Although Bitcoin has gone through countless phases of massive fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), the current crisis around Coldcard has triggered the worst wave of fear ever recorded on crypto social media channels.
So far, BTC has been able to weather the storm in terms of price moves to a large extent, even though it has slipped by a few grand. However, it appears that those losses are largely connected to other factors, such as the escalating tension in the Middle East.
Fear Through the Roof
Data provided by the analytics company Santiment Intelligence shows that Bitcoin has registered its lowest positive-to-negative commentary ratio since the firm began tracking such discussions across some of the most used platforms like X, Reddit, and Telegram. The current numbers show just 0.58 bullish comments for every bearish one, indicating that fear has overwhelmingly replaced optimism.
What’s even more intriguing is that this reaction is quite unusual since it has dwarfed all previous market shocks, including the rapid collapse of FTX, Mt. Gox, and the COVID-19 “Black Thursday” crash. None of them generated such extreme levels of negative comments online.
Santiment attributed the difference to psychological factors. While earlier crises primarily involved centralized exchanges or broader macroeconomic events, the Coldcard incident has raised questions about self-custody itself, which has long been considered Bitcoin’s safest storage method.
Binance’s Changpeng Zhao also commented on the recent developments, suggesting that even old wallets with a long history can have bugs. He believes nothing is 100% certain, which is why investors need to stay informed.
What Happened With Coldcard?
Security researchers disclosed last week that attackers had distributed malicious firmware capable of stealing wallet seed phrases during the device setup process. Coldcard users who installed the compromised software unknowingly exposed their recovery phrases, allowing attackers to drain their wallets after funds were deposited.
The estimated scale of the incident has grown significantly over the past few days. Current data shows that roughly 1,200 wallets have been compromised, losing nearly 1,100 BTC (worth over $70 million at current prices) during a coordinated 41-minute operation.
All transactions shared the same unusual fingerprint: identical 30sat/vB transaction fees, far above prevailing network rates, suggesting an automated sweeping tool. Furthermore, the attack occurred more than a day before Coldcard publicly warned customers about the compromised firmware.
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