Overview
- A Coldcard hardware-wallet firmware flaw was exploited in late July and analysts say attackers drained roughly 1,716–1,816 BTC, which led Coinkite to release patched firmware and prompted affected holders to move funds.
- U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a renewed inflow wave totaling about $865 million to $1 billion during Aug. 3–7, with CryptoQuant reporting roughly 11,792 BTC moved into identified provider wallets for the week.
- On-chain metrics jumped sharply, with Santiment recording about 2.27 million newly created wallets and roughly 751,000 active wallets over the week, analytics attribute a large share of that activity to defensive transfers after the Coldcard incident.
- The ETF flows were heavily concentrated in a few products, led by BlackRock’s IBIT (~$693.5M) and Fidelity’s FBTC (~$116.5M), and industry analysts warn those flows can reflect rebalancing, product shifts, or basis trades rather than fresh retail demand.
- Despite the inflows, CryptoQuant estimates cumulative institutional unrealized drawdowns of about $10.5 billion, leaving many institutional positions underwater and suggesting caution about reading the flows as a broad-market turn.