Bitcoin Audible

We finally stopped being lazy and brought a guest onto the Roundtable. Max Hillebrand joins Steve, Jeff, and I to talk about the absolute madness happening in the freedom tech space right now. Max has been using AI agents to solve challenging computer science problems for White Noise and the Marmot protocol. We talk about the possibility that we are moving toward a future where the average user ba...

In this Take, I break down why the biggest AI labs, while deeply unprofitable sitting on massive future compute obligations, are racing toward trillion-dollar valuations. I explore how open-source competition, especially from China, is crushing their moat, and why that pushes them toward lobbying for fear-driven regulation, immunity, and government partnerships. Ultimately, I argue that the AI pan...

***"The dollar is going to continue to lose purchasing power. Bitcoin is going to continue to gain purchasing power. It's going to keep on happening over the rest of the century. We will at some point have enough people that have most of their wealth in bitcoin that they don't have anything else to spend and they will start to spend their bitcoin. And when they start to encounter more people like...

In this Take episode, I break down the “Great Hackening” ripping through Bitcoin right now – from Coldcard’s catastrophic entropy bug to Liquid’s recent 4,000 BTC exploit, Lightning implementation issues, and a few major wallet update and data breaches. I also explain how AI has completely flipped the economics of attack and defense, why Bitcoin is the canary in the digital coal mine, and what pra...

In this third Coldcard Q&A, I tackle entropy, device trust, DIY signers, and why I’m leaning harder than ever on multi-sig. I walk through why understanding encryption must become a mandatory survival skill, rather than a niche hobby, if we want to resist a dystopian future. I also share where I moved my personal stack, explain how multisig actually saved me, and explore the impossible ethical nig...

The roundtable is back, but we're missing a familiar face. Mechanic has officially stepped down from Ocean, so it’s just Jeff, Steve and I digging into the aftermath of BIP110, from why the soft fork failed to what Luke and Mechanic’s departure means for Ocean and Bitcoin Core’s influence. We debate whether the real existential risk is block-template centralization, how much BIP110 helped or hurt...

In this episode I continue unpacking the Coldcard RNG disaster, wrestling with whether it was malicious or just shockingly incompetent design and attitude. I walk through how arrogance, licensing changes, and convoluted security theater may have let a fundamental failure sit unnoticed for years, possibly causing key collisions and bizarre “free Bitcoin” situations. I also warn about fake Sparrow a...

In this Guy's Take, I walk through listener questions and comments on the Coldcard random number generation failure and what it really means for Bitcoin self-custody. We dig into why the RNG bug went unnoticed for years, the difference between source-available and truly open source hardware, and how dice rolls and strong passphrases change your threat model. I also share how I’m thinking about saf...

***"In the early days, the average user could probably use a Coldcard and know the amount of entropy required. The average Bitcoin user today, no clue. And so the times have changed, our message should have changed. And where I come down to is essentially what you said HODL, you should custody your bitcoin at the level that you are ready for. And that is a process. Day 1, don't shame someone for u...

Thousands of careful Bitcoiners just got wiped out by a Coldcard entropy bug, and I use this episode to push back hard on the idea that self-custody is dead, and "don't trust, verify" failed us. I walk through the brutal history of centralized custodial failures, explain why "holding your own keys is still orders of magnitude safer, and extract three real lessons from this recent disaster. This is...

***"I think that self custody is not going to be dead. I think that there is going to have to be a group, a vanguard of people that do this and take it seriously. The revolution won't work without that. Everything under the spectrum is acceptable. But if you know what you're here for, you got to put pressure against those systems. And that is by taking the self-custody yourself. That's why we make...

In this episode, I unpack the claim that BIP110’s failure proves corporate miners and suitcoiners now control Bitcoin. I walk through the real dynamics between miners and validating nodes, compare BIP110 to the UASF, and explain why broad consensus is strictly required to change Bitcoin’s rules. Ultimately, BIP110’s failure actually confirms Bitcoin’s defensive power structure rather than undermin...

***"Today can you also use Coinbase to sell your coin? Yes. But can you guarantee that if Coinbase disappears, your funds will be with you? No. Because, it is, at the end of the day, their custody. Whereas in statechains, a really cool perspective is, if the server or the custodian, disappears, because of the design of the system, money comes back at you on L1. You can broadcast an exit or you can...

***"It's going faster than most people thought. We thought that these models would be useful, but not extremely useful, for a while. Now you look at this and you feel [that] if I'm not using this the entire day, I'm losing on something, I'm staying behind, I have to keep running this like crazy. But we haven't prepared for it. People are connecting all of their life to these cloud providers, you k...

In this episode, Steve, Jeff, and I walk through the catastrophic Coldcard entropy failure, how a trusted hardware wallet ended up generating weak keys, and how attackers are now brute-forcing Bitcoin wallets in minutes. We dig into AI’s role in widening the attack surface, the dangers of source-available over true open source, and our own arrogance around hardware security. I share practical step...

This is an emergency episode to warn everyone of the catastrophic Coldcard entropy bug that’s letting attackers regenerate users’ keys and drain wallets without device access. I walk through concrete, step‑by‑step instructions to move your coins to safety (including using Sparrow, Nunchuck, and even exchanges as a last resort), who’s most at risk across MK3, MK4, MK5, and Q devices, and what this...

There is a massive miscommunication tearing Bitcoiners apart right now. Instead of arguing over specific code like BIP 110, I want to ask a much harder question in this solo take: Is it actually censorship to address spam? I'll explain why prioritizing financial transactions over JPEGs isn't authoritarianism, and why claiming it is destroys our ability to protect the network. We built a protocol f...

"Your savings represent hours you worked, risks you accepted, businesses you built, time spent away from people you love, and consumption you postponed for the sake of the future. When the monetary system allows others to dilute those savings without your consent, it weakens your claim on that future. Bitcoin offers a peaceful alternative, giving every individual access to property that cannot be...

I walk through the global push for Central Bank Digital Currencies, why voluntary rollouts have mostly flopped, and what governments really gain from programmable, fully surveilled money. I dig into the upcoming digital euro, the U.S. Senate’s move against a federal CBDC, and the rise of OpenUSD as an open stablecoin standard. Ultimately I argue that while CBDCs are about control, the infrastructu...

***"I'm almost 99% certain that [BIP] 110 will activate. And not only that, I think there will be a capitulation after October, where if the month of October passes and [BIP] 110 is still not merged by Core devs, it essentially reflects that they are no longer relevant because they failed to be good stewards of the protocol." ~ Hunter Beast*** In this episode I sit down with Hunter Beast for a spr...

What is the most important project in Bitcoin? It isn't BIP 110 or some shiny new payment protocol. We actually have a massive security vulnerability sitting at the base layer: Bitcoin mining isn't really mining anymore. Right now, we have millions of hashers but barely a handful of real miners deciding what transactions make it into a block. And that means a few centralized pool operators could e...

***"I think I got kind of orange-pilled and privacy-pilled in this way when Snowden exposed all this surveillance that was happening by default through every system you've ever touched. That's when I started treating all digital infrastructure as inherently recording devices. They're trying to take information and, even if someone doesn't really want or intend to store the information, it's possib...

The extreme left often claims to follow logic and "the science". But I've noticed a glaring pattern that contradicts this. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. In this Take, I share my thoughts on the "holy trinity" the woke left actually worships. It starts with treating other people's money like magic. But seizing wealth is just the beginning. I break down the dangerous obsession with politi...

The sentiment lately has been total garbage. We’re deep in a bear market, the red candles are stacking up, and people are getting nervous. So, I got the guys back around the table to ask a really uncomfortable question: what happens if Bitcoin actually dies? We keep things pretty casual but talk through some heavy stuff. We debate the real dangers of leverage, the bizarre obsession with paper Bitc...

"In this X post, I said I don't know the consequences of BIP-110. Plenty of people called that incompetent, cowardly, or both. Others praised it as humility. It's neither. It's just true. I don't know the consequences, and here's my claim. Neither do you." ~ Jimmy Song I am reading Jimmy Song’s latest piece and things get a bit heated today. The debate around BIP-110 has everyone absolutely certai...