Coldcard Exploit Tops $100M as Expert Says Stolen BTC May Be Hard to Spend

Not everyone agrees the stolen BTC are trapped, with some pointing to mixers, Lightning, and privacy tools as possible escape routes. Well over $100 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) has now been stolen through the ongoing Coldcard wallet exploit, said Galaxy Research, but market commentator Joe Consorti has argued that the attacker may struggle to spend much of that haul since every BTC is being tracked on the public blockchain. Instead of focusing on the size of the theft alone, Consorti said the incident also shows an often-overlooked feature of the OG crypto: while private keys can be compromised, the movement of stolen units remains visible to law enforcement, exchanges, and blockchain analysts. Transparency Leaves Stolen Bitcoin Under Watch In a post on X, Consorti wrote: “The thief who stole $100 million in BTC is going to have a hard time spending most of it. Every coin is sitting in plain sight, tracked by Galaxy, the FBI, and thousands of others.” He added that Bitcoin “might be the worst money for crime ever invented.” In a video accompanying the post, the analyst pointed out that the exploit was not a failure of the Bitcoin network itself but of wallet software that genera...