Key Takeaways:
Bitcoin fell 1.5% to $62,595 and ether dropped nearly 2% to $1,842 as the $114 million Coldcard exploit entered its fifth day.
"Worse for sentiment, it has spooked holders into sending coins back to exchanges, the opposite of the self-custody trend crypto is built on," analysts at Marex said. "When the thing wobbling is cold storage itself, a cheaper barrel does not fix it."
Galaxy Research tracked three waves of thefts totaling 1,367 BTC across 4,585 addresses, with a possible fourth wave of 448.7 BTC across 709 addresses pushing cumulative losses near $114 million. Small holders moved 39,600 BTC (about $2.5 billion) on July 31, the most since the FTX collapse, with sub-10 BTC exchange deposits hitting 7,300 BTC ($459 million), per CryptoQuant. On-chain analyst Willy Woo put recovery odds at 20 to 40 percent.
The exploit stems from a March 2021 firmware bug that left seed phrases drawn from a pool of roughly 72 bits of entropy instead of 128 bits, affecting Coldcard Mk2 through Mk5 and Q models. Kraken chief security officer Nick Percoco called it a "wake-up call for the entire hardware wallet industry."
The long-short futures volume for takers leans bearish, with over 52 percent in shorts. BTC open interest rose to a one-month high of 772K BTC with annualized funding rates moderately positive at 4 percent, though the 24-hour cumulative volume delta is slightly negative, meaning bears are trading at market prices rather than passive limit orders. ADA, ETH, and BCH are notable OI gainers while SOL open interest continues to slide. TRX, DOGE, CC, and GRAM show negative funding rates, though none are deeply negative.
The BVIV, a 30-day implied volatility index, hovered near 37 percent for a fourth straight day, showing no stress in the options market despite the hack and rising Treasury yields. Calls at $68,000 and $70,000 are the most traded bets on Deribit.
NEAR's Intents system crossed $24 billion in lifetime volume, according to the protocol's monthly development recap. The transactions followed protocol version 2.13, which shipped quantum-safe signing to withstand future quantum computers and dynamic resharding that splits network workload across lanes automatically as traffic grows. NEAR also launched staking for AI compute, letting holders lock up tokens to provision and earn from computing power AI applications run on. NEAR traded around $1.72.
Bitcoin's 200-week simple moving average, currently above $63,000, is back in focus after Strategy (MSTR) said it is tracking the long-term average and hinting at resuming purchases after a five-week pause funded by preferred stock held at a steep 12 percent.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
