Man from Glad

 Eternal sunshine of Val Verde beckons - Gladstone

Initial reflections on the Coldcard catastrophe, the bitcoin-only approach, and financial freedom:

1) Many people, me included, trusted and recommended Coldcard more than we should have. Especially after it became only source-viewable, and especially given the attitude of the Coldcard creator towards other similar projects. These were obviously red flags in retrospect. This was a huge lapse on my part and I pledge to learn from it

2) Coldcard operated for many years with shocking, betraying negligence that was hidden from the public by a) security theater driven by marketing (i.e. cypherpunks should use this sophisticated tool) and b) an “in circle” reputation and that people like me perpetuated. Another mistake that will stick with me, and guide my future actions

3) We will not be lectured by scammers and ETF promoters and former FTX cheerleaders. There are other Bitcoin-only products like Bitkey, Bitbox, Passport, and Seedsigner. Just because one Bitcoin hardware wallet company failed, doesn't mean the Bitcoin-only approach is bad. Far from it. It just means we need to learn and improve. It DOES NOT MEAN we need to "diversify" into random shitcoins, endorse or tolerate premines, give all our Bitcoin to corporations, or other such nonsense

4) FOSS should be the gold standard in general. And multi-vendor multi-sig or collaborative custody should be a goal for large amounts

5) Exchange hacks have been ~1,000x worse than even this disaster. The answer to challenges in self-custody is *not* to trust someone else with your money. It’s to learn and improve or upgrade your self-custody

6) Fiat currency must be defeated. Entire nations have lost 50% of their money overnight, 75% or even 99% in a matter of months or years. Accounts are regularly frozen and stolen every day. The global monetary system is immensely unjust and predatory and must be resisted. The mission must go on

7) AI makes bugs more exploitable, but it also can be used to secure codebases to an extraordinary degree. This is already happening (see Spiral's Loupe) and really shows the power of open weights. The lesson here is not that frontier AI should be gatekept by the elite, but that it should be open to all, so that we all have more eyes on everything

8) Financial freedom is not easy. And maybe never will be. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Self-custody is the pinnacle. Maybe not everyone reaches it, but we should strive to make it an option for anyone

9) I am sorry that HRF handed out Coldcards at two of our events over the past decade, and sorry that I mentioned Coldcards occasionally over the years as a good option. I am NOT sorry that HRF has a laser focus on self-custody and privacy. This approach is *the only option* for people under authoritarian societies. Maybe you want to choose to rely on the good graces of an American financial institution, but this option doesn't exist for billions of people worldwide

10) I am also proud that HRF over the past decade has handed out *many more units* of other devices such as Bitkeys and Seedsigners and Passports, and that we work to teach topics like privacy and multi-sig in our work. I am also proud that we have given out 100+ grants, invested more than $5M, and paid out more than a dozen bounties towards multi-sig, better self-custody, and privacy

11) I can’t say enough about how awesome Casa is and collaborative custody in general. I have heard good things about AnchorWatch and Unchained as well. I highly recommended the collaborative approach for non-profits. Liana is fully open source and superb for managing multi-sig. Casa and Liana have helped HRF sleep easy through the FTX crash, Silicon Valley banking system collapse, Coldcard catastrophe, and other crises

12) It is incredibly inspiring to see the Bitcoin community rally around helping people at a time of need. Many people have barely slept over the past four days as they have helped race to secure funds. It is truly awesome to see this

13) We are in a new age of "back to the basics" in thinking hard about self-custody. Bitcoin doesn't work as freedom money unless people can control it themselves. There is much work to do, but perhaps in 10 years we will look back at this crisis and see that the industry instead of giving up, evolved significantly as a result. Now is the time to make that dream a reality. Thankfully I am seeing a variety of Bitcoin companies and entrepreneurs ranging from Block to Bull iterate rapidly in that direction

🙏

DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE WITH CRYPTOANARCHY, APSTER, EL SLAVADOR, QUANTUM AGI AND CSAM