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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3959 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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Grand Theft Crypto, Episode LXXVI

New week is here, time for new culture war happening is here. Maybe it belongs to finance thread, but both cryptocurrency and cryptocrime are now inseparable part of our culture.

Coldcard Hardware Wallet Flaw Linked to $70 Million Bitcoin Theft in 41 Minutes

An attacker drained 1,196 Bitcoin addresses in 41 minutes on July 30, taking 1,082.65 BTC worth about $70.2 million at the time.

Yes, safe crypto technology had proven to be unsafe once again. Follow the links in the article for more nerd details.

Why is this important? This time, this not due any fault or slip at the user side - their only mistake was trusting the professionals of Coinkite business operating since 2013 and considered one of the best by everyone in crypto.

Bitcoin is not to blame, Bitcoin worked as intended. The random numbers generated by Coldcard were not random.

Little parable for non nerds to grok what is it all about:

You have big pot of gold, and are very afraid you will lose it. Where to hide your treasure? You want to stay anonymous, you do not want anyone ever know that you are a rich man.

Fortunately, your bank provides deposit boxes, fully anonymous where anyone with key can come and withdraw the deposit, no questions asked.

Now, you have problem where to hide the key, so you do not lose or misplace it. No worry, you buy safe, made by trustworthy long established manufacturer that is 100% secure from crackers. You put your key inside, and feel relieved.

Until one day, you find the safe empty, the key vanished. You hurry to bank in panic, and your greatest fears come true. Someone was there, and emptied your deposit box. Your treasure is gone.

What happened? The super secure safe was unsafe. There was manufacturing fault that enabled anyone to open it if he knew about it. Some criminal mastermind learned about the vulnerability (For more mastermind points, he worked in the safe manufacturing company and put the fault there himself. For maximal mastermind points, he founded and operated the company himself, in a proper long con.) sneaked to your safe and squirreled away the key.

If your rage is pointed at bank, it is misplaced. Rightful target of your rage is the thief (good luck finding him, the chap can be now in Uruguay, Uganda or Uzbekistan, the world is big) and the safe company (good luck recovering anything from them). Just say farewell to your wealth and learn to love the hobo life.

Now, what are lessons of the episode?

1/ Another proof that crypto hadn't brought world peace and harmony as some more devoted fans promised, but crypto made crime cool again. Grisly, retarded and boring ordinary everyday crime stays, but evil genius was conjured from pages of pulp novels to reality.

2/ Trust no one. If you want to make you crypto stash really secure, you need to make your own random number generator, this means using the gold standard of physics, radioactive decay. No randomer random events can be found in this universe.

Too much work? Say good bye to crypto and invest in white powder. What you put in your nose, no one can take away from you ever again.

edit: links

Genuine question - why can't they implement some kind of two factor authentication? So that using your analogy, there are two keys to your vault. Stealing one key is not enough. Wouldn't that make it exponentially more difficult to steal peoples' money?

Maybe it's not a good analogy, but getting into my bank account requires both a password and a code number which is sent to my mobile phone. Obviously this is not perfect security, but it seems like it makes things much harder to break in.

Or here is another question: Why can't crypto currency be stored in the equivalent of a "checking account" and a "savings account." Most of the money is in the "savings account," and money can be moved from the "savings account" only to the "checking account" with a 48 hour delay. So that the user can check his account every day and if he sees an unauthorized transfer, he can lock the account down before any of the money makes it to the outside world.

You can, it’s called a multi-sig wallet. It’s a pain but people do it.

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