Why Korean Coldcard users avoided the bitcoin theft incident

A large share of the victims in the Coldcard bitcoin theft incident were early Bitcoin holders who were technically experienced, avoided exchanges, and relied on offline storage. Yet many Coldcard users in South Korea appear to have escaped the losses. Bitcoin researcher and observer Koji Higashi, who was also described as a survivor of the incident, said the difference was not superior technical skill but a simpler habit: Korean communities have long encouraged users not to rely entirely on a hardware wallet vendor’s random number generator. Instead, they promoted manual methods such as dice rolls to generate seed phrases. Higashi argued that this practice helped users avoid a potential design weakness. He also said the damage in English-speaking Bitcoin circles exposed a broader issue, where community influencers and sponsorship ties may have reinforced trust in a single product and weakened independent judgment. In his view, the lesson reaches beyond hardware wallets. The old Bitcoin maxim, “Don’t Trust, Verify,” applies not only to code and software, but also to the information users consume and the people they choose to trust.