How Bitcoin Hardware Wallets Supported Users During the Coldcard Crisis

Bitcoin.com News looked into how the top 13 manufacturers of these crucial devices communicated on X, the main social media channel for all things crypto asset-related, since the crisis erupted at the end of July and into August.

SPEED AND CLARITY

Teams differed in speed, clarity, helpfulness, tone, bragging level, and whether they kept following up on the matter days and now, weeks later. For example, the manufacturer of Bitkey, U.S.-based Block, which was part of the initial Coldcard investigation, was among the first to warn its users and the broader community about the exploit, and was soon followed by Canada-based Blockstream, the manufacturer of Jade. Meanwhile, for some others, it took more than a day to post on X. One of the leaders of the industry, Europe-based Ledger, informed its followers on X after around 14 hours since the crisis erupted.

However, the fastest responders were not always the most thorough.

BROADER SELF-CUSTODY OPPORTUNITY

In either case, among the patterns that emerged across the wallets’ communication, there was a heavy emphasis on how entropy is generated, as teams were trying to differentiate themselves from Coldcard. Also, some teams highlighted support for user-generated entropy as a way to reduce trust in the device’s own random number generator (RNG).