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This thing can go from the most boring asset on earth to the front page of CNBC.com in like an

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hour. Sailor sold like 100 million of Bitcoin and the worst self-custody exploit in the history of

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Bitcoin. And Bitcoin was up like three or four percent. So I would say it has been a very exciting

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time. I think it's very likely that we have bottomed. I just think 58 looks pretty durable

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at this point. It's held multiple times. There's a whole meme around it. If you look at the

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time frame between prior cycle tops and prior cycle bottoms that would put the cycle bottom here

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and it's almost perfect the prior cycles this is exactly what you would observe near a bottom is

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overconfident bears right just like at the top you observe overconfident bulls i think this is

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sort of the opening salvo in the clanker wars that are going to be a big feature of our lives going

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forward, you know, every new step function increase in an AI capability is going to also

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come with step function increases in vulnerability identification.

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And everything is at risk, to be clear.

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Every piece of software is at risk.

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This riverside we're on right now, it's at risk.

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On the surveillance stuff, I mean, obviously George Orwell's British, you know, like we

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We're well aware that the Brits have, I would say, much higher tolerance for their government surveilling them than the Americans do, though ours, I believe, is is too high our tolerance as well.

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And but like, you know, there's that stat they you know, and I can't verify this, but they say that the UK puts more people in jail annually for social media and China.

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like i think it also helps me watching the brits helps me appreciate the u.s constitution and the

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bill of rights a lot because they don't have a bill of rights um and we do it is kind of war it

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yeah well it's pretty remarkable to where we're at right now i think the you know these last few

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years and by the way you know uh caveat america is by no means perfect we saw the reactions to

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COVID and everything were a very clear example that like, hey, we have to stay vigilant on

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this front.

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Like we, you know, we should not be silencing people for speech of any kind, particularly

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not speech that, you know, is labeled as a far right conspiracy theory then turns out

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to be admitted by the, as truth, by the powers that be six months later.

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And there's a New York Times op-ed about it.

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But it also, these past couple of years, kind of, let's say post COVID have made me ever

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more appreciative.

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of America in terms of like, wow, what we have here is truly unique. It is incredibly powerful

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and it is not something that should be taken for granted because look at what the heck is happening

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in the rest of the world in purportedly, you know, Westernized free modern democracies,

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you know, where it's like, boy, like it's kind of scary. Uh, I don't know. I I'm very bullish

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on America, as I assume you are as well.

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Yeah, I am.

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I am.

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And I think, you know, again, like the First Amendment, when you look at other, you know,

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comparable liberal Western democracies, of course, America is one and, you know, lowercase

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liberal as in liberty.

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And you still forget that there is no we have a nearly absolute right to free speech, free

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expression, freedom of association, freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights and the First

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Amendment. Other countries don't have anything like that. In fact, almost maybe none. Right. So

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you can get arrested for merely offensive speech in most of Western Europe. And that is not

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something I believe in. And you don't you know, when everything's going great, you know, in the

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90s, the sort of Pax Americana post-Cold War era, right? The end of history, I think, as

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Francis Fukuyama had called it, like, you know, it doesn't come up that much. You don't notice

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that maybe, you know, some, you know, far right-wing Nazi was getting arrested in Germany.

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But when you have things like populism, COVID, you know, economic turmoil, mass migration that

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are sort of mainstream issues.

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And now you see it rearing its head, the inability of Europeans to speak.

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I even saw on X, there's a guy, a Euro founder, who's a European VC or whatever, who's got

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100K followers on X and is a, you know, a mid-tier, you know, X influencer on mostly

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on venture and on tech.

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He was sent basically a cease and desist letter by the European Commission, which is like

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the executive branch of the European government for saying false and offensive things about

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Europe.

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I mean, that is not something that I agree with.

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And it's shocking the extent to which, you know, peer nations of ours don't have the

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same basic, what we consider basic human liberties that we have in America.

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And whether or not those things were actually false and offensive of course is probably a very subjective matter Well and also like if I say false things knowingly false things about you right that could be slander or some forms of civilly punishable speech in the U that you cannot be get in trouble for saying false things about the U government

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There is no you've a nearly an absolute right to freedom of political speech. Most of the, you know, legal exceptions to the First Amendment's free speech clause involve inciting violence. Right. And knowingly. And by the way, the bar for that's also pretty high.

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and I'm not a constitutional lawyer,

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so I won't like literally enumerate

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what the exceptions are.

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But even just saying like everyone,

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you know, bring a gun down to the public square,

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it's typically not illegal.

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It requires like knowledge

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that it will be taken seriously

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and a bunch of other prongs, right?

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So we have a near absolute freedom

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to criticize our government,

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whether or not our facts are in line,

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which I love.

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Last digression, then we'll move on.

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but I think it was American HODL was, I believe it was him,

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when I was getting my 40 hours per week of just American HODL,

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he was talking about this idea that one of the reasons that the British

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have developed such a, like, dry sense of humor

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is because they don't actually have the ability to speak freely,

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and so they have to be able to fall back on, like,

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oh, no, I was just taking the piss, mate, you know, like,

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it was just making it funny, you know.

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And I was like, damn, I hadn't thought about it that way.

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Yeah, even without, like, outright censorship,

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like still like their polite like culture probably dictates not telling the truth a lot of the time

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um yeah that that's pretty funny i mean that sounds like a hodl uh you know identified item

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there whether or not it's true i believe it because it came out of his mouth you know he's

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very convincing that's that's my president right there uh someday someday a guy can dream

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but alex mr thorne i'm stoked to have you here we've been playing a cat and mouse game for a

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while trying to get you on here so i'm very glad to make it happen thank you for doing this on short

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notice as well uh a lot has uh a lot has happened in the last few weeks i've been sort of watching

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from the sidelines because we were as we were just discussing just uh brought a brought a beautiful

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baby girl into the world and now i'm coming back and i'm like wow i you know i don't know if i

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picked the best or the worst time to sort of be a bit checked out like because there's just been

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there's been a lot there's been a lot you've been in bitcoin longer than i have does this feel like

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is is this time different in terms of like the you know the deluge of shit that hit the fan all at

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once or is it just is this still just par for the course in terms of shit hitting the fan in the

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bitcoin world well i mean the cold card exploit is um pretty unique i would say but in terms of

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the volume of news. I mean, Bitcoin has been a very in a very sleepy pattern here for really

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months. People forget that Bitcoin was at like 82, 84 K just in April. It ran that high and then

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came all the way back down to 58. And but like really for all of June and July, Bitcoin was just

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like pinned in like the 62 K area with effectively no news occurring. Some news about sailor, you

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selling some coins to fund his dollar reserve.

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Obviously, at the end of July, the cold card news.

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But that exploit was primarily conducted on a Thursday night and Friday

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with some follow-on after, and we can talk about that.

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But that next week, Saylor sold like $100 million of Bitcoin

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and the worst self-custody exploit in the history of Bitcoin had occurred.

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And Bitcoin was up like 3% or 4%.

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So I would say it has been a very exciting time.

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Obviously, we're recording now on Thursday, August 20th, and Bitcoin has ripped 15 percent in three days and five days and is trading in like above 72 K.

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So there's that news as well, which has its own sort of catalyst.

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But, you know, in the history of Bitcoin, there have been busier times than the last couple of weeks.

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And I will say, obviously, and I will say most of those in a bull market, but I will say that, you know, following periods of very low volatility and there are several people I happen to tweet this like two days ago.

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Look how low volatility is. It looks like it's a spring that's coiling and is going to pop.

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I didn't actually necessarily mean the price. I meant the volatility.

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Obviously, both did it.

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We tend to sort of pop out of these quiet periods with like big moves and stuff coming to the surface.

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I think the nature of this the last couple of weeks since the end of July is different than others.

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I mean, the cold card, I think vulnerability makes it noticeably different.

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It's not the first time in crypto history that a seed entropy failure has occurred at the hardware wallet level or at the wallet level.

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It is the first time it really happened to a major Bitcoin wallet and it the cold card vulnerabilities by far the largest in terms of dollar damage So and as we talk about I mean I think that the cultural demographic

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that was impacted by the cold card exploit also makes it a uniquely Bitcoin story that really

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sort of it is a it is I don't know if it's a pivot point, but it's certainly a milestone here

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and that I think will have really wide-ranging effects on how people custody,

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how people talk about Bitcoin to the public, but also to newbies,

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how Bitcoiners judge each other, what it means to be a pure Bitcoiner.

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I think it will affect all of that.

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So pretty unique in that sense, the things that are happening.

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But I would say, you know, we've been through quiet periods and bursts before.

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I want to get into the cold cards side of things.

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in a little bit.

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But before we do,

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I do kind of want to double tap

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on just where we're at

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right now in the market

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because I think a lot of Bitcoiners

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have sort of, you know,

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they've been doing the right thing.

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They've been, you know,

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trying to stay humble

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and stack sats.

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Easy to stay humble

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in a bear market, right?

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Not so easy in a bull market.

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But we've been sort of,

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you know, to borrow a phrase

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from James Check,

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chop solidating for a while.

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Chop solidating down.

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A 58K gang was, you know,

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the best TAs out there

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was 58K gang, apparently.

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like they you know they called it right but that's been happening for a while now and meanwhile the

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vibes um as two members of vcm you know we do a lot of vibes based analysis and the vibes have

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just been weird the vibes have been bad uh then you throw all this other stuff on top of it and

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you know we'll get into the cold card stuff you've got a new you know a new shit coin fork

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that dropped as well pardon me and and somehow bitcoin comes out of that after all of this you

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Nobody cares.

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This peak apathy, to use another credit, James Check and Michael Sullivan, with that one.

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Nobody cares about Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin price is in the shitter.

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Horrible self-custody exploit happens.

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Data leak from Trezor happens.

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Shitcoin fork is launched with all of the FUD around that.

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And then Bitcoin just rips.

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So was this something where, I mean, like it's kind of incredible, right?

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but it also feels just like it felt like 58k was sort of the bottom or close to the bottom

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is that what you're seeing because you're looking at a lot more metrics than the average person

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uh what are you seeing in terms of that do you still abide by what a lot of the analysts are

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saying that actually the bottom's coming on this exact date in october and then we'll go up from

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there or or is are they missing something throughout this yeah I just I want to double

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tap before I go into that on your 58k gang they they 58k is held multiple times here as the bottom

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it's sort of like in a world where fifty eight thousand dollars was the only price for Bitcoin

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like one man decided to launch a fork to destroy it all but it didn't work you know it's like

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Like the best in a world voice.

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My voice is a little sick.

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We got to go back and forth later on some in the world.

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Yeah.

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Look, I mean, in terms of like bottoming indicators, I mean, it's a great question.

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And like I've been, you know, in 24 and 25, I was questioning the validity of the four year cycle.

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Remember, that was a big question then.

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Like, is the four year cycle over?

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And it makes a lot of sense to say yes, because, you know, the having impact in an absolute basis is so small at this point. You had all these, you know, non-Bitcoin native market participants, primarily through the ETFs.

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And once those ETFs are in like managed portfolios, they tend to become like like contrarian reflexive, right?

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Like when the position grows above one percent, they may sell some when it falls below one percent, they may buy some.

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And so that can compress volatility and like all these things should have.

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And I still believe in the long run should dampen this concept of a four year cycle in Bitcoin.

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But with October 6, 2025 is the all time high. And then, of course, the events of October 10th, like causing that huge deleveraging that empirically was right about the time that the four year cycle would have suggested the top be in.

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And I think if you look at the time frame between prior cycle tops and prior cycle bottoms, that would put the cycle bottom here.

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I mean, it's almost it's almost perfect, the prior cycles.

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And if this cycle followed that same pattern, then you would be looking at a bottom in like early October ish.

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Now, here we are in August, not October, and we haven't been at 58 K for, I don't know, a month and a half or so.

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So, you know, should then people be waiting till October for the bottom?

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I mean, no, because the the pattern itself, it's empirical.

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It's not prescriptive.

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Like we don know There no reason why Bitcoin should bottom in October We just saying that in the past there an identifiable pattern if we replay it here But there were also things of the last

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cycle that didn't line up to the pattern, the all time high before the having.

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Right. And to James Chex, chop solidation. That was the famous period between February 2024,

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all time high and November 2024, all time high during the Trump election. It was like something

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like 237 days of no new all-time high in between all-time highs. None of that makes sense from a

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prior cycle analysis. And just like 2021, 2024 in the initial peak, most of the topping metrics

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actually topped in March 21 and February 24, not in November 21 and November 24, right? So the

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topping metrics didn't quite hit properly. And in October 25, I mean, most of the most of the

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topping classical topping metrics either never hit or hit a year plus earlier during the prior

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run up to all time highs in 24. So the cycles do look different. But I would say, you know,

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another reason to not hold out for it to play out exactly, you know, one of my theses has been that,

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you know, we didn't quite top high enough. Most of those most of the metrics topping metrics didn't

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hit at all. And I've got a scorecard of, you know, 13 bottoming metrics that hit reliably on all three

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prior cycles and only like four have hit now. And so, you know, and also we're looking at, I think,

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a max like 54 percent drawdown that's happened from the current all time high to today. And, you know,

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prior ones are like 75 to 85 percent. So I think part of my thesis is that, you know, we had a dampened cycle top and that

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probably also contributed to a dampened cycle bottom, right?

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So compressed cycle as opposed in terms of amplitude, if not in time.

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I mean, time looks pretty like accurate overall.

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I mean, I wouldn't be quibbling about, you know, a July bottom versus an October bottom.

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I mean, it's, you know, it's close enough like that.

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I think if we're in cycle five and four years from now, looking back, wondering whether that

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cycle's bottom will be the same length as these will probably look.

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back on this one and say, yeah, August, October, like whatever.

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It's basically the same thing.

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Right.

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So I think you're close enough from a turn.

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You know, James also James check also has a phrase time pain.

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You know, you do need time pain.

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Right.

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When people when markets go down a lot, like it takes a while for people to get interested

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again for the people that did make profit to feel comfortable entering again, et cetera.

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I think it's been enough time.

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I think I don't think that means we're headed straight up here.

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at all. But, you know, like if you look at the macro backdrop as well, like, you know,

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valuations are stretched across the other hot trades. Right. So there are people looking,

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you know, if you asked me five months ago, you know, in February or March, like,

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yes, a normal investor, like, what do you think you don't own enough of right now? Is it Bitcoin

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or NVIDIA? And I think most, almost all people would have said NVIDIA. And, you know, I think a

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lot of those people own like ai stocks now and also they're really stretched and so now maybe

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you've got profits you're taking from other trades or you're looking to allocate cash and you're

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looking at something trading at like historic p levels um versus something that can provably go to

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125 and is you know was trading in the low 60s like that the risk return on a long there looks

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a lot better to me when Bitcoin's in the 60s than, you know, the AI trade that's perpetually

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at the top.

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And then also, like, you know, a huge factor here is just like, who is left to sell this

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thing?

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Even if you meant to sell Bitcoin at 125, oh, no, I missed selling the top.

246
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You didn't sell at 110 as it was going down.

247
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It goes all the way.

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It went back to 90.

249
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It later in April went to 82, 82 and above.

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Like you had multiple chances to get out at higher prices than the 60K range chop solidation we just had.

251
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So by the time you get to cold card and and like, you know, sailors selling Bitcoin like, you know, nobody else is there aren't any speculators and tourists left.

252
00:19:57,948 --> 00:19:59,789
They've all already sold. Right.

253
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So and that's why if you look at that URPD chart, like I think the biggest change of hands in coins in the current UTXO set is all between like 62 and 65K.

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That's basically the range of the last several months and earlier in the year.

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I don't know, people like me buying from tourists who are selling because I to me like the 60s looks pretty cheap.

256
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And to them, I don't know, they wanted to sell their Bitcoin to buy AI stocks.

257
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I don't know why. Right. Who knows why?

258
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So I think it's very likely that we have bottomed. It doesn't mean that even from 72.6 when we talk today, can't go back to 58 again. I just think 58 looks pretty durable at this point. It's held multiple times. There's a whole meme around it that 58K gain was right, apparently, or they were at least right as of the importance of the level, right?

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I mean, that we have to give to them. And so I think you're in a pretty good spot for Bitcoin at this point. Most of the juice has been squeezed on the short. I can't believe the amount of shorts that were carried out during this move the last couple of days. Who in their right mind is shorting Bitcoin at like 63 K? Like you meant to be shorting it. James said this, too. He's totally right. Like you meant to be shorting this thing like in January, February, March. Like that's when you knew it was probably trending lower and it was still elevated.

260
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And shorting it, it's in the 60s in July, 2026, the year of our Lord.

261
00:21:21,831 --> 00:21:23,271
I don't know what you were thinking.

262
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This is just a fluffing James Check episode, by the way, guys.

298
00:24:50,591 --> 00:24:52,051
Sorry if you're doing it for anything else.

299
00:24:52,191 --> 00:24:59,151
But another thing he points out is like this is exactly what you would observe near a bottom is overconfident bears, right?

300
00:24:59,191 --> 00:25:02,291
Just like at the top, you observe overconfident bulls.

301
00:25:02,291 --> 00:25:11,331
One thing I do want to get your thoughts on is you mentioned that depressed amplitude, that decreased dampened volatility that we've seen this cycle.

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Assuming we don't nuke down to 30k and it becomes, oh look, it just followed exactly the 70 to 80% drawdown that we've seen in prior cycles.

303
00:25:21,731 --> 00:25:26,131
Let's say this holds. Let's say 58k was the bottom. We're dealing with this set of numbers.

304
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is that dampened volatility that depressed amplitude is that simply a function of like

305
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a market maturing is that a function of institutional adoption i mean are those

306
00:25:37,131 --> 00:25:43,471
just basically the same thing also do you know what i mean yeah it's a i don't know um i do have

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the thesis that you know bitcoin's growing adoption is an institutional macro asset will

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also feature reduced volatility if you look at the historical realized vol like chart like it is

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compressing to the downside for years So that shouldn be a surprise as it gets bigger right Like and you know more adopted by long holders as you know percentages of portfolios or whatever else let alone if you

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have like, you know, sovereign wealth funds or, you know, central banks or whomever, you know,

311
00:26:16,648 --> 00:26:22,308
they're less short-term traders than people had traded Bitcoin in the past. It is also like a

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00:26:22,308 --> 00:26:26,928
little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? A huge reason that people have been drawn to Bitcoin

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is the chance for outsized returns.

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00:26:30,028 --> 00:26:31,508
If that's not the case anymore,

315
00:26:32,148 --> 00:26:33,548
you know, what is the transition

316
00:26:33,548 --> 00:26:36,768
to a new buyer and holder base look like, right?

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What is the composition of that base?

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I don't think that's a bad thing.

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00:26:41,408 --> 00:26:42,768
I think you're always about to,

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00:26:42,948 --> 00:26:44,648
you're always striving to get there.

321
00:26:45,248 --> 00:26:46,548
You know, gold is less volatile,

322
00:26:46,548 --> 00:26:48,948
not because, not for some inherent reason.

323
00:26:49,468 --> 00:26:50,748
It's because, you know,

324
00:26:50,808 --> 00:26:53,008
the world is so familiar with it as an asset.

325
00:26:53,008 --> 00:27:00,168
But investors worldwide have already made up their minds how they think about gold, generally speaking, how they're going to trade it.

326
00:27:00,268 --> 00:27:01,608
It doesn't mean everyone owns it.

327
00:27:01,688 --> 00:27:06,108
It means people, they're aware of it and they've decided whether to own it or not.

328
00:27:06,428 --> 00:27:14,448
I think as Bitcoin gets closer to that level of knowledge and adoption, and we are not there yet by any means.

329
00:27:14,588 --> 00:27:18,988
I mean, go ask an average person about Bitcoin and then ask them about gold.

330
00:27:19,088 --> 00:27:21,168
I think you'll find they know more about gold than Bitcoin.

331
00:27:21,168 --> 00:27:37,448
But I do think it's probably a feature of growing adoption. You know, people like Jeff Park have argued the opposite. I just don't see the data to support that. To me, the data shows clear dampening and volatility over time as the asset has grown in market cap.

332
00:27:37,448 --> 00:28:02,868
And so I don't know if that means the tops are going to be lower. I mean, I think there's a good argument to be made that 21 should have been higher and so should have 25. Like it didn't. 125 is pretty anemic for a top, given that we opened the year around 100. I mean, all it could do is a 25 percent in the entire year of 2025. Like that doesn't seem like a Bitcoin level return, you know.

333
00:28:02,868 --> 00:28:08,868
but I also don't I don't think that caps it in the future I don't I don't think it really tells

334
00:28:08,868 --> 00:28:14,308
us much of anything unfortunately but I do think you're going to see reduced volatility empirically

335
00:28:14,308 --> 00:28:20,508
you have seen that just as more people own it not everyone is going to be you know buying Bitcoin on

336
00:28:20,508 --> 00:28:26,548
Bitfinex in 2016 to send to an exchange and then buy an ICO like that was a huge use of Bitcoin in

337
00:28:26,548 --> 00:28:32,768
the past. I think now you're, I mean, the thesis of holding it for a number of years,

338
00:28:33,008 --> 00:28:40,168
thinking of it as non-sovereign, non-debasable money is a widely believed thesis. And that

339
00:28:40,168 --> 00:28:46,968
thesis inherently means less volatility. Do you think that part of the, let's say,

340
00:28:47,448 --> 00:28:51,488
disappointment with Bitcoin's, you know, performance, let's say, again, you talked

341
00:28:51,488 --> 00:28:54,928
about how this was a fairly anemic top at 125.

342
00:28:54,928 --> 00:28:56,768
Is part of that just a framing issue?

343
00:28:56,768 --> 00:28:59,888
Like if you look at cycle top to cycle top, right?

344
00:28:59,888 --> 00:29:01,808
Like I think that tells one story.

345
00:29:01,808 --> 00:29:04,568
If you look at cycle, you know, prior bottom

346
00:29:04,568 --> 00:29:07,628
to next cycle top, like that tells a different story.

347
00:29:07,628 --> 00:29:10,548
Do you think, I mean, is looking at these tops

348
00:29:10,548 --> 00:29:12,248
the best way to look at this from,

349
00:29:12,248 --> 00:29:14,048
in terms of a trajectory standpoint?

350
00:29:14,048 --> 00:29:16,648
Or is that just what we've become accustomed to?

351
00:29:16,648 --> 00:29:18,748
Because people think about the big number, right?

352
00:29:18,748 --> 00:29:20,348
They don't want to look at kind of the small number

353
00:29:20,348 --> 00:29:21,348
or the change.

354
00:29:21,488 --> 00:29:29,708
I love the question. I think it is more instructive to look at the bottoms, the cycle bottoms or the yearly lows is another way to say it.

355
00:29:30,388 --> 00:29:41,528
I think there's reasons in different cases, even in 21 and 25, possibly why we topped where we did that are not systemic or structural, but instead were idiosyncratic.

356
00:29:42,288 --> 00:29:49,888
You know, 1010 is a possibility as a catalyst for, you know, a deleveraging that simply can't be recovered from in 25.

357
00:29:49,888 --> 00:30:02,028
You know, FTX could be a reason in 21. There's theories that they were selling Bitcoin, you know, at the end of the cycle there to, you know, try to shore up their own balance sheet and stuff like that.

358
00:30:02,028 --> 00:30:06,988
There could be reasons why the tops, you know, I think were disappointing to some.

359
00:30:07,388 --> 00:30:17,548
I think if you look at the cycle lows or the yearly lows, another way, you see a steady rise, right, year over year, cycle over cycle.

360
00:30:17,548 --> 00:30:25,488
I mean, you know, we started 2023 at like 15.7 K, you know, a month or two after FTX collapsed.

361
00:30:25,788 --> 00:30:31,068
We ran to 30 K ish around this collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March of that year.

362
00:30:31,688 --> 00:30:34,908
Then BlackRock announced their ETF in June.

363
00:30:35,128 --> 00:30:36,848
Grayscale won their ruling in August.

364
00:30:36,848 --> 00:30:43,108
And then all of the fall of 23 was this drumbeat into the ETF launch, which was January 24.

365
00:30:43,108 --> 00:31:08,368
And like, you know, 15, seven as a bottom to start 2023, you know, 58 K as a bottom in this cycle, you know, assuming it holds the material uplift. I mean, that is four plus X, you know, four X over the prior low. When people ask me, like, is the digital gold thesis dead? Because gold traded a bit higher, like slightly longer than Bitcoin did at the end of 25.

366
00:31:08,368 --> 00:31:20,684
You know newsflash gold also did come off And and and by the way in the last couple of days it wasn equities that rallied when the Treasury signaled their intent to buy the long end of the curve It the dollar went down

367
00:31:20,944 --> 00:31:27,124
Stocks were flat to down. Gold, Bitcoin, commodities all went up. Right. Like hard money assets went up.

368
00:31:27,124 --> 00:31:32,124
So but again, where's the digital gold thesis? They said when Bitcoin was coming down and gold

369
00:31:32,124 --> 00:31:36,244
ran a little longer. Well, I'm sorry. It's right there at the, you know, 58K level, like the people

370
00:31:36,244 --> 00:31:48,424
buying at 15.7 in 23 or at, you know, 3,200 in 2018 or at 58K in 2026. That is the digital gold

371
00:31:48,424 --> 00:31:54,084
thesis. Those buyers are the long-term believers, you know, buying at levels that look cheap to them

372
00:31:54,084 --> 00:32:00,264
because they expect, you know, appreciation both in real and nominal terms. So like, I think it's

373
00:32:00,264 --> 00:32:11,024
It's very intact. I think looking at the the rising floor is possibly more instructive about Bitcoin's long term adoption than, you know, any any topping.

374
00:32:11,024 --> 00:32:19,904
and it's interesting too because i think part of the the bad vibes out there has been because

375
00:32:19,904 --> 00:32:26,704
while bitcoin has been uh languishing at these you know deplorable levels it seems like every

376
00:32:26,704 --> 00:32:29,564
like everything else you could have bought has been running right like you could have bought

377
00:32:29,564 --> 00:32:33,484
s and you know the s&p 500 and you'd be outperforming right so i think there's a lot of

378
00:32:33,484 --> 00:32:38,764
sort of fomo from some bitcoiners who are like oh why didn't you know why didn't i put it all into

379
00:32:38,764 --> 00:32:43,984
x y and z i don't think you see that as much from the hard you know hardcore stackers who are like

380
00:32:43,984 --> 00:32:48,644
well great this is a depressed price level for me to accumulate more sats at like you said like

381
00:32:48,644 --> 00:32:55,824
yeah bitcoin hit 58k amazing i'm buying as much as i possibly can uh but i'm curious if you think

382
00:32:55,824 --> 00:33:01,824
i mean obviously generally markets have been performing pretty well while bitcoin's been just

383
00:33:01,824 --> 00:33:08,944
kind of dumping around, right? Do you think we have a bit of a, and there's a bit too much froth

384
00:33:08,944 --> 00:33:14,264
in, let's say, traditional markets, a bit too much froth in the AI trade? Or is it like, hey,

385
00:33:14,264 --> 00:33:19,104
that bubble just never pops because it's never going to be allowed to pop. Yeah, Bitcoin will

386
00:33:19,104 --> 00:33:23,024
run up, but these things are going to keep running. We're not going to see a rotation of capital,

387
00:33:23,244 --> 00:33:28,204
in other words, from some of these other assets, which may seem, you know, short-term toppy,

388
00:33:28,204 --> 00:33:33,104
and Bitcoin, which is very much obviously in a bottom formation, if that makes sense.

389
00:33:33,764 --> 00:33:34,544
No, I think that's right.

390
00:33:34,844 --> 00:33:39,384
And I mean, look, the NASDAQ and S&P are up like 11 and 12 percent on the year.

391
00:33:39,384 --> 00:33:42,524
It's not they've been up higher at other points.

392
00:33:42,644 --> 00:33:48,684
But I mean, like, you know, they're up 20 and 21 percent one year, you know, year over year.

393
00:33:49,064 --> 00:33:55,244
You know, Bitcoin is down 17 percent on the year and down 37 percent year over year.

394
00:33:55,244 --> 00:33:59,924
that's not that bad for a Bitcoin drawdown.

395
00:33:59,924 --> 00:34:02,764
And people know that it's volatile.

396
00:34:03,364 --> 00:34:11,044
I would say, you know, that is a reason for, you know, people being upset with Bitcoin, I think is true.

397
00:34:11,164 --> 00:34:13,744
I mean, you know, they're saying, well, I could have just bought S&P 500.

398
00:34:13,884 --> 00:34:20,124
I could have bought, you know, industrials, chips, AI-themed names, the Mag-7 or whatever we call it now.

399
00:34:20,724 --> 00:34:24,684
And yeah, during this period, they'd have been better off.

400
00:34:24,684 --> 00:34:42,864
It depends on the period, though. If you bought Bitcoin at 15, seven, like I've been buying at 58 and 60, like you are doing great. Right. Like this is the thing that people are, you know, they get mad at Bitcoin. Like and I do think like everybody gets caught up in the bull market.

401
00:34:42,864 --> 00:34:49,264
a lot of influencers and, you know, professionals in the space and whatnot and like, you know,

402
00:34:49,284 --> 00:34:50,484
arguing it's going up forever.

403
00:34:50,484 --> 00:34:56,224
Like if you look at like people's predictions for Bitcoin price at the end of a year, like

404
00:34:56,224 --> 00:35:00,284
if you look at the January 25 predictions, I mean, they're insane.

405
00:35:00,384 --> 00:35:03,304
I was called a bear because I said 185.

406
00:35:03,484 --> 00:35:09,364
And of course, I was I was like fifty thousand dollars above where we even got to.

407
00:35:09,364 --> 00:35:12,804
So others were calling for, you know, 500K, a million.

408
00:35:13,104 --> 00:35:17,144
I mean, that type of rhetoric makes people think you might be going there.

409
00:35:17,144 --> 00:35:21,164
And the reality is, well, those didn't play out.

410
00:35:21,824 --> 00:35:27,944
But, you know, it's not nearly as safe an asset as like U.S. stocks.

411
00:35:28,104 --> 00:35:29,544
I mean, in terms of volatility.

412
00:35:30,124 --> 00:35:30,404
Right.

413
00:35:30,464 --> 00:35:37,004
And you're right that like, you know, you're not buying, you're not buying, you don't have

414
00:35:37,004 --> 00:35:44,324
pensions buying Bitcoin every day, putting it in their plan participants accounts, the way the

415
00:35:44,324 --> 00:35:50,584
perpetual bid exists for U.S. equities. Right. You may one day, you know, for Bitcoin or through the

416
00:35:50,584 --> 00:35:56,164
ETFs. So there's some truth to that. I think, you know, the prudent course, and this is something

417
00:35:56,164 --> 00:36:02,384
that, you know, Bitcoin people on socials and, you know, if you don't live on a Bitcoin standard,

418
00:36:02,384 --> 00:36:06,924
you're not a real Bitcoiner. I mean, the reality is people need to live in a fiat world today.

419
00:36:07,004 --> 00:36:13,724
and they need to diversify their investments and cash positions in a way that works for their lives.

420
00:36:14,164 --> 00:36:20,504
So, you know, if you if you don't want to stomach, you know, volatility hasn't been that bad now,

421
00:36:20,524 --> 00:36:35,540
but historical you know 50 100 vol asset as your entire portfolio or net worth then don you know if you you know I own stocks like it not crazy to not put everything into a thing that you know

422
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:41,840
yeah, it goes up three or four X pretty frequently historically, but it also goes down 50% plus,

423
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:46,640
like, you know, this is the same type of question though. This is just like, is it deja vu all over

424
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:50,840
again? Like, you know, yeah, Bitcoin's down. So all the questions, you know, no one's going to be

425
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:57,860
Same thing with the CAGRs and the, you know, if you look at like a five-year CAGR from today backwards, it doesn't look as good.

426
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:03,020
If you start it from October 6, 25 backwards, it looks good, right?

427
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:04,700
I mean, it's just a volatile asset.

428
00:37:05,100 --> 00:37:11,800
So I think that volatility historically has been positive, drives a lot of attention to the asset.

429
00:37:12,380 --> 00:37:20,040
But it also drives a lot of speculators, and they pile on like price on top of what is that growing floor of digital gold buyers.

430
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:27,000
like i almost think of price as like an air stacked area chart and you've got like the yearly lows is

431
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:31,800
like the long-term believers and then you've got these waves of fluctuation on top which are you

432
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:37,900
know hype cycle driven business cycle driven liquidity cycle driven and you know you should

433
00:37:37,900 --> 00:37:44,860
never be surprised when that happens yeah i think that that point and this actually just maybe a good

434
00:37:44,860 --> 00:37:52,480
bridge into the cold card saga. Because that point about, look, it's okay to diversify. It doesn't

435
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:56,980
make you an inferior Bitcoin. I think that that becomes abundantly clear to when you have kids,

436
00:37:57,480 --> 00:38:02,460
at least it became clear for me, like it became clear that now your job is not just looking out

437
00:38:02,460 --> 00:38:06,940
for yourself and how much you can make personal number go up. It is about making sure that you

438
00:38:06,940 --> 00:38:11,500
are managing risk appropriately for your family. And everyone's individual situation is different,

439
00:38:11,500 --> 00:38:16,740
right i'm not going to tell anyone what to do with their money but like the ability to uh handle

440
00:38:16,740 --> 00:38:22,700
unforeseen expenses during a bitcoin bear market you should be able to do that and it may be more

441
00:38:22,700 --> 00:38:29,500
difficult and require you to actually sell bitcoin if you are not uh otherwise let's say uh diversified

442
00:38:29,500 --> 00:38:34,240
now i'm not saying that you need to uh there's anything bad with being all in bitcoin if that's

443
00:38:34,240 --> 00:38:39,820
what works for you i own some stocks as well guys i also keep a little bit of fiat cash you know like

444
00:38:39,820 --> 00:38:45,680
yeah like just in case right because shit happens if this year's taught me anything it is that

445
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:52,440
but that's okay to do and you really need to make sure you look at your own personal risk profile

446
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:56,960
your family's risk profile what it is going to take to make sure you can still be a provider for

447
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:01,640
that family regardless of what drawdowns there may be and the reason that made me think of the

448
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:06,660
cold card side of things is because and first of all i'd like to say this is fucking horrible like

449
00:39:06,660 --> 00:39:11,840
this was the night but this started happening the night before my uh uh carla was scheduled to go

450
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:15,080
into surgery and my daughter was scheduled to be born so it happened that thursday night friday

451
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:22,600
morning and boy it is horrible and i'm so sorry to everyone who's affected and i know you've had

452
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:28,600
more probably firsthand experience with people who lost a lot of bitcoin than maybe anyone else

453
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,500
in the industry at this point because you've been doing a ton of great let's say pro bono

454
00:39:32,500 --> 00:39:37,080
investigative work. So thank you for that. But one of the things, Alex, that really just stuck

455
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:43,980
out at me was hearing that there were so many people who not only like, again, being all in

456
00:39:43,980 --> 00:39:49,540
Bitcoin, completely fine, right? Like Bitcoin is by far the largest bucket of things that I own.

457
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:56,940
But the people had everything, all of their sats on a single device, on a single key.

458
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:02,140
Like I use a distributed multi-sig now. I still have some other single sigs too. Like I don't even

459
00:40:02,140 --> 00:40:06,560
trust all of mine to just multi-sig like i i spread some things out right i keep a little bit

460
00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:10,980
on an exchange i keep a little bit on river shout out to the river guys not sponsored just love what

461
00:40:10,980 --> 00:40:15,160
leishman and the team are doing because they're awesome it was kind of mind-blowing to me that

462
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:21,200
people had everything at one single point of failure but the hard part is they did everything

463
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:26,640
that you were supposed to do that they were told was the right thing to do which is use the most

464
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:32,180
cypherpunk device that you can use you know that you you're not locked into vendor software you

465
00:40:32,180 --> 00:40:37,220
know generating your own entropy all of these things hooking up a battery to it so that you

466
00:40:37,220 --> 00:40:42,860
know the NSA can't backdoor your USB cable or whatever like doing all these things and then

467
00:40:42,860 --> 00:40:50,120
getting screwed like it was like it it did not affect me uh personally but seeing people that

468
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:55,420
I know and you know respect in the Bitcoin community get wrecked that was that's brutal

469
00:40:55,420 --> 00:41:01,700
that is gut-wrenchingly brutal and my heart goes out to all of these people and I would love if

470
00:41:01,700 --> 00:41:04,840
maybe you can share like now with a little bit I know you've talked about this in a decent number

471
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:10,880
of podcasts already but if you can sort of share like where we're at right now with the state of

472
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:17,100
this because I think a lot of people rightly so are still looking for answers looking for someone

473
00:41:17,100 --> 00:41:22,600
to be held accountable looking for the actual culprit in this whole thing is there anything

474
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:27,160
new that we know or what can you sort of tell us about the state of things from your uh your

475
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:34,380
observational point which i think is quite unique in the industry yeah it is truly devastating and

476
00:41:34,380 --> 00:41:39,960
um you know i think these people thought they did everything right right they didn't it's sad anytime anyone

477
00:41:39,997 --> 00:41:45,337
loses money. I dare say it's even sad if you gamble on low cap meme coins and lose your money.

478
00:41:45,677 --> 00:41:51,357
It's less sad, though, than people who just stack sats and thought they were storing it in cold

479
00:41:51,357 --> 00:41:56,557
storage. They weren't speculating. They weren't putting it on even on an exchange, which, you know,

480
00:41:56,657 --> 00:42:02,897
has risks. They weren't bridging it to DeFi and chasing yield down a risk curve. Right.

481
00:42:03,617 --> 00:42:07,077
They were storing it in their safes, in their homes, in their closets.

482
00:42:07,077 --> 00:42:14,437
many of them had never spent before right so they're only sending in savings into these

483
00:42:14,437 --> 00:42:21,057
addresses the average dormancy of coins stolen is like four years so like they're not they're

484
00:42:21,057 --> 00:42:28,477
not even recent right these are long-term hodlers you know i think that that makes it particularly

485
00:42:28,477 --> 00:42:35,997
sad and like i said it's sad anytime something like this happens even to a low-cap alt corner

486
00:42:35,997 --> 00:42:44,537
I'll dare say. But again, this is sort of the purest, longest term thinking cohort in all of crypto.

487
00:42:45,457 --> 00:42:53,837
And yes, among in the Bitcoin community, like particularly low risk, taking long time horizon, having individuals.

488
00:42:54,737 --> 00:42:58,177
So, yeah, very sad. I've talked to more than 200 of them.

489
00:42:58,177 --> 00:43:02,197
And some stories are truly devastating.

490
00:43:02,857 --> 00:43:09,457
Talking about, you know, someone who realized they might be vulnerable on that Thursday night, but their wife was in labor.

491
00:43:09,597 --> 00:43:11,457
And so they could not race home.

492
00:43:11,457 --> 00:43:14,937
And by the time they got home to their cold car the next day, it was gone.

493
00:43:16,277 --> 00:43:25,037
People who had moved to a new country to set up a whole new life and were going to use their coins to buy their house there and set up their family there that lost everything.

494
00:43:25,037 --> 00:43:29,677
tons of stories that are as heart-wrenching as you can imagine.

495
00:43:31,337 --> 00:43:34,677
I would say, you know, I think where it stands today,

496
00:43:35,317 --> 00:43:38,177
you have about 1,800 Bitcoin confirmed stolen,

497
00:43:38,917 --> 00:43:40,697
that I am confirming as stolen.

498
00:43:41,457 --> 00:43:44,197
High confidence is what I call it, stolen.

499
00:43:44,717 --> 00:43:49,457
Probably almost half of that directly confirmed by the victims themselves.

500
00:43:49,457 --> 00:44:05,597
The rest of it is either co-spent by attackers along with other confirmed victims funds. Remember, because the attackers possess the private keys to the coins, they can spend many victims coins in the same transaction to themselves.

501
00:44:05,597 --> 00:44:13,957
So wave one and two featured a lot of this, like co-spending multiple victims in the same transaction to the attacker's address.

502
00:44:14,157 --> 00:44:19,757
So when some victims send me a transaction ID and I look at the transaction, it's got 200 inputs.

503
00:44:20,157 --> 00:44:23,117
I have to say, you know, unfortunately, can you go into cold card?

504
00:44:23,197 --> 00:44:24,177
Can you go into Sparrow?

505
00:44:24,557 --> 00:44:27,517
Can you actually export a list of all of your addresses?

506
00:44:27,517 --> 00:44:32,277
Because I can't figure out which ones are yours by looking only at the transaction.

507
00:44:32,277 --> 00:44:53,077
In some instances, I've helped people send me their X pubs, which are the master public keys from which all other of the wallets, private public keys are derived. I've said this to them and said it before, like there are privacy implications to doing that. I can derive all possible addresses in your wallet from that.

508
00:44:53,077 --> 00:44:56,457
I don't have the keys, but I could see all of your spending.

509
00:44:56,697 --> 00:45:00,217
So if you don't want if you have anything you want to hide, don't send me that.

510
00:45:00,337 --> 00:45:04,237
But it's the surefire best way for me to get all of your addresses.

511
00:45:04,237 --> 00:45:09,197
That way I can give you a report that is fulsome and complete about the state of your coins.

512
00:45:09,617 --> 00:45:10,897
Many have done that. Right.

513
00:45:11,517 --> 00:45:14,537
You know, if you don't have anything to hide, you're never using that seat again.

514
00:45:14,637 --> 00:45:20,477
So it's frankly, in my view, no, no real issue with sharing the XPUB again, unless they're spending.

515
00:45:20,477 --> 00:45:37,677
And by the way, I also tell them, like, I have absolutely zero interest and have spent exactly zero seconds interrogating prior spends from those addresses. Like, you know, I technically I would possess the X pub so I could, but I don't give a shit about that. I'm only looking to confirm all the addresses that were stolen.

516
00:45:37,677 --> 00:45:59,097
So it's about 1,800 Bitcoin. It's $1,16 million stolen at the point that they were stolen. You know, with this uplift in price, we're now talking about about $130 million in actual value. Something like almost 90% of it is still held by attackers in their initial collector addresses.

517
00:45:59,097 --> 00:46:23,077
So most has not been attempted to be exfiltrated one way or another, sent to an exchange, sent to whatever. There are some later copycats in the hack that once the vulnerability was disclosed and understood, if you had compute, you could direct some computer trying to grind these private keys and execute the attack yourself.

518
00:46:23,077 --> 00:46:38,677
I'm very confident there's at least 10 to 15 operators that have, you know, exploited this vulnerability beyond the sort of biggest chunk, which is the first three waves, which is, you know, 1500 of the 1700, 1800 BTC.

519
00:46:40,057 --> 00:46:42,737
Some of those have very different profiles.

520
00:46:42,977 --> 00:46:44,337
The funds are not always sitting.

521
00:46:45,197 --> 00:47:00,673
One smaller wave and I call those footprints one of the biggest footprint E which is a pattern very likely the same attacker inside that footprint They sending funds into coin joins doing peel chains

522
00:47:00,813 --> 00:47:09,213
elaborate things, bridging to other networks. It's all different modus operandi than wave one,

523
00:47:09,313 --> 00:47:15,753
two, and three attackers, which are just sitting inert on chain. So there is a variety of things

524
00:47:15,753 --> 00:47:17,853
that people are, you know, attackers are doing,

525
00:47:18,093 --> 00:47:20,853
most of the coins are sitting inert, right?

526
00:47:20,913 --> 00:47:22,413
And we're monitoring those addresses.

527
00:47:23,693 --> 00:47:27,533
Every day or two, I send an updated CSV to the FBI,

528
00:47:27,693 --> 00:47:30,633
to FinCEN, to Chainalysis and TRM and Elliptic

529
00:47:30,633 --> 00:47:33,413
and other exchanges just flagging, like,

530
00:47:33,853 --> 00:47:37,093
the updated set of attacker addresses, right?

531
00:47:37,133 --> 00:47:38,493
The hope being that, you know,

532
00:47:38,573 --> 00:47:40,853
if the attackers one day move funds

533
00:47:40,853 --> 00:47:42,333
to a centralized intermediary,

534
00:47:42,813 --> 00:47:45,373
they'll be flagged by compliance software

535
00:47:45,373 --> 00:47:51,353
because I told the entity to flag it, because the law enforcement is telling them to flag, whichever.

536
00:47:51,733 --> 00:47:59,513
I mean, at this point, I'm trying to propagate those around the crypto industry and law enforcement agencies as widely as possible

537
00:47:59,513 --> 00:48:04,033
in the hope they get frozen if they land at a centralized intermediary.

538
00:48:04,953 --> 00:48:10,793
And that's why, you know, I encourage, I've been giving back to the, you know, the victims helped me by providing, you know,

539
00:48:10,793 --> 00:48:26,213
information about their the theft and in sort of an exchange, I'm providing them with a report that traces their coins and they can use that report to file with law enforcement, you know, these victim reports with FBI's IC3.

540
00:48:26,873 --> 00:48:38,873
So, you know, one of the really interesting things from an investigative standpoint about the cold card incident is that we have to trace the funds upstream and downstream.

541
00:48:38,873 --> 00:48:59,193
So what I mean by that is normally when, let's say a crypto exchange is hacked, Bybit was hacked, right? Or, you know, a smart contract in DeFi or a bridge is hacked. These are centralized points. And so the forensic exercise is tracing the funds as they flow out of the, you know, exploited address.

542
00:49:00,033 --> 00:49:01,493
We don't have to trace up.

543
00:49:01,693 --> 00:49:04,513
We can see that they started here at the exchange and now they're being stolen.

544
00:49:04,773 --> 00:49:11,173
And so it's all about following the funds as they move around on chain to try to figure out where they go and notify law enforcement.

545
00:49:11,653 --> 00:49:20,313
Here, the funds are flowing from many, many disparate addresses with no prior connection to one another.

546
00:49:20,453 --> 00:49:24,633
Right. Because these are regular people's self-custody, you know, wallets.

547
00:49:24,733 --> 00:49:27,593
They're not sitting in a centralized point of control.

548
00:49:27,593 --> 00:49:44,453
So the only way to trace the attackers is from victim reports. So the engineers at Block, who identified wave one, they published a blog about this and they highlighted the features of the wave that they used.

549
00:49:44,453 --> 00:49:49,933
they occurred between, you know, in 41 minutes across just a few blocks that they used the same

550
00:49:49,933 --> 00:49:54,033
like lock time and wallet fingerprints and fixed fee rates and blah, blah, blah.

551
00:49:54,673 --> 00:49:59,513
So I mapped, I was easily by their description able to find all those transactions and that's

552
00:49:59,513 --> 00:50:05,933
wave one. And that's subsequently been confirmed by dozens of victims that it is a true wave one.

553
00:50:06,013 --> 00:50:09,633
And in wave one, the attacker co-spent a lot of inputs from any victims in the same

554
00:50:09,633 --> 00:50:14,353
transaction. So like if I confirm one or two, then I can just fold in the rest of them as all

555
00:50:14,353 --> 00:50:16,913
being thefts.

556
00:50:18,113 --> 00:50:20,593
Every other wave and footprint

557
00:50:20,593 --> 00:50:22,693
that I reported on up to like footprint,

558
00:50:22,933 --> 00:50:24,213
like AP now,

559
00:50:24,333 --> 00:50:26,933
like many different patterns of attack,

560
00:50:27,653 --> 00:50:29,393
all the ones that I published

561
00:50:29,393 --> 00:50:31,293
as high confidence or victim confirmed,

562
00:50:31,673 --> 00:50:33,573
every single one except wave one

563
00:50:33,573 --> 00:50:36,293
was discovered by victim reporting, right?

564
00:50:36,593 --> 00:50:38,673
Discovered, not just corroborated

565
00:50:38,673 --> 00:50:39,573
and further mapped,

566
00:50:39,633 --> 00:50:41,933
but actually identified in the first place

567
00:50:41,933 --> 00:50:43,813
because a victim came forward to say

568
00:50:43,813 --> 00:50:45,593
that their funds were stolen, right?

569
00:50:45,653 --> 00:50:48,533
So it's essential that victims do that reporting

570
00:50:48,533 --> 00:50:50,733
so that we can widely identify

571
00:50:50,733 --> 00:50:54,333
and then propagate these attacker addresses

572
00:50:54,333 --> 00:50:56,513
to hopefully not just freeze the funds,

573
00:50:56,613 --> 00:50:58,753
but maybe also catch these assholes.

574
00:50:59,613 --> 00:51:02,753
But that from an investigative standpoint

575
00:51:02,753 --> 00:51:06,273
is very unique for a crypto hack, quote unquote.

576
00:51:06,513 --> 00:51:07,893
Like they almost always start

577
00:51:07,893 --> 00:51:09,833
in one centralized location and flow out.

578
00:51:10,233 --> 00:51:12,093
Here they start in many locations

579
00:51:12,093 --> 00:51:17,933
and sometimes flow together, other times flow into a whole new path because it's an ongoing

580
00:51:17,933 --> 00:51:21,973
vulnerability that's being exploited by a new copycat. It's not even the same person.

581
00:51:22,313 --> 00:51:26,693
So there's many different threads to pull, and it makes the investigation really complicated.

582
00:51:27,313 --> 00:51:32,813
It also means that once I became a shelling point for these victim reports, which, you know,

583
00:51:32,813 --> 00:51:38,473
was incidental, was not a goal of mine, I started mapping it and posting about it,

584
00:51:38,473 --> 00:51:40,713
And then people started sending me their stories.

585
00:51:40,973 --> 00:51:44,273
So then I started cataloging them and then it sort of snowballed from there.

586
00:51:44,893 --> 00:51:47,593
You can't really do this without the victim reports.

587
00:51:47,713 --> 00:51:47,893
Right.

588
00:51:47,933 --> 00:51:53,333
So that's why I've also been working so hard to make sure I share the, you know, threat

589
00:51:53,333 --> 00:51:58,293
actor information, the on-chain addresses, the patterns with law enforcement and, you

590
00:51:58,293 --> 00:51:58,653
know, freely.

591
00:51:58,793 --> 00:52:11,809
It not I not treating it like proprietary information I just happen to be the only one that has it So like I also sharing right like those addresses as widely as possible because I also can you know track these funds

592
00:52:11,809 --> 00:52:17,209
downstream in perpetuity. Like I can't be following one piece of coin that goes through five peel

593
00:52:17,209 --> 00:52:22,389
chains into a coin joint and eventually on a bridge and is now in a DeFi smart contract. I simply don't

594
00:52:22,389 --> 00:52:27,849
have the bandwidth for that. Others may. Right. So I've been sharing it widely, but it makes it a

595
00:52:27,849 --> 00:52:34,849
very, very unique exercise in data analysis, the sort of topography of the cold card exploit.

596
00:52:35,469 --> 00:52:41,709
You know, that topography also is a really good marker to tell the story, again, of how tragic it is.

597
00:52:43,249 --> 00:52:49,709
I'm curious, too, because this is something that I sort of, I guess, thought was interesting from

598
00:52:49,709 --> 00:52:55,789
the initial reports. And you've sort of just corroborated here this idea that whatever this

599
00:52:55,789 --> 00:53:00,329
initial whoever this primary attacker or attackers group you know individual group whatever was

600
00:53:00,329 --> 00:53:07,889
seems to have perhaps not been the most uh like sophisticated like the fact that they didn't start

601
00:53:07,889 --> 00:53:12,609
just immediately coin joining this before anybody even got wind of it the fact they didn't you know

602
00:53:12,609 --> 00:53:17,809
go through these steps to obfuscate what they had done uh that they were even like i think i saw one

603
00:53:17,809 --> 00:53:22,889
report that they were like paying for some sort of uh blockchain analysis tools they had an account

604
00:53:22,889 --> 00:53:32,549
So there's all these different things that if you were a sophisticated attacker, either individual or group, you would presumably never have done because that would just be like rookie mistake number one.

605
00:53:33,189 --> 00:53:37,709
Do you have any hypotheses around why that's the case?

606
00:53:37,849 --> 00:53:43,789
Like, was this just somebody who was like just, you know, prompting one of the frontier models and stumbled across this?

607
00:53:43,989 --> 00:53:46,929
Like, did they just say, you know, get me as much Bitcoin as you can?

608
00:53:47,009 --> 00:53:48,389
And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, shit.

609
00:53:48,589 --> 00:53:50,229
Like, do you have any thoughts on that?

610
00:53:50,409 --> 00:53:52,009
It definitely could be that.

611
00:53:52,009 --> 00:53:53,849
for the early waves.

612
00:53:54,029 --> 00:53:55,389
The report you're talking about

613
00:53:55,389 --> 00:53:57,289
was Clay from Block

614
00:53:57,289 --> 00:53:59,989
who posted that they had seemed to identify,

615
00:54:00,209 --> 00:54:01,929
I think relating to the Wave 1 attacker,

616
00:54:02,589 --> 00:54:03,529
that they may have used

617
00:54:03,529 --> 00:54:06,869
a common RPC data service

618
00:54:06,869 --> 00:54:08,929
which exists to query

619
00:54:08,929 --> 00:54:10,629
Bitcoin blockchain data

620
00:54:10,629 --> 00:54:12,629
in service of committing the attack, right?

621
00:54:12,769 --> 00:54:14,169
And so this is like, you know,

622
00:54:14,689 --> 00:54:15,689
either you're a business

623
00:54:15,689 --> 00:54:18,529
that can't solely rely on their own node

624
00:54:18,529 --> 00:54:20,149
for the state of the Bitcoin blockchain.

625
00:54:20,409 --> 00:54:21,129
There are many such

626
00:54:21,129 --> 00:54:29,629
totally legitimate businesses that serve Bitcoin data to others over API or through an RPC endpoint

627
00:54:29,629 --> 00:54:34,709
or whatever. Even if you do run your own node, you may still also need these things, right?

628
00:54:34,809 --> 00:54:38,969
For whatever you're running a big exchange or any kind of brokerage, even if it's just for

629
00:54:38,969 --> 00:54:45,169
redundancy. I don't know how they did this, but they said that they figured out that the attacker

630
00:54:45,169 --> 00:54:51,789
was querying a popular data provider with a paid account, using a paid account, and that they talked

631
00:54:51,789 --> 00:54:56,329
to the provider, and they confirmed that it was the same, I don't know, maybe the attacker was

632
00:54:56,329 --> 00:55:00,469
looking up all the target addresses right before they enacted the attack, right? I mean, that,

633
00:55:00,889 --> 00:55:05,329
something like that, and that they've been in touch with authorities. Haven't seen any updates

634
00:55:05,329 --> 00:55:12,889
on that, so I don't know. If the attacker did do that, you're totally right. That is sloppy,

635
00:55:12,889 --> 00:55:39,349
Right. This is like Mars spits bars. Right. Not going to node. Even the attacker couldn't run a Bitcoin node. Right. Like I have a Bitcoin node. I can easily query the balance of every address. The reason, by the way, just for background for the audience, like the nature of this vulnerability is such that if you know the cryptographic space that a key could have been generated in because it had insufficient entropy in the beginning, what you do is you go and grind and create as many keys as possible.

636
00:55:39,349 --> 00:55:56,949
I don't know. I'm not a mathematician. I haven't been working on this part of it, but bajillions of possible private keys. Right. Then you derive addresses, maybe like the first hundred or some number, however much compute you have and want to devote to this, to deriving all the possible addresses those keys could have created.

637
00:55:56,949 --> 00:56:14,829
Then you search those addresses on the blockchain to see if any of them have money. Then you go and construct transactions using those ones private keys to take the money. Right. So you do need to query the blockchain here to know which transactions to actually build, which theft transactions to go ahead and create and submit.

638
00:56:14,829 --> 00:56:19,629
if they used a paid service rather than just spinning up a Bitcoin node for that,

639
00:56:19,709 --> 00:56:23,409
which you absolutely could do, I can query all these now.

640
00:56:23,409 --> 00:56:27,709
I can use Kimmy, a local model, to actually, if you give me an XPub

641
00:56:27,709 --> 00:56:30,429
or a private seed to generate every private key,

642
00:56:30,749 --> 00:56:35,489
if I have a million seeds, I can, with AI, generate all the correct private keys

643
00:56:35,489 --> 00:56:39,029
and then drive the first hundred of all of those addresses

644
00:56:39,029 --> 00:56:42,169
and then query my node to see if any of them have money.

645
00:56:42,169 --> 00:56:48,149
that you could use a local model locally with a local Bitcoin node and you wouldn't have had this

646
00:56:48,149 --> 00:56:55,669
leak that may have happened that block engineers identified. So that that is positive for victims

647
00:56:55,669 --> 00:57:00,829
for wave one. The funds haven't moved. And again, I don't have an update on the state of that,

648
00:57:00,829 --> 00:57:05,049
but it's possible the attacker can be identified. Right. If they even paid with a credit card,

649
00:57:05,109 --> 00:57:10,509
there's some paper trail for that node, that node data service. There's some paper trail to follow.

650
00:57:10,509 --> 00:57:26,726
So I think it very clear that the first wave attacker wave one wave two wave three and I happen to believe wave one and two are the same and wave three might be a second Wave one swept many addresses and

651
00:57:26,726 --> 00:57:36,146
over a thousand Bitcoin in 41 minutes, like early in the morning on Thursday, July 30th,

652
00:57:36,146 --> 00:57:41,306
UTC time. So like the evening East Coast, Wednesday, July 29th.

653
00:57:42,946 --> 00:57:49,746
To construct those transactions, they almost certainly used AI just again to just operationalize the attack.

654
00:57:49,886 --> 00:57:52,406
They didn't need AI to find this vulnerability.

655
00:57:52,406 --> 00:57:58,246
If you have been following, if you're a security researcher following hardware wallets or crypto wallets,

656
00:57:58,246 --> 00:58:04,966
like you've known that an entropy bug is one of the main bugs that could make those wallets insecure.

657
00:58:04,966 --> 00:58:29,686
And these have been found in the past, you know, to a lesser blast radius, but in crypto wallets. So like it's a known vulnerability type. It's not totally novel. So you didn't need it to find it, need AI to find it. They probably used it. They probably did use it to find it. I mean, Kimi K3, very, very powerful local model, open source model came out like two weeks before this was exploited.

658
00:58:29,686 --> 00:58:33,526
but they almost certainly used it to operationalize it.

659
00:58:34,246 --> 00:58:41,346
I don't see necessarily a lot in wave one or two that in terms of on-chain patterns and

660
00:58:41,346 --> 00:58:44,266
topography that suggest they were definitely not sophisticated.

661
00:58:45,046 --> 00:58:46,226
I will say those two.

662
00:58:46,226 --> 00:58:52,966
So wave one swept a bunch of coins and left a few UTXOs in some victim addresses unswept.

663
00:58:53,766 --> 00:58:56,726
The ones they left unswept, wave two mostly came and drained, right?

664
00:58:56,726 --> 00:59:04,186
So it's sort of like a cleanup wave two, which is why I think wave one and two might be the same person or attacker wave three.

665
00:59:04,186 --> 00:59:12,886
And those funds were swept into like three collectors and now sitting in two or three like holding addresses that we presume belong to the attacker.

666
00:59:13,106 --> 00:59:19,326
So they co-spent, they co-mingled, and now they're sitting there in a pile and a couple piles.

667
00:59:20,146 --> 00:59:30,706
Wave three, mostly something like, I don't know, 290 out of 293 transactions only had inputs from one victim, each of them.

668
00:59:30,926 --> 00:59:38,526
And they each went into one intermediate address and they're each sitting at one scripted vault address, one per attack, per victim.

669
00:59:38,786 --> 00:59:40,546
So they're segregated almost.

670
00:59:40,746 --> 00:59:46,626
I think there may be one or two where I noticed that they might not be segregated, but the vast majority are totally segregated by victim.

671
00:59:47,286 --> 00:59:50,086
That alone is a much more sophisticated topography.

672
00:59:50,326 --> 00:59:52,486
There is no co-spending across vaults.

673
00:59:52,586 --> 00:59:57,686
The way I know this is a wave is that I've got many victims and they all look the same

674
00:59:57,686 --> 01:00:01,666
right across the same blocks with the same types of transactions landing in the same

675
01:00:01,666 --> 01:00:03,546
types of holding addresses, right?

676
01:00:03,946 --> 01:00:10,486
But there isn't like direct spending history between those 293 attacker output vaults.

677
01:00:10,486 --> 01:00:12,046
They just look the same, right?

678
01:00:12,046 --> 01:00:19,906
And I've got enough victim confirmation of victims in wave three that, to me, prove the pattern is high confidence.

679
01:00:20,106 --> 01:00:21,926
And so I call it one full wave.

680
01:00:22,166 --> 01:00:26,026
But it's a much more sophisticated topography than one and two.

681
01:00:27,886 --> 01:00:28,806
Still haven't moved.

682
01:00:29,066 --> 01:00:33,346
Then you look at something like what I call footprint E, which is the largest of the footprints.

683
01:00:33,906 --> 01:00:39,566
That's the one that, honestly, it looks like a sophisticated actor that's done these types of thefts before.

684
01:00:39,566 --> 01:00:53,386
Or we may see waves one, two and three eventually go into coin joins, eventually go into peel chains to try to make it difficult for me to track, eventually bridge to other networks and blah, blah, blah, like the whole sort of money laundering MO.

685
01:00:54,206 --> 01:00:56,466
Maybe they need to figure out how to do that.

686
01:00:56,506 --> 01:00:57,406
And that's why they haven't done it.

687
01:00:57,506 --> 01:00:58,646
Maybe they never intend to do it.

688
01:00:58,726 --> 01:00:59,266
We don't know.

689
01:00:59,926 --> 01:01:03,506
But footprint E knew exactly what they wanted to do with the funds.

690
01:01:03,506 --> 01:01:06,526
They instantly started peeling and coin joining and bridging.

691
01:01:06,666 --> 01:01:12,466
And like, that's not something you learn in the time between stealing the funds and enacting the transactions on chain.

692
01:01:12,686 --> 01:01:17,226
This is an actor who knows, has a modus operandi, knows how to execute it.

693
01:01:17,446 --> 01:01:25,006
So for something like that, I mean, it's much more likely that it's a, you know, common hacking group, even possibly a nation state.

694
01:01:25,006 --> 01:01:29,466
Like they have a whole process for trying to launder these funds and exfiltrate them.

695
01:01:29,466 --> 01:01:32,186
so I don't know that's a long answer

696
01:01:32,186 --> 01:01:34,346
Walker to your question like

697
01:01:34,346 --> 01:01:36,406
wave one

698
01:01:36,406 --> 01:01:38,586
and two also

699
01:01:38,586 --> 01:01:40,246
if it's the same party

700
01:01:40,246 --> 01:01:42,606
if they leaked their ID to a

701
01:01:42,606 --> 01:01:44,526
paid service like that's a huge

702
01:01:44,526 --> 01:01:45,766
fuck up for them

703
01:01:45,766 --> 01:01:48,846
but you know

704
01:01:48,846 --> 01:01:50,266
commingling the funds

705
01:01:50,266 --> 01:01:51,946
and one thing you know that's

706
01:01:51,946 --> 01:01:54,406
helps us categorize

707
01:01:54,406 --> 01:01:56,066
the blast radius of their operation

708
01:01:56,066 --> 01:01:57,986
more easily than say wave three

709
01:01:57,986 --> 01:02:02,746
where technically I don't have co-spends to definitively state that they're related,

710
01:02:03,006 --> 01:02:05,506
but we can still trace pretty well.

711
01:02:05,646 --> 01:02:12,806
I don't think it's the on-chain topography as much as the leaking of the ID to the RPC provider.

712
01:02:13,886 --> 01:02:19,586
Last thing I'll say, if you look at the Bitfinex hacker, Razzle Khan and her husband,

713
01:02:20,366 --> 01:02:24,666
they sat on billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin inert for years.

714
01:02:24,666 --> 01:02:29,946
I think if I recall correctly, they were eventually caught because they peeled some off to buy Walmart gift cards.

715
01:02:29,982 --> 01:02:32,082
and they were caught that way.

716
01:02:34,162 --> 01:02:35,962
They were not sophisticated.

717
01:02:36,182 --> 01:02:39,602
I've never quite learned how they managed to get those funds.

718
01:02:40,082 --> 01:02:46,502
I'd seen disputes between BitGo and Bitfinex on the timeline in the past as to who was to blame.

719
01:02:46,922 --> 01:02:49,122
I guess Bitfinex used BitGo for some portion.

720
01:02:49,722 --> 01:02:50,782
But we never quite understood.

721
01:02:51,022 --> 01:02:57,162
Most likely that was some kind of insider or phishing situation, you know, meaning not that sophisticated.

722
01:02:57,162 --> 01:03:02,262
not like they breached the firewall and hacked through the matrix right and not as sophisticated

723
01:03:02,262 --> 01:03:07,582
frankly as enacting this attack which requires compute and you know even if ai helped you it's

724
01:03:07,582 --> 01:03:14,822
it's i mean you're reproducing private keys from a vulnerable entropy like keygen like that's you

725
01:03:14,822 --> 01:03:20,022
know more sophisticated than bitfinex but the bitfinex hackers also sat on the funds for years

726
01:03:20,022 --> 01:03:26,602
before doing anything with them so whether or not the on-chain behavior of waves one two and three

727
01:03:26,602 --> 01:03:29,902
means they're sophisticated or not, no matter what.

728
01:03:29,902 --> 01:03:34,962
I mean, it could just sit there for a long, long time before it could sit there forever.

729
01:03:35,202 --> 01:03:38,962
I mean, for all we know, the attacker could decide it's too risky to even try to move

730
01:03:38,962 --> 01:03:40,242
and they just never move it.

731
01:03:40,642 --> 01:03:41,722
It's totally possible.

732
01:03:42,322 --> 01:03:43,682
So I do.

733
01:03:43,842 --> 01:03:50,542
All of that being said, the RPC, possible paid account leak as a nuance.

734
01:03:51,362 --> 01:03:56,202
I don't think there's quite much to say how sophisticated the attackers are or not.

735
01:03:56,602 --> 01:04:03,602
With the exception of both the paid RPC endpoint and the difference in behavior,

736
01:04:04,022 --> 01:04:08,582
footprint E and a couple of the smaller ones are immediately being laundered.

737
01:04:09,422 --> 01:04:13,762
So those are at least people with experience.

738
01:04:14,582 --> 01:04:19,482
But we can't say for certain that the others are not experienced attackers.

739
01:04:19,482 --> 01:04:30,602
i mean it is uh it is horrific and tragic it is also fascinating just because i think one of the

740
01:04:30,602 --> 01:04:36,002
reasons this really and doesn't seem to have gotten much coverage outside of the bitcoin

741
01:04:36,002 --> 01:04:40,602
community actually you didn't really see headlines like you probably would have a few years ago saying

742
01:04:40,602 --> 01:04:45,442
bitcoin has been hacked you know what i mean that would have been the the fud that was thrown out a

743
01:04:45,442 --> 01:04:49,182
few years ago then you would have had to have a bunch of people explaining well no bitcoin wasn't

744
01:04:49,182 --> 01:04:54,382
hacked bitcoin is you know we didn't really see that maybe that's an another example of market

745
01:04:54,382 --> 01:04:59,962
maturity here but something you and i were just talking about a bit before we got recording was

746
01:04:59,962 --> 01:05:06,522
this idea of what this actually means for the culture moving forward because this is very much

747
01:05:06,522 --> 01:05:13,122
an earth-shattering thing again as you highlighted these are people who did the right thing they did

748
01:05:13,122 --> 01:05:18,062
what you were supposed to do they did they didn't keep their key their their bitcoin on exchange they

749
01:05:18,062 --> 01:05:23,422
you know they had their own keys right not your keys not your coins they got a super cypherpunk

750
01:05:23,422 --> 01:05:28,522
uh you know kind of not the best like ux hardware wallet right they struggled through that

751
01:05:28,522 --> 01:05:33,782
and then they still got rugged and so if you do everything right and you can still be rugged i

752
01:05:33,782 --> 01:05:39,822
think a lot of people fairly lost or you know feel a bit lost or lost a lot of confidence in that

753
01:05:39,822 --> 01:05:44,802
and it's like meanwhile they see people with bitcoin sitting in coinbase or in you know

754
01:05:44,802 --> 01:05:47,642
Obviously, if you have a Bitcoin ETF, you don't have the Bitcoin, right?

755
01:05:47,682 --> 01:05:49,142
But you've got exposure to the price.

756
01:05:49,222 --> 01:05:54,422
And I think a lot of people might be sort of rethinking this whole paradigm a bit.

757
01:05:54,842 --> 01:05:56,282
Can you give your thoughts on that?

758
01:05:56,322 --> 01:05:59,642
Because again, it's like you're hearing 200 plus of these stories.

759
01:05:59,862 --> 01:06:02,182
Like you're on the front lines of this.

760
01:06:02,822 --> 01:06:06,842
Are people giving you any indication of kind of what they're going to do next?

761
01:06:06,922 --> 01:06:10,422
If they even want to keep holding Bitcoin, maybe they just feel too burned by this to

762
01:06:10,422 --> 01:06:11,802
even try again.

763
01:06:11,842 --> 01:06:12,262
I don't know.

764
01:06:12,702 --> 01:06:14,102
Yeah, I've heard some of that.

765
01:06:14,802 --> 01:06:20,422
I've also heard stories of, you know, I'm going to rebuild and start stacking again.

766
01:06:20,542 --> 01:06:22,322
I mean, I've heard both across the spectrum.

767
01:06:22,522 --> 01:06:29,502
Total disillusionment forever going forward, as well as, you know, this is a wake-up call about better self-custody.

768
01:06:30,722 --> 01:06:35,962
In terms of, like, the media not covering this, like, there's been a little bit, but I agree.

769
01:06:36,102 --> 01:06:41,342
Like, this was not widely covered in mainstream media, even in, like, mainstream financial media.

770
01:06:41,522 --> 01:06:42,482
You know, a story here or there.

771
01:06:42,862 --> 01:06:43,702
I went on Bloomberg.

772
01:06:43,962 --> 01:06:44,702
They talked about it there.

773
01:06:44,702 --> 01:06:55,982
They did an episode about it. So I think in sort of Wall Street and traditional like active markets finance, this was known and like and understood.

774
01:06:56,562 --> 01:07:02,722
And it didn't impact price and it didn't hasn't, I don't think, impacted institutional interest in Bitcoin.

775
01:07:03,582 --> 01:07:08,242
One, because they are a lot smarter about Bitcoin than, you know, they were a couple of years ago.

776
01:07:08,822 --> 01:07:14,622
You know, not saying it's just because of me, but I've been trying to teach these people about Bitcoin for a long time.

777
01:07:14,622 --> 01:07:22,542
And I was very clear and I continue to be and try to be that this vulnerability is related to a specific hardware vulnerability.

778
01:07:22,542 --> 01:07:24,902
It is not a Bitcoin protocol vulnerability.

779
01:07:25,762 --> 01:07:30,282
This specific vulnerability does not impact other hardware wallets, as far as we can tell.

780
01:07:30,422 --> 01:07:37,442
Not saying they're always going to be safe either, but like this is a limited to one hardware wallet key gen.

781
01:07:37,442 --> 01:07:50,485
And by the way the demographic that owns Cold Card I think both of us included are you know a cultural like cultural specific cultural niche in Bitcoin ownership

782
01:07:50,785 --> 01:08:00,205
It is not the, and I think the largest victim reported loss is about 60 Bitcoin, which is fucking tragic.

783
01:08:00,385 --> 01:08:01,605
That's an enormous amount of money.

784
01:08:02,825 --> 01:08:05,345
But the, you know, the median is like one BTC, right?

785
01:08:05,345 --> 01:08:24,145
And for some of these people, that's they've told me that's their life savings. So one, that's absolutely devastating for them. But, you know, two, from a mark, you know, even 116 mil in, you know, at the point it was stolen as the blast radius here. It's really just not that big in terms of the overall Bitcoin market.

786
01:08:24,145 --> 01:08:42,605
So it hasn't dramatically impacted the market. I think the institutional investors and by, you know, along the way with them, also the financial journalists realize this isn't, you know, systemic to Bitcoin price, like in the scheme of things.

787
01:08:42,605 --> 01:08:48,785
It may, though, have a lot of implications for how people get exposure to Bitcoin going forward.

788
01:08:49,465 --> 01:08:55,985
Right. You know, in some ways, I think HODL had a great American HODL had a great tweet that was like, you know, the upside is like not that many people listen to us.

789
01:08:56,625 --> 01:09:00,625
Well, some did. And I don't want to downplay the tragedy that's befallen them.

790
01:09:00,625 --> 01:09:07,445
But, you know, many didn't, you know, to be frank, if it had been Trezor or Ledger, the blast radius would have been way larger.

791
01:09:07,745 --> 01:09:11,665
Like those are much more widely owned like than cold cards were.

792
01:09:11,665 --> 01:09:27,505
So that's one reason is that although incredibly tragic to many people in terms of the size of the blast radius in the market, it's not quite big enough to make a real impact here.

793
01:09:28,845 --> 01:09:35,825
And that's just I mean, it's now been three weeks since it happened and you just you've seen Bitcoin flat to dramatically up in the more recent days.

794
01:09:35,945 --> 01:09:37,685
It's not being impacted by it.

795
01:09:37,685 --> 01:09:52,185
But I think people are right to wonder, you know, if they rolled their own custody with cold card and didn't work out clearly if, you know, if they were in a single SIG or, you know, no passphrase, no entropy.

796
01:09:52,325 --> 01:09:54,905
And to be clear, like I've used cold card in a multi SIG.

797
01:09:55,025 --> 01:09:56,145
I didn't introduce any entropy.

798
01:09:56,145 --> 01:10:01,785
Like the idea that you should have known, I totally disagree with like hardware wallets supposed to create a good key.

799
01:10:02,225 --> 01:10:04,485
Like that's that's not your fault.

800
01:10:04,525 --> 01:10:04,805
Right.

801
01:10:04,865 --> 01:10:05,745
It's kind of nothing wrong.

802
01:10:05,745 --> 01:10:05,985
Right.

803
01:10:06,085 --> 01:10:07,305
Like, yeah, it's kind of.

804
01:10:07,445 --> 01:10:07,605
Yeah.

805
01:10:07,685 --> 01:10:24,025
I mean, I don't get me wrong. I think if I'm going to roll my own custody in the future, self custody, I probably will do dice rolling. Now, it's not actually that hard, but it is a ridiculous thing to ask a like a new entrant to do. They're supposed to just be able to buy this device and it makes the key for them.

806
01:10:24,025 --> 01:10:40,245
And, you know, and they did the irony is, you know, a lot of people were powering them off batteries and keeping them in Faraday bags. And it turned out, you know, to protect from the NSA, like we were talking about before, and like turns out that the actual primary function of the thing was catastrophically broken. So that did nothing.

807
01:10:40,245 --> 01:10:57,165
Look, I think it's reasonable for people to wonder whether self-custody is for them. And, you know, I'm still a huge proponent of self-custody. I think there's ways to do it safely that mitigate even the risk of one hardware wallet or several being compromised.

808
01:10:57,165 --> 01:11:05,985
specifically, I like collaborative custody, multi-sig, Nunchuck, Casa, Unchained, like

809
01:11:05,985 --> 01:11:11,845
Anchor Watch, Liana Wallet, like it's a bunch of ways to do that, which I think people should

810
01:11:11,845 --> 01:11:17,585
look into. But honestly, no one should store Bitcoin in a way they feel uncomfortable doing,

811
01:11:17,905 --> 01:11:23,225
you know, especially if you're doing self-custody. You really got to know how to do it. And you can

812
01:11:23,225 --> 01:11:29,785
watch, you know, Walker or my pods or BTC sessions, you know, excellent tutorials, but like

813
01:11:29,785 --> 01:11:34,065
you need to feel comfortable doing it. Know that you're taking it into your own hands and

814
01:11:34,065 --> 01:11:38,525
understand that there are risks. And I don't think we as a, you know, Bitcoin educational

815
01:11:38,525 --> 01:11:43,065
community did a good enough job explaining that like you really can't take a shortcut.

816
01:11:43,065 --> 01:11:47,485
You can't rely on a podcaster to make you feel comfortable storing your own coins.

817
01:11:47,485 --> 01:12:12,385
So if you don't, do not stretch yourself. Like, you know, River is highly regulated. Coinbase is highly regulated. They have, you know, they're not without risk. It's a different risk, right? And you should know those risks, but totally reasonable, I think, to either use whatever you feel comfortable for custody, whether that's a custodian, whether that's just owning the ETF.

818
01:12:12,385 --> 01:12:18,265
Jeff, you know, I think the era of judging people for those decisions really has to be over.

819
01:12:20,465 --> 01:12:22,125
I think that that's fair.

820
01:12:22,245 --> 01:12:30,465
And again, I, you know, I will continue to, as you just said that you will as well, be a proponent and personal user of self-custody.

821
01:12:30,465 --> 01:12:38,645
I also like collaborative self-custody or if you want to do it all yourself, you know, as you mentioned, a bunch of things that you can do there.

822
01:12:39,245 --> 01:12:40,865
But like, I like that.

823
01:12:40,865 --> 01:12:42,265
I like that,

824
01:12:42,265 --> 01:12:44,265
that peace of mind.

825
01:12:44,265 --> 01:12:45,505
And like the fact that,

826
01:12:45,525 --> 01:12:45,745
you know,

827
01:12:45,805 --> 01:12:49,165
as my wife was about to go into surgery in a few hours,

828
01:12:49,205 --> 01:12:49,785
the next morning,

829
01:12:49,785 --> 01:13:03,208
she asked me are we affected by this And I could say nope we good That was a pretty great feeling because I mean the story you shared about like my God someone wife being in labor and like that that was that that very much could have been could have been my story

830
01:13:03,668 --> 01:13:08,508
That could have been my story. And that's just horrific. Like you, you don't want to be in that

831
01:13:08,508 --> 01:13:13,248
position, but I think that it is fair. I was going to say just real quick too,

832
01:13:13,308 --> 01:13:17,668
like the ETFs, I think can make a lot of sense for some people, but you don't own coins if you

833
01:13:17,668 --> 01:13:23,408
own the ETFs. Yes. And you may want to use coins in the future. So personally, again, this is just

834
01:13:23,408 --> 01:13:30,008
me personally. And by the way, I do own the ETFs in accounts where I can't own coins like that,

835
01:13:30,108 --> 01:13:34,908
where I want Bitcoin exposure. I think they're really useful for certain investors at certain

836
01:13:34,908 --> 01:13:40,848
times and maybe many types of investors. However, if I want to own Bitcoin and I don't feel

837
01:13:40,848 --> 01:13:45,428
comfortable self-custodying, I can tell you I'm storing it at a regulated exchange that I have an

838
01:13:45,428 --> 01:13:52,308
account with, because at least I can decide later to withdraw them. And I think that's an important

839
01:13:52,308 --> 01:13:59,168
caveat about the ETFs. The ETFs give you economic exposure to the asset that you're not going to be

840
01:13:59,168 --> 01:14:05,168
able to, you know, in a, you know, economic catastrophe, like, you know, it's not quite clear

841
01:14:05,168 --> 01:14:09,408
whether you're going to be able to access your, you know, fiat brokerage accounts in which those

842
01:14:09,408 --> 01:14:14,448
are held. Whereas Bitcoin, you can send around the world for, you know, a dollar or less at any time,

843
01:14:14,448 --> 01:14:15,328
as long as there's internet.

844
01:14:15,628 --> 01:14:17,008
And even without the internet,

845
01:14:17,148 --> 01:14:18,508
possibly with a ham radio

846
01:14:18,508 --> 01:14:19,768
or the Blockstream satellite,

847
01:14:20,048 --> 01:14:21,608
like I am,

848
01:14:21,708 --> 01:14:23,068
I would prefer personally

849
01:14:23,068 --> 01:14:25,148
to own Bitcoin at an exchange

850
01:14:25,148 --> 01:14:26,508
than Bitcoin in ETF.

851
01:14:27,468 --> 01:14:29,088
Of course, with all the caveats

852
01:14:29,088 --> 01:14:30,468
necessary about exchanges

853
01:14:30,468 --> 01:14:31,668
and, you know,

854
01:14:31,768 --> 01:14:32,668
making sure you trust,

855
01:14:32,968 --> 01:14:33,208
you know,

856
01:14:33,368 --> 01:14:34,468
have the level of trust

857
01:14:34,468 --> 01:14:35,528
that you can be comfortable with

858
01:14:35,528 --> 01:14:36,608
with that exchange,

859
01:14:36,648 --> 01:14:37,208
like a river,

860
01:14:37,308 --> 01:14:38,288
which I also use.

861
01:14:38,908 --> 01:14:39,928
Big fan of river.

862
01:14:40,108 --> 01:14:40,588
Again, also,

863
01:14:40,708 --> 01:14:41,948
I don't have any sponsors

864
01:14:41,948 --> 01:14:43,508
on my podcast.

865
01:14:43,508 --> 01:14:46,048
Thank you, Galaxy, for paying for my podcast.

866
01:14:47,028 --> 01:14:48,468
But I am a user of River.

867
01:14:48,648 --> 01:14:54,388
And again, like I like River and I would rather have coins on River than in an ETF as an individual.

868
01:14:54,668 --> 01:14:56,408
I mean, obviously, there are different situations.

869
01:14:56,848 --> 01:14:58,468
And again, I'm not here to judge.

870
01:14:58,808 --> 01:15:04,188
Certainly, I think less so than ever before am I not here to judge how people choose to store.

871
01:15:04,248 --> 01:15:06,368
This is people's money and livelihood and savings.

872
01:15:06,948 --> 01:15:09,668
I think you should store it however you feel comfortable.

873
01:15:09,668 --> 01:15:16,648
one of the things and again this is not to make light of it but just to like look at the kind of

874
01:15:16,648 --> 01:15:22,348
absurdity of this situation how shocking it was i might have been i forget what account made it so

875
01:15:22,348 --> 01:15:25,928
i'm sorry for not crediting you maybe you know because you've been deeper in this than i have

876
01:15:25,928 --> 01:15:32,128
but they were like you know get your bitcoin on exchanges now you know and it's like boy you know

877
01:15:32,128 --> 01:15:37,768
like shit yeah i like that for a lot of people that's exactly what they did it was like to keep

878
01:15:37,768 --> 01:15:42,208
my Bitcoin safe. I had to transfer it out of my self-custody onto the exchange.

879
01:15:42,408 --> 01:15:47,308
This is like the reverse. People have called it the reverse FTX. So like when FTX collapsed,

880
01:15:48,208 --> 01:15:53,408
coins fled into self-custody. They didn't know if the contagion was going to spread or if other

881
01:15:53,408 --> 01:16:00,028
exchanges were implicated in it. Whereas here, I know Sani from Time Chain Index, I think in the

882
01:16:00,028 --> 01:16:06,148
first three days, there was like a net inflow of 22,000 Bitcoin into exchanges. I saw CryptoQuant

883
01:16:06,148 --> 01:16:10,708
had posted something saying that, I forget the timeframe, but like, you know, at least a very

884
01:16:10,708 --> 01:16:17,588
long time, it was the largest count of sub one Bitcoin deposits into exchanges. So yeah, there

885
01:16:17,588 --> 01:16:22,248
was a lot of fear. I think there's going to, it's going to take some time, I think for the,

886
01:16:22,248 --> 01:16:28,448
you know, Bitcoin, general Bitcoin investor and owner to feel comfortable self-custodying like

887
01:16:28,448 --> 01:16:35,248
this. This has done some damage to the self-custody narrative, but it is not dead and it will not be

888
01:16:35,248 --> 01:16:41,048
dead. And I really, like I said, like I love using collaborative multi-sig. I think it is,

889
01:16:41,108 --> 01:16:47,488
it gives me great peace of mind. I don't even, you know, in a multi-sig quorum, you don't even

890
01:16:47,488 --> 01:16:52,268
have to store the seed phrases necessarily for those hardware wallets because you have redundancy

891
01:16:52,268 --> 01:16:57,148
in other ways. So you're not, because that's also been a thing. Let's say you store it perfectly.

892
01:16:57,588 --> 01:17:02,508
It's another thing that these cold card victims didn't do that makes it further not their fault.

893
01:17:02,508 --> 01:17:13,848
A lot of times people get funds stolen out of cold storage because they store the seed phrase somewhere in a last pass and last pass gets hacked or they, you know, store it in their Gmail and their Gmail gets hacked.

894
01:17:13,968 --> 01:17:21,148
I mean, searching for 12 or 24 words on a fixed list of possible words is like one of the very first things cyber criminals do.

895
01:17:21,268 --> 01:17:24,028
Like it is easy for them to locate a seed phrase.

896
01:17:24,428 --> 01:17:30,208
And oftentimes people who self-custody and did everything otherwise correctly accidentally leak their seed phrase.

897
01:17:30,488 --> 01:17:30,928
Right.

898
01:17:30,928 --> 01:17:42,328
And so that's another thing I like about multi-sig is that you don't necessarily have to keep all the seed phrases because you have redundancy from your signing threshold in your quorum.

899
01:17:42,948 --> 01:17:51,348
Right. So you can not only could I lose the cold card seed phrase, I could lose the whole device and throw in the ocean and still recover my funds with redundancy.

900
01:17:51,988 --> 01:17:59,008
So I think I tweeted this. Some people are mad. They're like, no, no, the perfect single seed treasure is still safe.

901
01:17:59,008 --> 01:18:16,371
I not saying it is or isn I just saying that multi I think is the pinnacle of self And there are some great services that can help you do it for pretty cheap you know a couple hundred dollars a year And they also provide redundancy if they go away right

902
01:18:16,471 --> 01:18:18,011
And they won't go out of business or whatever.

903
01:18:18,651 --> 01:18:23,131
So I really recommend that if I had to pick a way to do self-custody going forward.

904
01:18:24,131 --> 01:18:25,951
That's what gives me, I'm good at Bitcoin.

905
01:18:26,211 --> 01:18:29,031
I still am pretty worried about fucking up my own self-custody.

906
01:18:29,211 --> 01:18:30,811
And these things help me sleep at night.

907
01:18:30,811 --> 01:18:37,191
yeah and if you are going to do single sig even single sig with a passphrase like i would just

908
01:18:37,191 --> 01:18:42,271
again do whatever you want but personally i wouldn't be comfortable having more than a third

909
01:18:42,271 --> 01:18:47,971
of my stack on any single single sig like at least you know at least spread that out so that

910
01:18:47,971 --> 01:18:53,811
if there is another unforeseen vulnerability that you can't get totally wiped out by that

911
01:18:53,811 --> 01:18:58,491
at that time right uh and maybe the the last thing we're running out of time here but i did

912
01:18:58,491 --> 01:19:03,671
when I ask you just in these last couple of minutes, though, perhaps out of this horrible

913
01:19:03,671 --> 01:19:09,271
tragedy, one thing that has been, I think, very positive is this red teaming effort.

914
01:19:10,191 --> 01:19:17,631
You know, Callie, Rob from Anchor Watch, Charlie, like, I can't even list all of them,

915
01:19:17,971 --> 01:19:23,611
doing incredible work to basically go down the line. And I know OpenSats threw some grant money

916
01:19:23,611 --> 01:19:29,191
Adam. So it wasn't just Rob maxing out his credit card for tokens. Like this to me has been this

917
01:19:29,191 --> 01:19:33,751
incredible thing. That's the best example that I have in recent memory of like, you can just do

918
01:19:33,751 --> 01:19:38,331
things like you can just go out there and audit every open source Bitcoin project and check for

919
01:19:38,331 --> 01:19:42,451
vulnerabilities. Like, was that as heartening to you as it was to me? Cause that was like a

920
01:19:42,451 --> 01:19:47,631
coming together moment that I thought was just beautiful to see. Yeah. It's one of the good

921
01:19:47,631 --> 01:19:53,071
things to come out of the event and it is good. And it's this, you know, we used to say, don't

922
01:19:53,071 --> 01:19:58,911
trust verify. And the reality is most people weren't verifying and most people couldn't

923
01:19:58,911 --> 01:20:04,671
verify. I mean, I couldn't, I'm not a software developer. I wasn't going to be auditing,

924
01:20:04,811 --> 01:20:10,611
you know, code repositories for vulnerabilities in the hardware wallets I use. It's not possible

925
01:20:10,611 --> 01:20:15,351
for most users, but it also turns out, I think a lot of people just assume somebody else was doing

926
01:20:15,351 --> 01:20:20,831
it. Um, in the case of cold card in particular, I think, you know, there's some history there of

927
01:20:20,831 --> 01:20:27,551
the team, you know, being hostile to other open source developers and creating an environment

928
01:20:27,551 --> 01:20:33,531
that discouraged other qualified open source developers from reviewing their code. And that

929
01:20:33,531 --> 01:20:39,851
I think contributed to why that vulnerability at Coldcard went unfound for so long, five years,

930
01:20:39,971 --> 01:20:45,851
five plus years it existed and wasn't, you know, probably wasn't exploited, but also wasn't

931
01:20:45,851 --> 01:20:54,511
publicly identified. But now you can. Rob, I'm a big fan of Rob and Calais and James O'Byrne and

932
01:20:54,511 --> 01:21:00,251
the others that are working. I think Rob said maybe 25 people have been officially working with them.

933
01:21:01,331 --> 01:21:08,371
Now with the quality of AI, you can. And by the way, you can run a pretty strong version of Quinn

934
01:21:08,371 --> 01:21:15,951
or Kimmy or GLM locally and do a little bit anyway of your own verification on open source code.

935
01:21:17,091 --> 01:21:23,631
But, you know, Rob and the team, I think, identified a real gap here, which was that no one was doing

936
01:21:23,631 --> 01:21:28,931
this at scale. And you've seen a couple. I saw Atomic Labs, which is like a cross-chain Bitcoin

937
01:21:28,931 --> 01:21:36,631
bridge, Bolts, both also basically said like the volume of AI-enabled attackers is like far

938
01:21:36,631 --> 01:21:41,331
exceeding their capability of defending their project. So they like have to close the project

939
01:21:41,331 --> 01:21:46,831
like they don't want people to lose money. They literally are trying to fight back against a

940
01:21:46,831 --> 01:21:55,491
deluge of attacks. And so AI has dramatically altered the threat environment for cybersecurity

941
01:21:55,491 --> 01:22:02,831
generally. I think Rob and the red team have they're sort of in the parabolic blow off top

942
01:22:02,831 --> 01:22:10,191
phase of catching up here, I think you're going to reach a bit of a plateau, not just in the Bitcoin

943
01:22:10,191 --> 01:22:18,111
repos, but in all and everything. Everything is at risk, to be clear. Every piece of software is

944
01:22:18,111 --> 01:22:24,071
at risk. This riverside we're on right now, it's at risk. You know, like there's the amount of

945
01:22:24,071 --> 01:22:30,131
effort you used to have to devote of highly trained developers, pen testers to identify

946
01:22:30,131 --> 01:22:31,891
zero-day vulnerabilities or new bugs.

947
01:22:32,291 --> 01:22:33,931
It was an enormous amount of resources

948
01:22:33,931 --> 01:22:35,571
that type of research required.

949
01:22:35,811 --> 01:22:38,231
So even when hackers found one,

950
01:22:38,391 --> 01:22:40,631
it had taken them a lot of time, typically.

951
01:22:41,271 --> 01:22:44,531
Now, like, it's not that the AI is better

952
01:22:44,531 --> 01:22:46,451
than any pen tester that's ever existed

953
01:22:46,451 --> 01:22:48,951
or hacker that has ever, you know, hacked.

954
01:22:49,091 --> 01:22:51,931
It's that the scale at which you can deploy it

955
01:22:51,931 --> 01:22:53,011
is so much grander.

956
01:22:53,671 --> 01:22:56,351
And so, I mean, vulnerabilities are being found

957
01:22:56,351 --> 01:22:58,191
across every, I can assure you,

958
01:22:58,251 --> 01:22:59,471
it's not just the open source,

959
01:22:59,471 --> 01:23:00,471
It's not just Bitcoin.

960
01:23:00,871 --> 01:23:08,871
Every company on Earth right now is finding like, you know, dozens or hundreds or thousands of previously unknown vulnerabilities and patching them.

961
01:23:09,311 --> 01:23:16,131
And I think this is sort of the opening salvo in the clanker wars that are going to be a big feature of our lives going forward.

962
01:23:16,671 --> 01:23:19,951
You know, every new step function increase in an AI capabilities.

963
01:23:19,993 --> 01:23:26,253
going to also come with step function increases in vulnerability identification. And I think part

964
01:23:26,253 --> 01:23:31,293
of the goal that Rob and his team are doing, they're playing catch up on the open source repos

965
01:23:31,293 --> 01:23:39,373
that service the Bitcoin ecosystem. Once they have caught up and I think they've done a lot

966
01:23:39,373 --> 01:23:45,393
already now, we're in a pretty good spot, I think now. But, you know, then there'll be a cooling off

967
01:23:45,393 --> 01:23:50,313
period where, you know, all the repos that could have had a bug have been scanned by both hackers

968
01:23:50,313 --> 01:23:55,673
and defenders alike to a large extent. But then you'll have a step function increase. And the goal,

969
01:23:55,833 --> 01:24:01,093
I think, from a policy standpoint is how to get the tools into the defenders, at least at the same

970
01:24:01,093 --> 01:24:07,433
time, if not before the attackers. And this is like a very common thing across history, right?

971
01:24:07,513 --> 01:24:14,093
Like the Mongols like took over most of the world because they had this crazy offensive innovation,

972
01:24:14,093 --> 01:24:20,213
which is basically shooting arrows from a horse that was just decimated all the defense all

973
01:24:20,213 --> 01:24:25,413
everywhere they went. Right. And there's probably, you know, tons of other examples. But think forward

974
01:24:25,413 --> 01:24:29,853
to the American Revolution, like turned out that hiding behind trees and popping out and shooting

975
01:24:29,853 --> 01:24:35,433
people, guerrilla warfare, which was an American invention, absolutely decimated the British line

976
01:24:35,433 --> 01:24:42,193
defense. Right. The attackers tend to have better technology because the incentive of war drives the

977
01:24:42,193 --> 01:24:47,753
innovation in the first place to create the new weapons. And, you know, you think about the phrase

978
01:24:47,753 --> 01:24:55,353
on defense, right? By definition, it's a reactive. The question is how, whether it's U.S. policy,

979
01:24:56,093 --> 01:25:02,073
maybe just policy at the Frontier Labs, you know, how can they get the top tier models in the hands

980
01:25:02,073 --> 01:25:08,413
of the good actors faster? Ideally before they're ever in the hands of bad actors, but just generally

981
01:25:08,413 --> 01:25:20,989
faster One of the big things that Rob has pointed out I encountered myself just in tracking this stuff You know I use frontier models and local models to traverse my own Bitcoin data stack

982
01:25:21,069 --> 01:25:25,969
right? You know, I'm not like thumbing through, you know, 300 million UTXOs to find the one you

983
01:25:25,969 --> 01:25:31,049
told me was stolen. Like I use AI for that. Sometimes merely asking, saying, hey, you know,

984
01:25:31,109 --> 01:25:36,069
a new victim reported this address was stolen by the cold card hacker. Literally, Fable will be like,

985
01:25:36,069 --> 01:25:38,369
oh, he said victim, like downgraded to Opus.

986
01:25:38,369 --> 01:25:42,929
Like this is just asking the AI to traverse my own data set, right?

987
01:25:43,009 --> 01:25:45,209
Not even doing penetration testing.

988
01:25:45,489 --> 01:25:46,789
That has to change.

989
01:25:47,169 --> 01:25:51,669
And so, you know, shout out to Rob and the team for doing, you know, this first initial

990
01:25:51,669 --> 01:25:58,789
wave of stuff I guess we thought always should have been being done, but definitely exposed

991
01:25:58,789 --> 01:26:05,109
the lack of resources, human resources in eyeballs on a lot of this code.

992
01:26:05,109 --> 01:26:16,169
And I think now if you're a software developer, open source or not, like you need to be writing a lot of your code with AI and then auditing your code with AI all the time forever.

993
01:26:16,569 --> 01:26:17,909
I mean, this is the new paradigm.

994
01:26:19,869 --> 01:26:23,109
Well, I know I've kept you a little bit long here, so I do apologize for that.

995
01:26:23,149 --> 01:26:25,689
But I appreciate you giving that breakdown here at the end.

996
01:26:26,049 --> 01:26:33,109
Real quick, where do you want to send folks, you know, your own podcast, perhaps your voice acting work, anywhere you want to direct people?

997
01:26:33,109 --> 01:26:51,729
Yeah, well, look, first, if you're a cold card victim, message me on X, DM me on X. That's the best way to reach me. I've triaged everybody on X. That's intangible coins. And yeah, I mean, I have a podcast. I got to have you on, Walker. I have a strong bias for in-person recording in New York.

998
01:26:51,729 --> 01:27:16,545
So whenever you in whenever you in New York at some point you know I know whenever you leave your orchard that you have there come to New York and I love to have you on Galaxy Brains We cover markets and Bitcoin and you know sort of crypto adoption We don talk much about other coins but I interested in regulation tokenization of real things like stocks

999
01:27:17,545 --> 01:27:18,805
Anyway, I think it's a good show.

1000
01:27:18,865 --> 01:27:20,985
I've done like 260 episodes or something.

1001
01:27:21,065 --> 01:27:22,425
It's been like five years of episodes.

1002
01:27:23,425 --> 01:27:27,585
But, yeah, also, I would just say, like, you know, hang in there, guys.

1003
01:27:27,705 --> 01:27:29,005
Bitcoin ain't going nowhere.

1004
01:27:29,005 --> 01:27:36,645
it's got a long history ahead of it this is a hiccup cold card but as you can see like this

1005
01:27:36,645 --> 01:27:42,285
thing can go from the most boring asset on earth to you know the front page of cnbc.com in like

1006
01:27:42,285 --> 01:27:50,045
an hour i saw like 400 million in short liquidations in one hour um the other day and i think now as we

1007
01:27:50,045 --> 01:27:55,805
record like it's now been about 24 hours since this rip and it's like 1.3 billion in short

1008
01:27:55,805 --> 01:28:03,485
liquidations again who is shorting bitcoin 11 months after an all-time high you know near a

1009
01:28:03,485 --> 01:28:09,225
cycle low i don't know what you're doing i think that is hubris like james said so um yeah and just

1010
01:28:09,225 --> 01:28:15,765
you know maybe in a world where there's only one bitcoin podcast you can watch one man and his

1011
01:28:15,765 --> 01:28:20,685
orchard bring to you by the way whatever happened weren't you building something you ever finished

1012
01:28:20,685 --> 01:28:27,165
that thing was like swing set oh yeah yeah yeah well i got sidetracked by the uh i built all of

1013
01:28:27,165 --> 01:28:31,825
the uh the relevant parts to play on there's just some exterior finish work that needs to be done

1014
01:28:31,825 --> 01:28:37,285
but i got sidetracked building the wife of pergola and then building like 50 different other at home

1015
01:28:37,285 --> 01:28:43,145
projects i think you do well i'm assuming you do pretty well on bitcoin content because i know i

1016
01:28:43,145 --> 01:28:48,065
like it so it must do pretty well but there's a huge you got a huge future and like the those

1017
01:28:48,065 --> 01:28:53,665
really nice clipped edited like uh tick tocks of like building stuff like here's how to build

1018
01:28:53,665 --> 01:29:11,341
here how to build a pergola in like 12 hours and it like the really nice chopped up like cut cut like drop log drop lot you know like because that what i need i need a zoomer i need a zoomer intern is what i need if you a zoomer who is just innately good at that stuff and yeah the edits are hard i will pay you in

1019
01:29:11,341 --> 01:29:18,681
bitcoin uh or in fiat or whatever you want uh whatever you want no no meme coins i appreciate

1020
01:29:18,681 --> 01:29:24,061
you brother thank you for coming on here uh stoked for people to uh to dig into this a little bit and

1021
01:29:24,061 --> 01:29:28,021
thanks for the ongoing work that you do. I know there's, I've seen a lot of appreciation out there

1022
01:29:28,021 --> 01:29:31,961
for it. Uh, you didn't have to do it, but you're out there doing it. You know, you can just do

1023
01:29:31,961 --> 01:29:36,161
things and what you're doing is genuinely, I think helping a lot of people. So thanks, man.

1024
01:29:36,721 --> 01:29:38,341
Thank you, Walker. Thanks for having me, buddy.

1025
01:29:39,961 --> 01:29:42,661
And thank you to everybody at Noster. I almost forgot to thank you guys. Yeah.

1026
01:29:42,781 --> 01:29:46,861
You didn't think I'd forget you. Appreciate the Zaps guys. Much love. We'll see you next time.

1027
01:29:46,861 --> 01:29:58,221
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.

1028
01:29:58,881 --> 01:30:02,841
Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening,

1029
01:30:03,101 --> 01:30:07,141
and share it with your friends, family, and strangers on the internet.

1030
01:30:07,141 --> 01:30:13,841
Find me on Noster at primal.net slash walker and this podcast at primal.net slash titcoin.

1031
01:30:13,841 --> 01:30:22,241
On X, YouTube, and Rumble, just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Titcoin Podcast.

1032
01:30:22,981 --> 01:30:25,221
Head to the show notes to grab sponsor links.

1033
01:30:25,401 --> 01:30:30,041
Head to substack.com slash at Walker America to get episodes emailed to you.

1034
01:30:30,501 --> 01:30:33,821
And head to Bitcoin Podcast dot net for everything else.

1035
01:30:34,381 --> 01:30:37,941
Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant.

1036
01:30:37,941 --> 01:30:43,561
So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast.

1037
01:30:43,841 --> 01:30:46,601
Until next time, stay free.