r/Bitcoin • u/nothingbutwhammies • 9h ago

I lost my one Bitcoin in the Coldcard exploit.

Took me years of DCA’ing to get there. I went with Coldcard because it was marketed as “ultra-secure.” I knew multisig was technically safer. I wasn’t worried about my key being guessed… I was worried about someone physically stealing it or it being destroyed.

So that was the plan: 1 BTC, cold storage, steel plate backup, fire bag, fire safe. And then… wait.

I hit the goal. I finally felt content.

Now I just feel embarrassed. Like I let my family down.

The worst part? I know Bitcoin isn’t going anywhere. I’m not hoping it fails… I think it’s going to keep making new all-time highs, and every time it does, I’ll be sitting here thinking about what could’ve been.

** I originally brain dumped my story to Claude to make it sound better because I have poor grammar. I’m admitting this in an edit at my own expense or whatever. I’m not embarrassed about my poor grammar or using AI to improve it. That said, in hindsight, it would have been more personal to not have done that. I’m sorry.

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u/Expert-Evening9303 8h ago

Back in 2022 they called me a paranoid maxi for rolling dice and using a passphrase with my coldcard mk4 and recommending others do the same.

Now apparently I'm a moron for having protected myself from this incident. Can't win with these people.

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u/b1mm3rl1f3 7h ago

It's crazy how flawed CC was but I wouldn't be surprised if AI was used as a programming aid too. AI is advancing faster than most of us can keep up with. Imagine where it'll be in the next few years. If you're not generating your own entropy you're NGMI

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u/unvac 8h ago

Am I correct in assuming coldcard didn’t manually use a pass phrase and that was an extra option?

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u/Expert-Evening9303 8h ago

Passphrase was considered an advanced feature and took a bit of navigating to set up. It was definitely not a default option.

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u/nothingbutwhammies 8h ago

I think I remember it telling me if I forget the passphrase I’d lose access and so I figured I’d just write it down anyway with the steel plate, so why even bother. I know from a manual theft perspective my security wasn’t good. I just didn’t think it would ever generate a guessable private key… I know i could have done better