funds harder to trace.
Galaxy said the third-wave exploiter had created 293 two-of-two multisignature vaults to hold victims’ coins and was moving funds from the largest vaults in descending order of size. Funds from the 11 largest vaults have now been moved.
The transactions helped Galaxy identify a previously unknown vault that it said likely held another Coldcard victim’s funds, although the cause of that loss remained unconfirmed.
Across all waves of the Coldcard exploit, approximately 82% of the stolen Bitcoin remains in the original attacker-controlled addresses, while 18% has moved, apparently for laundering purposes, Galaxy said.
The Coldcard exploit ranks as the third-largest exploit so far in 2026, behind a $293 million Kelp DAO hack and the $280 million Drift protocol hack, according to DefiLlama.
Related: Trezor says data breach affects another 67K US customers
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