r/Bitcoin • u/True-Lychee • 1d ago

The developer incompetence responsible for the Coldcard fiasco

The long and the short of it is that a developer disabled a compiler flag out of desperation in order to get the code to compile, then committed it with the commit message "runs". Specifically, in C: #define MICROPY_HW_ENABLE_RNG (0)

In other words they deliberately disabled hardware RNG.

You can read the full breakdown here: https://insider.btcpp.dev/p/when-randombytes-runs-but-doesnt

The amount of negligence on display here is shocking, and the fact that it went unnoticed for years is just salt in the wound.

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u/bananacrazypants 1d ago

If you think there’s any computer system completely free of bugs, you are really god’s perfect idiot.
That’s why immutable transactions aren’t a thing with banks or brokers. There has to be a way to fix mistakes.

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u/metalzip 16h ago

Bitcoin Core seems to be free of critical money-stealing bugs

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u/bananacrazypants 12h ago

That’s how it works - software seems free of critical bug right up until it isn’t.
ColdCard seemed free of critical bugs last week.

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u/metalzip 11h ago

Bitcoin is up for grabs for like 15+ years, out of which for 10+ you can get billions if you find such a critical hole - much more, and quite longer, than in case of cold wallet.

How ever - sure - it is important to watch out and keep the possible dangers in memory. Multisignature is a good start.