By any ordinary measure, Bitcoin should be falling. Losses from the Coldcard hardware wallet theft have exceeded $116 million, and waves of fund withdrawals have continued since the vulnerability was discovered on July 30. Michael Saylor's company, Strategy, reported selling 1,638 $BTC for approximately $104.7 million (its third sale this year), and wallets linked to the company transferred another 1,030 $BTC on Wednesday, heightening concerns about a fourth sale.
In Washington, a vote to end debate on the 'Clarity Act' bill is poised to fail after Democratic senators blocked negotiations on ethics issues. The probability of the bill becoming law in 2026 has dropped from 27% to 23% (as of today), according to Polymarket.
Nevertheless, despite all this, Bitcoin has not given up: its price continues to fluctuate around $64,000—significantly below its highs, yet it stubbornly maintains a stable level despite an almost exclusively negative news flow.
Tracking the Attack in Real Time
The Coldcard vulnerability remains the most troubling story of the week. A bug in firmware dating back to March 2021 caused some devices from Canadian manufacturer Coinkite to generate recovery seeds with approximately 40 bits of entropy instead of 128, exposing long-term holders to brute-force attacks. Bitcoin.com News published a full analysis of who lost coins and who remains at risk.
The attack is ongoing and is now being tracked publicly. Bitcoin developer James O'Beirne launched an interactive monitoring dashboard displaying the ongoing thefts by seeding the network with "tripwire" unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) built on vulnerable default seeds with varying levels of added entropy. The results were alarming: his control wallet with no added entropy was drained within an hour, proving that attackers are continuously scanning the vulnerable seed phrase space.
What the Bottom Could Look Like
The bulls seem to have a benchmark for evaluation: Capriole Investments founder Charles Edwards referenced Bitcoin's production cost (the total cost for miners to produce one coin), emphasizing it currently stands at $54,000, with the electricity cost portion of this metric estimated at $40,000.
Historically, prices have fallen below the production cost at every cycle bottom, meaning the current price of $64,000 is still trading at a premium, but a floor is clearly defined.
Finally, exchange inflows spiked as frightened Coldcard users transferred their coins, while Strategy still has $5 billion in authorized sales remaining. As if that weren't enough, the failure of the Clarity vote this week seems poised to deliver another blow before the August recess (which could send Bitcoin's value tumbling again).
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