Understand custody
A wallet holds access—not coins.
15 articles in this rubric.
Where Bitcoin exists
Why a balance is a sum of unspent outputs and a wallet holds keys rather than coins.
Read article ↗Practical guideHow to choose a wallet without losing access
Mobile, desktop and hardware wallets: purpose, trade-offs and the rules of reliable backup.
Read article ↗Key loss · 2013 → 20258,000 BTC beneath a landfill
A drive reached a landfill, but the decisive loss came earlier: the only usable copy of access disappeared.
Read article ↗Compromise · June 13, 2011The first major reported theft: 25,000 BTC
A backup existed but could not reverse a transfer after someone gained access to the live wallet.
Read article ↗Bitcoin Core · 2025–2026An Old wallet.dat Cannot Simply Be Opened
The end of BDB wallet loading and a rare migration bug show why recovery begins with copies.
Read article ↗BTC interest accounts · Verified August 20, 2026Bitcoin interest accounts: who pays the yield?
Why Bitcoin itself creates no yield, who receives control of the keys and what risks hide behind the familiar word “deposit.”
Read article ↗Research · 2011–2015Why a Phrase from Memory Made a Bad Wallet
The brainwallet experiment: when a convenient human phrase became a predictable private key.
Read article ↗BIP 39 · 2013Twelve Words Are Not a Password
How BIP 39 turns randomness into a readable backup and why people should not invent the words.
Read article ↗Custody · BTC or a product shareThe Fund Holds BTC. What Does the Investor Hold?
Why a bitcoin exchange-traded product can follow Bitcoin’s price without giving its shareholder the same control as a private key.
Read article ↗Custody · Coinbase 2025 / Trezor 2026The Data Leaked, the Keys Did Not. Who Controls Your BTC?
Two incidents without stolen private keys reveal the difference between self-custody and an account with an intermediary.
Read article ↗Bitcoin Depot · March 202650.903 BTC Left After Credentials Were Compromised
How access to a corporate system enabled an unauthorized BTC transfer without breaking Bitcoin—and why the entire path to signing must be protected.
Read article ↗BTCPay Server · August 2026The File That Became a Key: Theft Through BTCPay Server
How exposed authorization files gave attackers access to LND Lightning nodes and why version 2.4.2 required an urgent update.
Read article ↗COLDCARD · July 2026The Hardware Wallet That Generated Keys with Too Little Randomness
How a COLDCARD firmware defect reduced seed entropy and why updating the device does not repair a wallet that already exists.
Read article ↗Bitcoin Core · Fix merged September 2, 2026When a Wallet Name Becomes a Command
How a crafted wallet name could alter a walletnotify command and why RPC access should not imply access to the operating system.
Read article ↗Bitcoin Core · Fix merged September 9, 2026The Wallet Was Called Corrupted Even Though the Keys Were Still There
How a Bitcoin Core 31.0 compatibility check prevented some Miniscript descriptor wallets from loading—and why a corruption warning does not always mean lost coins.
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