Unchained · Tuesday, August 4, 2026
The Coldcard hack is characterized as a core cryptography exploit, not a Bitcoin-specific issue. Alex Thorne explained that a poorly generated pseudo-random function for seed creation could impact any system using that cryptography, including email providers or other blockchains like Ether or Solana. The failure was due to software and firmware not properly routing key chains through the random number generator.
“So the problem here, ironically, had nothing to do with Bitcoin specifically. This was a core, like cryptography exploit. Where you had a poorly generated pseudo-random function to create your seeds.”
“And as a result of that, whatever was secured with that cryptography could have been hacked. So if this had been, for instance, an email provider using encryption instead, you would have been able to get into everybody's email, correct? Like this is not a problem unique to blockchains. It is a cryptography problem.”
“And not only not a Bitcoin problem, um, could have been an Ether or Solana problem, and to your point, could have been, um, in a zip file problem or any type of key generation.”