Santiment reports 2.27M new Bitcoin wallets amid Coldcard custody concerns

When a security scare hits the hardware wallet market, Bitcoin users don’t sit around waiting for a patch. They move their coins. That’s exactly what Santiment’s latest on-chain data appears to capture, with 2.27 million new Bitcoin wallets created in the week ending August 8, the highest weekly total in 12 months. The spike in new address creation came alongside 751,000 active wallets during the same period, the strongest level of network activity recorded in the past 10 months. What triggered the rotation The catalyst, according to Santiment, was a security vulnerability associated with Coldcard hardware wallets. Coldcard is a widely used cold storage device popular among security-conscious Bitcoin holders, the type of people who tend to own meaningful amounts and react decisively when something looks wrong. When users suspect their custody setup is compromised, the standard playbook is to generate a fresh wallet, sweep funds to the new address, and figure out the rest later. Do that across a large portion of the self-custody community simultaneously, and the on-chain footprint looks exactly like what Santiment recorded: a sharp, anomalous spike in new address creation that isn’t...