The $120 million Coldcard hack lights up Bitcoin’s memory pool

There’s an old saying that “every coin has two sides.” It applies perfectly to the multimillion-dollar hack of the hardware wallet Coldcard that began on July 30 and is still in progress.

On one hand, the hack raised questions about the safety of taking direct custody of coins in hardware wallets as a long-term holding strategy, a technique that became popular following the collapse of the FTX exchange in 2022.

On the other hand — and this is the bright side — it spurred the shuffling and reshuffling of coins to exchanges and multiple wallets alike by holders.

This bright side is evident from key data, starting with the number of transactions sitting in Bitcoin’s memory pool awaiting confirmation from miners. That count has spiked since late July, reaching 89,031 on Tuesday, the most since February 2025, according to data from Blockchain.com (check the Daily Signal).

Other metrics reveal the same picture. According to data-tracking firm Santiment, the number of active addresses hit a three-month high of 712,000, and transactions from large holders, known as whales, climbed to a five-month high of 61,800.

Increasing network activity is often said to support valuations for the network’s native coin, bitcoin BTC$64,070.10. So far, the token has neither rallied nor dropped significantly and remains boxed in the recent range of $62,000–$65,000.

Analysts continue to point to the fate of the Clarity Act as the immediate catalyst while citing longer-duration government bond yields as a more macro and longer-lasting one.

“CLARITY is still the immediate policy binary. The Senate has a three-day window before its August 10 recess, while the implied probability of passage by year end has fallen to 23% from around 75% in mid-May. A push to attach prediction-market restrictions adds another process risk,” analysts at Marex said.

Meanwhile, Bitfinex said the bullish macro case for bitcoin could collapse if the real or inflation-adjusted yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note tops 2.5%.

“The 10-year real yield has not stayed above 2.5% since before Bitcoin existed, so there is no price history above that line. It is now at 2.41%, nine basis points below,” the exchange said.

Stay alert!

Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today . For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”

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The chart shows the daily tally of transactions waiting for miner approval in the Bitcoin blockchain’s memory pool.

The count reached more than 89,000 on Tuesday, the most since February 2025, building on the pickup in activity in late July.

It remains to be seen how long this spike lasts.

Broadly speaking, activity has slowed sharply since the introduction of spot ETFs in early 2024, which likely strengthened BTC’s appeal as a digital gold and store-of-value asset rather than as a payments network.