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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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