Cold Wallet Goes Cold: $114M Coldcard Hack Spooks Holders Into an Exchange U-Turn 🧊

Bitcoin and ether declined on Monday as a $114 million exploit targeting Coldcard hardware wallets extended into a fifth day, prompting some holders to move coins back to centralized exchanges and reigniting debate over the safety of self-custody. Bitcoin was recently down 1.5% over 24 hours at $62,603.77, while ether slipped nearly 2% to $1,842, according to CoinDesk Data. The CoinDesk DeFi Select Index fell 2.5%. Despite the scale of the theft and the erosion of confidence in cold storage, the price reaction in the largest cryptocurrency remained relatively contained, with BTC revisiting a level it has traded at several times in recent weeks.

Analysts at Marex said the hack has unsettled sentiment across crypto social media, where small holders have reported losing long-term positions. "Worse for sentiment, it [the hack] has spooked holders into sending coins back to exchanges, the opposite of the self-custody trend crypto is built on," Marex wrote. "When the thing wobbling is cold storage itself, a cheaper barrel does not fix it." The incident has raised fresh questions about direct custody as a holding strategy at a time when several firms are continuing to accumulate bitcoin.

Strategy (MSTR), the Michael Saylor-led corporate bitcoin holder, indicated it is tracking the 200-week simple moving average, which sits above $63,000, and hinted at resuming purchases after a five-week pause. The pause, funded in part by preferred stock carrying a steep 12% dividend, was the longest in the company's history. Geopolitical developments added to the cross-currents: President Donald Trump said new talks with Iran would begin on Monday, a claim Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei rejected, stating there are no plans to receive a U.S. delegation or send an Iranian one.

In derivatives markets, positioning offered mixed signals. BTC futures open interest climbed to a one-month high, while the long-short futures volume for takers tilted slightly bearish, with more than 52% of taker volume on the short side. Options volatility held steady, with call interest clustered around strikes of $68,000 and $70,000.

Separately, NEAR Protocol said its Intents system has processed more than $24 billion in lifetime volume and outlined upcoming upgrades including quantum-safe cryptography, dynamic resharding and AI compute staking.