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ARTICLE · 15 SEPTEMBER 2026

How CRA Treats $40M In Stolen Bitcoin Cryptocurrency: Lessons From Coinkite Coldcard Hack

Rotfleisch & Samulovitch P.C.
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Bitcoin holders around the world woke up on July 31, 2026, to unsettling news: attackers had drained roughly 600 bitcoin, worth close to $40 million, from several hundred Coldcard hardware wallets in a matter of minutes. Coldcard is a bitcoin-only hardware wallet built by Coinkite, a Canadian technology company.

CanadaTax
David Rotfleisch
David Rotfleisch
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Coldcard Hardware Wallet Attack: Canadian Tax Implications for Bitcoin Holders Who Lost Funds and for the Canadian Company Behind the Wallet

Overview: The Coldcard Hack and Why It Matters for Canadian Crypto Taxpayers

Bitcoin holders around the world woke up on July 31, 2026, to unsettling news: attackers had drained roughly 600 bitcoin, worth close to $40 million, from several hundred Coldcard hardware wallets in a matter of minutes. Coldcard is a bitcoin-only hardware wallet built by Coinkite, a Canadian technology company. The theft was traced to a firmware bug that generated predictable, rather than truly random, private keys on certain Coldcard devices going back to 2021.

For the Canadian taxpayers whose bitcoin disappeared overnight, and for the Canadian company whose product made headlines for the wrong reason, this incident raises a set of tax questions that go well beyond the immediate financial shock:

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