BTC Sessions - Bitcoin Boomers: Joe Kelly on Scams, Security & Self-Custody in 2026

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Boomers holding Bitcoin are being targeted by scammers — and most don't know it until it's too late.In Episode 6 of Bitcoin Boomers, hosts Bob Burnett, Larry Leopard, and Gary Leland sit down with Joe Kelly, CEO of Unchained Capital, to break down why older Bitcoin holders are disproportionately targeted by scams, what those scams actually look like, and exactly how to defend yourself. Joe explains what Unchained Capital does, why collaborative custodyis a game-changer for security, and what practical steps any boomer (or anyone) can take right now to stop being an easytarget. Additionally special guest author Terence Michael jumps hops on with some incredible stories of bitcoin theft. If you or someone you love holds Bitcoin and doesn't have a rock-solid security plan, this episode is essential viewing.Chapters:00:00:00 - Scams, Security & Bitcoin for Boomers00:00:37 - Welcome to Bitcoin Boomers Episode 6 with Joe Kelly00:02:00 - What is Unchained Capital? Multi-Sig & Self-Custody00:04:53 - Bitcoin Ownership: Legal Title vs Cryptographic Control00:08:21 - Bearer Assets – Gold Lessons & Confiscation Risks00:11:16 - Government Seizure Fears & Multi-Sig Recovery00:13:01 - Sovereign Recovery with Unchained Vaults00:19:14 - Gary’s Spoofed “Unchained” Scam Call Story00:24:42 - Fake Bloomberg Interview Scams00:30:20 - Terrence Michael Joins the Show00:31:15 - Wrench Attack: Sister’s Safe Stolen00:33:05 - Pig Butchering Romance Scam Example00:43:18 - Physical Security, Duress & Multi-Sig Strategies00:47:46 - Time Locks, Decoy Wallets & Adding Friction00:57:36 - Practical Tips to Avoid Scams & Social Engineering01:03:04 - Estate Planning, Trusts & Inheritance with Bitcoin01:09:08 - Bitcoin Milestone: 20 Million Coins Mined01:19:00 - Closing Thoughts & How to Connect with Guests Links & Resources: → Unchained Capital: https://unchained.com → Email Joe Kelly: [e-mail] → Terrance Michael on X: @proofofmoney → Free Bitcoin Tutorials (BTC Sessions): https://btcsessions.ca/learn → Bitcoin Mentor (1-on-1 Expert Guidance): https://bitcoinmentor.io SUBSCRIBE for weekly Bitcoin education: https://www.youtube.com/@BTCSessions Supported By:Blockstream Jade: Easy, open-source Bitcoin-only cold storage. Get 10% off with code BOOMERS at blockstream.com.Unchained Signature: Premium custody for serious holders. 10% off first year with code BOOMERS10 at unchained.com/btcboomersAbundant Mines: Fully managed Bitcoin mining. Learn more at abundantmines.comBITCOIN WELL is the best place to buy Bitcoin in Canada and the USA.Visit BITCOINWELL.COM/BTCSESSIONSBook Private Sessions: Master Bitcoin with experts at btcmentor.io. Hosts:Lawrence Lepard (@LawrenceLepard): Author of "The Big Print" Bob Burnett (@boomer_btc): Founder/CEO of Barefoot MiningGary Leland (@GaryLeland): Founder of Bit Block Boom Bitcoin Conference.Follow on X: https://x.com/BTCSessions #Bitcoin #BitcoinSecurity #BitcoinScams #BTCSessions #BitcoinBoomers #Unchained #SelfCustody #BitcoinEducation #HardwareWallet #BitcoinWallet #BTC #BitcoinSafety

Today, I think we're going to focus on, you know, scams and security. Yesterday I got from an old college professor, an email from her actual email address, but it's clearly a phishing her email account to be compromised. So you also can't even quite trust the known contacts to send you something that's always trustworthy. It's a social engineering problem. It's less technical or technological. As soon as there's a public data set out there, as soon as there's some way that you're associated as a cryptocurrency user, there's a little bit of extra motivation and, you know, maybe a prize that.

these scammers perceive at the end of the road of trying to scan somebody. Welcome to episode six of the Bitcoin Boomers. I'm Bob Burnett. I have with me, co-hosts Larry Lepard and Gary Leland. And today's special guest is Joe Kelly from Unchained Capital. Good morning, Joe. Good morning. Great to be here. We're happy to have you. Today, I think we're going to focus on, you know, scams and security and, kind of all those things that, you know, they make a lot of news. And I think especially in our generation, I think it scares a lot of people, you know, the, I think the boomers hear this stuff and it immediately like puts them into kind of like

a deer in the headlights fright sort of mode. And maybe there's some justification for that and, you know, maybe not. And I think, you know, Bitcoin, when you come on Bitcoin and the boomers, I think it gets even scarier. I mean, Sam certainly are not exclusive to Bitcoin, but I think when someone-stakes are quite high. Yeah, yeah. But I think when somebody finds out there's a boomer with Bitcoin,

well, you know, I think maybe the bull's eyes a little bigger. Maybe, I'm not sure. I don't know if it's any way to create a statistic on that. But, you know, maybe, Joe, because to get started, maybe we should even start with just a little bit of what ain't unchained is and what you do and any opening comments you might have on this topic. Yeah, happy to go into details. Unchained. This year we'll celebrate our 10th year anniversary. We've been added for quite a while now, longer than half of Bitcoin's life, which is crazy to think

about. So maybe we were becoming a boomer company. But we, uh, we've always had the, the idea and the, the vision of serving long term, long term Bitcoin holders with financial services, uh, acknowledging that while Bitcoin is a new form of money, um, it's unlikely to be best served by the, the way traditional financial services does it through centralized custody and, you know, a system with, uh, increased counterparty risk relative to what you can get when you self-custody or Bitcoin. So we've always tried to deliver our financial services in a format where clients can hold their own keys.

That happens in our vault product, where clients can custody Bitcoin in a format where they hold two of three keys. That gives them unilateral control because it's a two of three multisig, so they can move their Bitcoin without us being involved or preventing that. And likewise, if they lose a key, we can help them recover through our key. We also have loans. We lend dollars against Bitcoin as collateral if IRA accounts and a trading desk. Clients can buy and sell Bitcoin through.

And then late last year, we launched a trust company that can provide institutional trustee services for folks personal or private trusts. And so that also engages in some more greater forms of wealth management or financial planning for folks depending on what they need. And back to a lot of the subject matter for this talk, I think kind of led with this intersection of Bitcoin. and boomers, but it's certainly not a problem restricted to boomers. Anyone of any generation is susceptible to the main form of fraud and these kinds of scams that target people's Bitcoin, because most of all, it's a social engineering problem. It's less technical or technological, I think, is kind of not so much the main thrust of it. It's really people getting at you with urgency or getting at you in ways that trigger you into

making mistakes. and it's something that you're set to plot at any age really practically. It would be one opening point. You know, you said a few things that I think maybe would be worth expanding, especially early in the show before we get a little deeper into some of it. And I think one of the things that maybe confuses boomers about Bitcoin is the, you know, what does it mean to own? Bitcoin, or does it mean to custody Bitcoin? Why is it different? Because I, you know,

I think it's so common for, and not just boomers, this is a everybody thing, but they think of, you know, let's say they own Tesla stock and they use that phrase to own the stock. And, you know, to own something or to have rights to something or custody to something, there's some subtleties in there that, I don't know, maybe you want to expand on. Yeah, I think it has been part of the joy or the discovery process of working on a rounded new asset in terms of how to reconcile it with the existing legal frameworks and system that's stood up around stocks and securities and the forms of property we have in traditional finance. So I think that when the clearest ways to think about it is to separate what is legal ownership, what is the type of ownership that means something to an attorney, to the U.S. government, to a judge when it comes to probate or a process around someone's estate, that's one form of ownership when it means to own something.

And separately, there's a form of ownership that looks like control or like you are the actual person that can move the physical asset into the control of another party. And so those are, in some ways, those can kind of collapse, you know, and be the same thing in Bitcoin. Or that's how I think a lot of people start in their Bitcoin journey thinking that, oh, if I take self-custody, surely I, you know, I do own it. I control it now. But that is only part of the puzzle because if you die and pass on, and that Bitcoin wasn't registered as part of your state, or you know, you're filing your taxes and you don't have a clear statement or something you can hand to your accountant about maybe assets you have,

then you're kind of missing a little bit more of that legal piece. And that's something we found are in chain that we provide that helps bridge those concepts because you can get a simple statement from your Unchained Vault account, a PDF that an accountant or an attorney is going to understand It's got a financial services company letterhead kind of thing on it in a clear end of month balance type of a thing. It feels so very rudimentary, but it's a very practical thing we need in our financial lives that just sending your account into Bitcoin address doesn't quite suit. So it's important to have kind of both of those processes or both of those factors at play when considering what it means to own something that often our legal system and a regulatory system depends on. on some party attesting to a certain thing.

And Unchained kind of gets to attest with in a very real cryptographically proven way that this account or this name or under this trust owns or holds this Bitcoin. And then we can help provide evidence for that while that party can still maintain control that we don't have. No. As, as we explore this, I think, you know, Larry, you and the gold world, you know, coming with roots in the gold world, you know, the whole. you know, what's a bear asset, a lot of the sound money folks, you know, are rooted in that.

And then there's there's there's kind of the the responsibility that goes with it too that I think probably creates some. It's kind of weird, but having the bearer asset or, you know, physically possessing something almost is scarier to a lot of people than having somebody else do that. And I don't, maybe you could expand on that. Well, yeah, I mean, certainly there's always been the issue with gold of where do you store it? You know, do you dare store it in your house? And, you know, somebody shows up with a gun and they're going to take it from you. So, you know, there are custodians and their safe deposit boxes and there are lots of people you can pay to store your gold. You know, of course, the issue there is then you don't have direct control of it anymore.

in the 30s, when they grabbed the gold, they did go to the safe deposit boxes. So that's not necessarily a way to protect yourself from confiscation. You're talking about 60102, they went to the safety deposit boxes? Actually, really, I didn't know that. We went to the banks and told the banks to open up the safe deposit boxes, see if there's any gold in there and they had to turn it in. Really? I didn't know that. That's an interesting tidbit. Data point, yeah. So, you know, in the fine was $10,000 in prison and stuff.

I still think a lot of people took the gold out. Larry, I think that was like per ounce, wasn't it? Well, I don't know what the fine was. I remember which would be like $100,000 today. So it would really scare people. Oh, yeah. Well, I think there were some people who, you know, just hit it under their mattress anyway. I mean, it's, I mean, the one beautiful thing about a bearer asset is, you know,

if you're smart about it, nobody needs to know that you have it. But, you know, an intangible bearer asset. set like Bitcoin is obviously a kind of a different kettle of fish. I mean, 12 words and you control it and, you know, you don't need a safe per se, although you certainly have to make sure you got the 12 words and I can't lose them. So it's a, you know, it's a more modern problem, but the, you know, I mean, self-sovereignty has always required, you know, personal responsibility. And, you know, there's some segment of the population that doesn't want to take personal responsibility.

Or they'd rather pay an expert to do it. And that's fun. I mean, they leave their money in a bank because, you know, they know that the bank is theoretically honest, not all honest, but theoretically they are and they can, you know,

sue the bank if the bank takes their money. You know, and so, I mean, and that's why there will always be a need for, for, you know, an unchained and the services that Joe provides are very, very useful services

because some people just don't want to mess with all the, you know, being self-savor, you know, and it's only in extremists that being fully self-savre and really counts, right? If, you know, the world kind of goes to hell in a handbasket and, you know, the government says, well, we're going to confiscate all the Bitcoin. Well, they're going to call up Joe's company and say, hey, you know, who are your clients and Joe's company is going to be forced, I think, to just close that.

I don't know, Joe, maybe you can comment on that. We are regulated. So we, you know, have a responsibility to respond to the lawful requests. And the, part of what you said, a lot of it depends on the kind of goals. And part of your point about, you know, with this a bare asset, you can keep it yourself or outside the system. A lot of our clients are faced with wanting to own their Bitcoin in a trust or own an IRA or own in these other legal vehicles that then really do need to be, you know, kind of

registered or known somewhere to the institution. There's nothing wrong with that. I think, you know, for most people, that's the way you should go. You know, for those extreme nut cases like me, you know, who prepared for the world to go to, you know, really dark place, I like being self-sovereign. Hey, can I ask you a question, Joe, on this subject that Ari's talking about here? Someone asked me a couple weeks ago, and I really didn't know the exact answer to this. They were more on Larry's way of thinking that, you know, everything was going to go to hell, and we were going to have 1931 again or whatever, and that they would come for Bitcoin.

And the question was, if you have your Bitcoin with a company that's doing multi-sig like yourself, and they come down to unchained and take all your computers and pull your server offline or whatever, do we still have access to get our Bitcoin out? Okay, I didn't really, I assume so,

but I thought I would double check and make sure for anyone who is wondering about that. The important piece is when you are creating your vault, when you're instantiating a vault inside your account with Unchained, there's an important piece of data there called your wallet configuration file. As long as you have that wallet configuration file, which we encourage and help our clients back up when we're helping them onboard, as long as you have that in your two keys,

you do maintain your control. You have all the pieces you would need to recover on your own. Okay. Excellent news. Excellent news. I figured there was. I just didn't know the answer. And I remember downloading all that a long time ago.

So it's been a long time since I opened my account there. So my memory is not that good. It needed to be re-remont. We thought about it. And when we do our conciergeal onboarding or our professional onboarding services for clients, we'll often walk through that sovereign recovery exercise. And we happen to maintain an open source wallet called Caravan that you can load in a browser. and you could even download and have the code ready yourself if you wanted to.

But the same wallet configuration file and these same keys you use it, they're on Shade Vault. Those can be uploaded into any open source, multi-sig wallet, Sparrow, Specter, if it's still around, Leana wallet, many of these others that are Munchuck that have some of this functionality. You can load in that file and talk to your, and sign with your wallace. Abundant Mines is an Oregon-based husband and wife owned Bitcoin mining company, making Bitcoin mining accessible to investors of all ages and experience levels. They're fully managed. White Glove service allows you to own all of your own equipment

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I remember staring at my screen and wondering, are my keys safe? Did I do this right? That experience is why I started BTC sessions. For over a decade, this channel has helped millions of people like you learn how to use and secure Bitcoin. I realized something. For many people, videos aren't enough. Everyone learns differently. Some need to ask questions in real time as an expert walks through their setup, their goals, and their threat model. And certain things like advanced cold storage,

inheritance planning, privacy, and node or mining setups often can't be fully solved by watching another tutorial. So I built BTC mentor. I recruited the best Bitcoin educators on the planet to work with you one-on-one. Real experts, real answers, personalized hands-on guidance, tailored to your exact situation. Whether you're brand new or building a complex setup, we meet you where you're at and walk with you step by step. By the end, you don't just hope your Bitcoin is safe. You know it is. If you're ready for that level confidence, then head to btcmentor.io and book a call with us today. Well, I downloaded Caravan quite a few years ago. Would that be something that's been updated since then?

And I need to re-download a newer version? It ought to still work in that form you have. I would encourage you to, yeah, grab the latest version, especially if it's been a few years because it has been maintained both by us and outside contributors. I find it interesting. You know, a lot of the topic today, you know, was around security and scams and that sort of thing. and we found ourselves, the first thing we end up talking about is the government seizing our Bitcoin.

The biggest scam of all. I just kidding. I find that kind of funny that we naturally went to that point so quickly. I'll only wrap up with just a piece there on just that, you know, I am proud. I do think that because we're in this frontier space at Unchained, where we are exposed to a lot of these new newer kinds of scams and newer ways of people trying to get at Bitcoin in a way that wasn't possible.

Again, the asset didn't exist 20 years ago, but also just for people getting more clever about this, that our fraud and risk team is really at the front lines of how to figure out. It's kind of like battlefield medics or other people in the Ukrainian war. It's like you're figuring out the modern ways to respond and deal with actors that are hungry for people's Bitcoin and getting more and more clever with how to get at it. and also supporting law enforcement. Because back to your point about or a point made earlier about, you know, how is the, you know, who's working on this at the FBI

or at these law enforcement agencies? And there are, and there are divisions that are stood up and that are, you know, specializing more and more in this area. But they do depend on in some way, you know, commercial enterprises to help them or to be a resource. And so that's definitely a function that on-chained, when there are real, real criminal investigation, we can sometimes support.

You know, talking about to try to get us on our original subject here, I'll dive into this. This is kind of crazy to me, but I was talking to Mel the other day about this show and about you coming on the show. And while we're talking, first of all, my phone is set up to only ring if it's someone in my phone book. Because I get so many calls from scammers that if you're in my phone book, my phone will ring and display your name. So Mel and I are talking, and the phone rings, and it says Unchained. So it's the number I have for customer service at Unchained. So I said, Mel, I got to go. It's Unchained.

Let me see what they need and see if I can help them. So I hung up with Mel, went to it, and the person on the phone said, Hi, this is Joe Blow from Unchained. We have a security issue on your account. Someone has logged in and requested a phone number change from this number to a new number, and we're calling to see if you have requested that. And I just thought it was funny that you guys would call. And so I said, really?

I said, can you tell me who is the, who runs, who's the boss over there at Unchained? And he thought for a second, I guess he probably was looking at his computer screen in hindsight. And he said, Joseph Kelly. I said, yeah, anyone can, to myself, I said, yeah, anyone can figure that out if they're good enough to do this scam and spoof this number. I said, well, who was the first female employee you guys had? like employee number three. And he thought for a second. And he goes, I'm not here to answer survey questions.

I'm here to help you with your security. Do you need help? You want help or not? So I just hung up. And then I said, well, you know, I'd be a total idiot if that was unchained. And the guy was brand new and didn't know that. And here they called me and I just blew them off. So I called unchained and said, have you seen a request for me?

me to change my phone number. And he goes, no, no, you got Ubiki. I mean, you know, set up. You got everything. There's no way he was getting this account to request anything. And so then I'm kind of pissed at myself. I should have stayed on the phone and see what he wanted me to do, you know, because I'm sure he was going to have me do something to give him access.

He just didn't call because he was sitting there bored. So I'm kind of pissed. But I thought that was really interesting that they, well, they, and I have mentioned before I'm on Unchained, you know, so they knew I was on Unchained. and then they spoofed your number. So, I mean, if I'd have been like a typical boomer, I probably would have gone, oh my gosh, this is unchanged.

Look, this unchained phone number here. And I probably would have started helping them. So that's a really big thing people need to be aware of, I guess, is what I'm bringing up. Luckily, I tell it extra secure after talking to my customer service person. And if you don't have your ubiquit set up, get it set up. Yeah. Yes.

How often do you get those calls? every day, Joe, or every week or every month. I'm not sure that I'm curious what the frequency that you guys see of. They've happened in a way that I'd say is consistent with just industry-wide trends. That really over the last 12, 18 months, last year, year and a half, it's increased. I can't speak for the amount of clients that get those calls. We don't always get them reported, but reports of those kinds of calls have increased. And it's through either, and often, I mean, the most dangerous situations clients find themselves in is when they're already something else is compromised, like their Gmail.

And so somebody else is, you know, an unauthorized person or one of these fraudsters is inside of their email account that they might use with Unchained. That's how they discover that they're an Unchained client. And then they utilize that vector. And that the kind of trust people have or the association they have with Unchained as an organization to then. disclose too much or be persuaded to take actions that then compromise their Bitcoin and compromise their security setup. So it's definitely, and I get these calls too from Google or Apple or anything, you know, look at your phone and it looks like it's the Google 800 number or something like that.

And it's a, it's not a phenomenon limited to just Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. There are a lot more increasing reports of people's iCloud, you know, architecture is being compromise and things like that. So it happens. But then as soon as there's a public data set out there, as soon as there's some way that you're associated as a cryptocurrency user, there's a little bit of extra motivation and, and maybe a prize that these scammers perceive at the end of the road of

trying to scan somebody. I think you pretty much probably go on the list that the scammers buy have known crypto people. So we're all screwed guys. They know it. Well, I think folks like us, not that we're famous or anything, but we are public facing and we're associated with Bitcoin. And, you know, I had a, I had a very sophisticated attempt, maybe six months ago where people posing as Bloomberg interviews or viewers, they had, you know, requested an interview with me. Just I get, you know, I'm probably on a podcast a week, something like that.

So it's a very common thing for me. And they were, so we set up the interview. We set it up for like several weeks in advance to fit my schedule. They were very professional about it. We went on the interview. They had a setup just like we're using today, extremely professional about it. And then they started asking for control, like, oh, hey, we're having audio. issues, we're having this, we're having that.

Can we can we install this software, run this scripts? You know, and luckily, you know, I was in a position to get it. But I have to say it caught me off guard because they were so good. Like this happened like 25 minutes into an interview. And they had asked me great questions about Bitcoin, about mining. They were, they were very professional. And by the way, you know, they started asking things like, how do you custody and how do you do this? And actually, I, the interview never saw the light a day, as you can guess.

But like, one of the things I said was, hey, I actually use unchained and we use multi-sig and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I, I think that was, well, I think that was another layer of protection for me. Like had I even done that, you know, gone too far, I think I would have been okay because, you know, they were only getting access to one of three, not two of three. And I had the same, I had the same almost thing happen, except it wasn't Bloomberg. And while we were doing questions, you know, before to set it up, their third question was, how much Bitcoin do you have? I was like, whoa, whoa. He goes, well, I think that's a natural question to know how much Bitcoin a guy who's been doing a Bitcoin conference has. And I said, yeah, let's forget this interview.

Good for you. Bob, the same group got through to me and they actually did. They got on, they hacked me and they got onto my computer. And it was really kind of a disaster. They took over my Twitter account for a while, as you recall. I remember that. Yeah, successful. And I had checked.

them out. I mean, they showed, they showed me their names and photos, and I went to Bloomberg, and they were real people. But as you'll recall, on that scam, they were claiming they had video difficulties, and so they weren't actually letting us see them. You remember that? Did have some video. There were four people, but two of them did have video. And do they look like the people they said they were or not? No. Good enough, I guess, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But But they were all Americans, by the way, on accident in English, very articulate, highly educated people who should be putting those, that intelligence and skills to practical use. It's amazing how many people choose this path. And how disappointing, too.

What a sad life to. Yeah, right, to be just scatming people. Yeah, there was an article recently in the journal on that. somewhere I read how much these people in India are making. I mean, it's crazy. I mean, there's a whole cottage industry of ripping off boomers in America. You know, giving you an example of a boomer situation here, we're going on a pilgrimage in Italy after our own over Europe during right after Bitblock boom.

And the deacon that's leading it sends an email out to 80 people who are going. And carving copies everybody. So I get my email and there's, oh, what in the heck is this? And I tell Kathy, and she goes, it's okay, Kathy. You're so, Gary, you're so paranoid about anything like this. You're just overboard on the security stuff. It's crazy, Gary. These are all honest, church-going people.

This is her. And my thing is like, this is 80 boomers who are going to coach on anything they see. This is the opposite of safe. While they may be nice people, they're not computer illiterate. So I have to email. the deacon and send them a big explanation of the two differences between carbon copy and blind carbon copy. And he emails me and goes, wow, thanks for that.

I'll BCC from now on. But it was just crazy that my wife's going, oh, it's fine, Gary. These are honest people. They go to our church. You know, I'm going, yeah, I'm not worried about them. I'm worried about whoever they get hacked by. Right. So several years ago, I was at a music house at a Peter Gabriel concert.

And in the middle of the conference. concert, we got a surprise, and that was that Sting came out to do a couple songs with Peter Gabriel. And so it was a really cool thing. Today, we have the Bitcoin equivalent of that. So in our show with Joe Kelly, we have the pleasure of welcoming Terrence Michael to the show today. So Terrence, welcome to the show. And for those who don't know you, author of the book, Proof of Money, very prominent voice in the Bitcoin community, a big background in Hollywood and TV. And so we're happy to have you here today, Terrence.

Well, thanks, guys. It's an honor to be with you guys. I always listen to you. And thanks, yeah, thanks for having me. It looks like you guys are doing a show on scams from the scammers or pitfalls, things to look out for online. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Lots on, you know, I think, you know, how how Bitcoin is securing Bitcoin is different from other things. Obviously, you know, boomers, I think often are targets of scams, not just in Bitcoin, but in other things as well. And we've told a couple stories about scams already. And so join on in. Let us hear what you have to say on this. Sure. Well, seeing that Joe Kelly's here, I can mention a couple things that sort of dovetail into his platform. One, you know, my – and this wasn't even a Bitcoin thing, but it ended up being a scary Bitcoin thing.

My sister who lives in a very nice community, very nice house, they were targeted by this Chilean gang that went around and was breaking into houses. And the short story is that they physically took the whole safe, ripped it out of the floor and took the safe. and my sister called me and she's like, remember when you helped me set up a Bitcoin device key? You know, she was using the wrong term. I'm like, yeah. She's like, I had that in there and I also had 12 words in there. I had the password, you know, the passphrase. And so, of course, she freaked out what I'm going to do.

And, you know, she had quite a bit of Bitcoin in there, her and her husband. And I didn't panic right away because I knew she wouldn't remember this. but, you know, we had set up a multi-signature set up with her. She had one key with Unchained and she had two of her keys separated. That was just one of her keys in there. But we did put a Honeypot on there and I was monitoring. You know, there was like 500 at the time and I think it quickly became a couple thousand. And no one ever moved it.

So, you know, the gang probably didn't even know that that was Bitcoin or otherwise they could have punched it right into Blue Wallet or trust or whatever and immediately moved it. But, of course, you know, we just logged onto Unchained. I helped her with her key and with Unchains Key and we just moved her into new multi-sig vault. So that was just like one thing that, one reason why over the Bitcoin Advisor, we're always trying to tell people to try to find a collaborative security model with Bitcoin. So you don't have those single points of failure. And it doesn't matter. I mean, it could be Unchained.

It could be, you know, Swan, Kasa, Nunchuk. They, you know, they all effectively do the same thing. They just, you know, have slightly different, you know, customers and whatnot. So that was, that was one of the first scams that hit close to 100. home. The second one was we had a client of ours who finally got to their first Bitcoin. And so for them, this was a lot of money. He was divorced, has a daughter. He came to us because he was stuck on Coinbase. He didn't even know how to get it off, as a lot of people don't even know how to move their Bitcoin. So at the Bitcoin Advisor, we kind of act as key agents where we just hold a

backup key. We'll help set them up wherever they want to. We're a company agnostic. This guy wanted to be with Unchained. So we set him up with Unchained. They've got a key for him. He's got his own key. We helped set him up on a Trezor. We're holding a backup key. And it was only like three or four weeks in. And he says, hey, I met someone online. And, you know, we're falling in love. She's great. I already bought tickets for her. She's flying to California at Christmas time. This was this past Christmas. And I'm going to meet her and everything. Anyways, red flags went off for me. And he did. have to tell me he's sovereign. He can do whatever he wants with his Bitcoin. He can obviously log on to Unchained with his key, those two keys, boom, send and spend. But the reason it came to

us is because he had requested our key. And that's just very odd. That tells us that you lost your key or something happened. Why would you be requesting your backup key? Just log and Unchained. And simultaneously, because we were taking too long, because we always say, hey, are you sure you didn't lose your key, he went to Unchained and was requesting the key. So Unchained contacted us too and said, wait a minute, he's requesting two of his three keys. Is your client okay? Anyways, long story short, lots of text messages back and forth. We got Peter Dunworth on the phone with him and myself and just, you know, do you know what you're doing and said, I know what I'm doing?

Trust me. This woman already made me $10,000 in USDA. I gave her $5,000. They made me $10,000. We're like, how do you know? She sent me a screenshot. I can see on the exchange. It's like, you know, an exchange you've never heard of.

And he's like, so I'm sending my whole Bitcoin. And we said, we just set you up here. You do not touch this. Don't, you know, this is not for you to mess around. He says, no, no, no, I'm going to turn this into two Bitcoin. Anyways, Unchained did everything they could to try to protect him. They saw what was going on. We did everything we could.

And at the end of the day, and I posted about this because I wanted to prove to the community that does not like, some people don't like multisignature. They're like, oh, you're not sovereign. It's like, no, you're sovereign. It's your keys. we're just custodians, which is why I like to call it collaborative security rather than collaborative custodian. Like we're really just holding the key. Anyway, so we let him sign with our key and he sent it off and gone. So he texted us later. He said, I'm devastated. You guys did everything you could. I'm an

idiot. I wish I could turn back time. I don't know what to do. And I feel bad. He's, you know, he's, I think he's Gen X, but, you know, he's still, he's in his 50s and he doesn't, you know, he was was hoping to get closer to retirement. I'm curious, where was your sister located? That rents attack sounds a little scary, Chilean gang. Where was she? She's in Laguna Beach in a very nice area. And it's similar to where I am near, you know, Fred Kruger here in Brentwood and whatnot.

It's like the gangs go to the nice areas. And so, you know, you got to just, you got to just be careful. And it's why I like separating my keys. It's why I use, you know, speaking of keys, you guys maybe already talked about the Ubi key. Larry, you may already use this. Like you, I'm with I Fani, you know, to get rid of the sim swapping. There's just lots of things that we have to be careful of, you know, online. I get those coin base calls all the time. I'm sure you guys do. And I get, the emails are endless. River now, too. I'm getting a lot of fake river calls. River emails. And, you know, I always just do that quick thing you guys might have talked about where I hover my mouse over the link. I don't click it. And, you know, you know, the little preview, it's like, oh, this is not river.com.

This is not unchained.com. Oh, interesting. Hey, Larry, it's kind of hard to hear you, Mel, telling me if you can move closer. And, Terrence, I have a question for you about your services. Just because I know of you and I know Peter and everything. Yeah, you know, super gym. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too well.

But your system is set so that when you're using Unchained, Unchained has a key and you have a key and the customer has. the key. Is that how it works? Is that why he called you and Unchained? Yeah, correct. And since they only need two, yeah, for everyday spending, they just plug in and so Unchained or Swan or whatever, because Unchained has their enterprise key, of course, and then the client has their one key. And so for the most part, no one ever calls us. Like if they call us, there's a problem. You know, like we've had a few clients who died. So we help their family, their trust and inheritance, you know, with their key sign and move the funds or set up a new vault.

But for the most part, it's really mostly high net worth individuals that are with us or companies or in this case, this guy Thomas, who just doesn't know how to use keys and he knows he would lose his big one. Unfortunately, he lost it anyway. But that's really who it's for a lot. You know, by the way, we teach people how to do this completely on their own. It's completely open source. Our website shows every. And I, you know, Peter jokes with me all the time because he's like, you know, we don't get any business because of you. And he's like, but I'm happy with that.

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Because Bitcoin isn't just for life, it's for generations. Yeah, I just didn't know that the keys were divided among three people. Yeah, jurisdictionally. You have two and someone else has one, which makes sense that they're not going to lose both their keys, you know. Yeah, and it's not for everybody, but yeah. We even, well, we implement at Barefoot, we implement this internally, but, you know, we have two key, the two keys we possess are 2,500 miles apart. So, you know, it, it's, and we have code words and things like that, too, you know, to make sure that, you know, this doesn't happen. And I think in terms of like, there's personal side and then there's corporate, you know, what you have to do with corporate management.

Like, Joe, are you seeing that? Like, we have all these Bitcoin Treasury companies, but we're also seeing some companies start to have. have treasury, is there corporate adoption of this sort of thing? Obviously, barefoot's one, but yeah. Yeah, certainly. Yeah, especially in mining, I'd say a lot of more folks that are going to rooted in Bitcoin or a little more Bitcoin native in their business, tend to adopt multi-sig, I think, more readily.

You bring up a good point is there's definitely the social layer around multisicry. Increase some of that capability, especially as in the future there's this kind of arms race to how do we verify who is on the other side of? this phone call or even this video call, kinds of things that even the types of questions, you know, Gary was asking because of his knowledge about Unchained, I think that's what, one layer of adoption on Unchained is very similar to the approach that Terrence was talking about,

but we have a feature set called Connections, which enable individuals to ask for another account to hold a key. It basically share keys with each other across an account. So it's one great way that, you know, someone in their uncle or, you know, on behalf of their grandma can kind of hold a key. And it creates this extra friction, you know, in the process and this redundancy, of course, because you can just imagine as, you know, grandma or somebody might be getting scammed or trying to maybe just sell their Bitcoin because they're feeling out.

But there's that idea that that family member or someone else can be a really solid verifier of, you know, who's actually trying to sign, who's trying to get your Bitcoin the other end? What are you trying to do? Making sure they're talking to who they are through verifying personal facts and things. And so that's that's only one way you were encouraging clients to lean into for more robustness on these kinds of scams and issues. Just relying on trusted people, family members, to consider having them hold a key with you as a way to just be more resilient overall. And it looks not unlike the kind of corporate controls, which businesses have had to figure out over time.

of just having multiple approvers. And we have had feature sets for many years that that had able delegated roles inside of a transaction process of who can stage, who can sign, who can actually submit and broadcast. So you do get those controls happening inside the organization. The wrench attack, which I guess, Terence, the thing you had with your sister, I assume she wasn't home when this happened. No.

So at least at least the physical threat. But I mean, that's a scary thing too. And we were talking, again, before you were on, Terrence, but, you know, like the four of us, at least within the Bitcoin community, we are known. There's some level of, you know, that we're associated with Bitcoin. People assume we have some Bitcoin. And so I think we all have to have a certain understanding that we, we could be subject to that, whether that's, you know, kidnapping or, you know, some sort of physical threat. And, you know, Malteseg, I think helps with it a little bit. Like the holder of

the other key in our case is under strict instructions, regardless of what duress I may be under to not do anything, right? And that's probably a... I don't need to say now, but if you've got a gun at your head. Yeah. Well, the good news is I can't do anything, right? So it's, you know, it would have to be the other person that holds the keys that has to make that decision. And it's, you know, no. And we know, in this case, unchained, won't do it?

Do you ever have those conversations, Terrence, too? Like with your holding one of the keys for a lot of your clients, do you have those kind of conversations ever. Yeah, a lot. And obviously, every setup is different. But, you know, if you think of the worst case scenario where someone is breaking into your house and assuming they've gotten past your gates or your security cameras or your firearms, all of which you should have, they're, you know, these people, first of all,

of all, it's pretty rare that you're going to have a wrench attack. Everyone wants easy friction. They want probabilities. That's why they're doing all of these. online social engineering attacks, right? That's, that's the way, full stop. If someone's breaking in, you know, they're risking spending the rest of their lives in jail and they want to get in and out quickly. So we recommend different things, whether sometimes it's time locking, which I love, because I can just show you, let's go into the men pool and I'll show you, you can't even touch

my Bitcoin unless you can travel in time, like this amount of Bitcoin is, it's not even available for the next 18 months. I also like the multi-sig because you can even be honest with them or transparent. Say, okay, I have one key on me. I can't do anything. You want to go get the second key? It's on 12 words in a safety deposit box at this bank. So we're going to have to go to the bank where there's security guards, where there's a camera, grab the words, punch.

Like, at a certain point, you can be honest. And like Gary said, if you're under duress, you know, you sometimes maybe aren't prepared to lie or tell a story. So it's like, great, do you want to go to? They don't want to. Well, here on this other wallet, I have a whole Bitcoin. Please don't take it. Wow, a whole Bitcoin. Like, they're going to take it and run. So I do think a decoy wallet or having more than one wallet is helpful. And like you, having them geographically separated, like, great, let's buy airline tickets and jump on a plane because I got to get over here. You know. And if the other key is like with unchained and you have a key on you, which isn't the best. in that situation. But then you can always, I forget what you call it, Joe, but it's like white listing or there's limits where it's like, okay, here we go. You know, please don't hurt me. Oh, 20,000 is the most I can send.

There's a limit. Otherwise, we've got to do a video verification. They're going to call me. It's like, so I think you just want to add as much friction as possible. The white listing, maybe you can expand on that, Joe. I'm not sure. I'm familiar with that. And we should also talk about time lock probably a little bit more.

too, which you brought up, Terrence. Yeah. Yeah. So presently we don't have Titan native time mock features built into the vaults. And those kind of thresholds that Terrence is talking about, that depends on the vault type. That one has, like a business fault, we'll have more of those kinds of functionality, but it's not necessarily baked into always, you know, how about the key, you know, signature requests. The biggest advantage we have with the signature request from unchained is a true time delay. It's not instantaneous.

is. So for people that are you're looking for a signature from unchanged, it often could take it 24 to 48 business hours. It's sort of what we, what we pledge. And I mean, I think that to try to also kind of develop the rubric, I think one thing consistent with a lot of the stories we've talked about is that idea just slowing down. Like the biggest thing they try to stoke in you is urgency when they've got in the line. And it's different, of course, that there's these home invasion kinds of scenarios. The urgency is kind of right in your face. So that many, bachelor in your urgency when they're when they're calling you or because you're on what appears to be a Bloomberg interview and they're trying to you're trying to look your best and like you know get this do a solid interview and then in that moment there this urgency to download this package or this thing that they're creating for you that those are the those are always really the biggest risk or where we we're all most susceptible to make mistakes um so just truly just from like if there were a checklist about, you know, how to prevent these kinds of things.

It feels like verifying who you are talking to and all the ways you can of that knowledge. And then secondly, like slow, slow way way down and acknowledge that the technology here is such that you can rest assured there's not something that just happened overnight or just, you know, that just puts your keys at risk or something like an unchained account at risk. That, you know, creating a multi-sig wallet is a very, at least as long as it's unthoughtfully and that the things, you use that the instantiation were kept, you know, secret and with care, that there's just no reason to ever have to rush through any process. And care. So really time delays and time locks and things like that also, I think, are how great garb rails for that. Sorry, Joe, I thought, I thought you ended there.

I thought it was too. Hey, Karras, I was curious as that. How long was that guy talking to that woman that stole with Bitcoin? How long did that communication last? It appears to have been about two to three weeks. It was very fast. As in most of those pig butchering cases, what they're called, they contact them on Facebook. And, you know, you can always tell right away if you ask someone, you know, this even happened to my dad.

But, you know, I told him, Dad, she's not interested in you. They contact you. They're like, oh, hey, you look pretty attractive. What do you, you know, you seem really nice. And they're just, they're fishing. And they used to do this, of course, before crypto. And it's kind of sad because a lot of these people are somewhat modern slaves. They, you know, similar to that TV series, what was that series on Netflix?

The Korean one where they're all in debt. And so they went to play this suicide games or squid games. Yeah. Squid games. Squid games. And so these people are in debt. And these big factories hire them. They give them a place to live.

They give them food. but they immediately become indebted to them. And sometimes they beat them, they harm them. But they have these tiny little dorms where they're with a bunch of people and they just, they have to, they have to collect. What we found out with this client, which was really interesting, she who the she could have been he, ultimately felt bad for Thomas and privately sent him a message, which he screenshotted and sent to us where he said, listen, I just, I'm so sorry, I feel terrible,

you know, but we're all doing the best we can. You know, God bless you. hopefully you can make some more money but you know I had no choice yeah and and yeah she basically said who you were talking to this whole time was an AI model it wasn't me um I'm not telling my bosses that you also have stocks because he does have stocks and I'm just going to tell him I'm just going to lie to him and say that you blocked me so um and I don't know if you guys read there was an article I think it was New York Times or the Atlantic where there was some guy he was talking to a journalist who worked at one of these pig butchering farms and he he had the journalist help him escape.

Yeah, Joe, you probably read it. It was a pretty popular article that went around and revealed a lot about how these pig butchering scams go in Cambodia and Southeast Asia and it's tragic. It is tragic. So you're saying they're like slave scammers? Yeah, they're stuck too. I mean, they're scamming, but they have to pay off their debts or they get they're basically kidnapped. They're entrapped. and they're beaten if they don't bring in the numbers. Good God. Yeah. Now, a lot of these operators have been caught recently, you know, but I don't know how many are out there. And, you know, you think about the social engineering.

I'm sure you talked about the whole Roblox crew. A lot of them are here in Los Angeles. They're like 18, 19, 20-year-old kids. And they're the ones that are sending all these Coinbase and Google links to try to get control of your computer or to have you, you know, change your password so they can see where you have keys. and they're looking in people's eye clouds, and oh, someone screenshot at their 12 words. But most all of them are based here in Los Angeles. You might have heard there were some audio tapes that were going around Twitter

where people recorded these scammers. June Seth was one of them. And I think Brandon Quidium of Swan recorded another one. And they're just impersonating Coinbase support. You know, hey, we need to upgrade your thing. Something happened to make sure it's safe. give us your 12 words. A lot of people don't know.

And there was a Bitcoiner who's been around for like six, seven years. He's been using Sparrow. So he's very sovereign. He got a scam email that said there's now a sparrow app. Well, there's no Sparrow app. He went to the phone. He punched in his words into the phone on the Sparrow app. He lost 7.4 Bitcoin.

Right. This was about 12 months ago. So, yeah, it's, I mean, we know we hear it over and over, and it bears repeating. Like, you just do not, those 12 words are your secret. You know, I always tell people you can't hold Bitcoin if you can't hold a secret. If you can't keep a secret, you can't keep Bitcoin. It's that simple. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I think picking, and some people aren't ready for it. I mean, I think that's the reality, especially in our, when I say our community, I'm talking about the boomers, you know, the people I interface with. And I think some people would be upset with me for saying it. There are people I interface with here that are in the 70s and 80s who want some Bitcoin exposure. And for them, I have to say, go buy an ETF. Like that that's, you know, I cringe saying it.

I'm sure there are bitcoins who get mad at me that I've directed people that way. but it's that or nothing it's that or Bob, I just turned 71 Sunday and you're telling me that I mean, well, you're saying oh, 70 years old. I said all of them. I said some of them. No, you're right though, Bob. Some people have to, you know, like my parents would 100% be an ETFs if it,

if it wasn't for me. But they actually own spot Bitcoin because I convinced them to convert their bonds into Bitcoin and they also use Unchained. So I know they don't know how it all works, but I feel safe knowing that their keys are, you know, separated and no one can get it. Yeah. I think we can do that for our families,

but we all have. Right. I learned this early too. We all have a personal bandwidth, right? Because the first couple people, I was Orange Pillning, well, let me help you all come over. We'll get a treasurer or we'll get a cold car or whatever

and we'll set the whole thing up, you know. And it's fine to do that. a couple friends and then it starts kind of exploding. Yeah. And and then the phone call comes a year and a half later. Like, hey, I can't do this. I can't do that. I want to, you know, I want to sell it.

What do I do? You know, and you become technical support. Yeah. Tech support. And, you know, I can feel a little bit. But, you know, I guess the one thing. Because I think there's, you know, I guess that's, you know, I guess that's kind of Bitcoin via proxy, you know, and then there's, you know, kind of third-party custody,

which would be, I guess, you know, having Coinbase hold it for you or Cracken or somebody like that. And then there's self-custody and there's multi-sig. And, you know, I guess picking the right one for somebody or maybe even using one of those as the gateway, one of the less-sides. sovereign ways as a gateway into it is, is, uh, we just, I guess what I'm getting as you can't leap to necessarily for everybody. For sure. You know, the things that, that we're talking about, you know, a time lock multi-sig, for instance, is not, is not probably the starting point for, for everybody.

No. I mean, I could jump in and just say, in general, you, you have to pretend that, uh, not pretend, what's the right word? Just behave as if anything you want, you're going to go shopping. If I want something, I'm going to go to the mall and buy it. I don't need someone to try to sell me a shirt or pants. And what I mean by that is when I get these emails and it's like, you need to do this, click here, click there. Nope, just delete.

I get the phone calls. Nope, just delete. If I need something, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to call Coinbase. I'm going to go get a new signing device. I'm, you know, Wells Fargo, Vanguard, Fidelity. they're even doing the same things. It's like, no, I don't need to click this link and upgrade. Delete the email and just go to fidelity.com. And now let me see, do I have a notification in there? You know, that's probably the simplest thing. And then I would say hovering your mouse

over the links. I mean, that's just, I do that every single time just because that, that just cracks me up how easy it is. And they don't even try to make it close. Yeah. You know, don't, yeah, some simple. I don't open a PDF from. an email that you don't know or a JPEG or anything like that. Just don't open files from people you don't know. Another way, Bob is to set your phone not to ring if you don't have a phone number in it. Because they'll leave a message and you can call them back and then add them to your phone. Yeah, it's more like that.

Yeah. I don't know how I did that, but I know I figured it out. Yeah. Yeah. And just awareness, that's why I love you all are doing this episode because there's just kind of a new world order about how easy it is, that the cost of attacking is so much lower. But you can't replace just good judgment and people deciding to slow down, not trust phone calls, not trust emails. Even the point about yesterday I got from an old college professor an email from her actual email address, but it's clearly a phishing, spent, you know, her email account had been compromised.

So you also can't even quite trust the known contacts to send you something that's always trustworthy. Like you do that, the hovering over links kinds of a thing still really matters, too. Just always take careful steps with anything you get. Have you guys seen that's, oh, go ahead, Bob. I was just going to say, I think we all have some certain that tingly spiny senses too. Like, you know, pay attention to those because they're probably right. Sorry, Terrence, go ahead. I was going to say, have you guys seen that?

It's a newer scam, but it's been going on. I want to say, for the last six months. Well, they'll contact people like us here on the stage saying, hey, I want to interview you for a podcast. And they're talking to you as if they understand Bitcoin or Crypto. Gary, do you know what I'm talking about? We covered this earlier. All of us said. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Perfect. Yeah, they came after both Larry and I, posing as Bloomberg people. There you go. Yeah, they were posing as when they came to me. I can't remember. But like I said, when they asked first question, which Bitcoin I had was out of there.

Yeah, exactly. No Bitcoin would do that. Yeah. I mean, they're really good. The other one that's, I mean, I get investors. As a startup CEO, you get investor in bounds that look like, look legitimate, it look like some fund, and then not. unlike your story, Bob, it was, you know, show up at the certain time.

Or, yeah, the video software they wanted to use or isn't quite working. Or their IT team asked me to install a package or something like that. And, you know, just a big, right, sorry to red flags, sometimes when you get inbound investor interest. But it's otherwise a, you know, a double concern when, you know, stuff like that happens when you show up. But it's, yeah, they really do target you based on your profile and how they can find the, the right psychological threads to pull on or buttons to push. Yeah. One last thing.

I think I might have mentioned it before, but have with the key people in your life, have some key words or secret words so that if you question whether or not something is authentic, you can ask them. I have them with my wife and my children, for instance, that they should, Should something happen, somebody poses as me or somebody's posing as them or something like that, you know, they have to say the word, right?

That would be. Or something like only you would know, right? Like what's the color of the seat tractor that Aunt Edna had in the barn, you know, or whatever? Yeah, it has to be. Yeah, it has to be like that. Yeah. Yeah, it can't be what's your birthday or. Right.

What city were you born in? Like, you know, it has to be like really obscure stuff. So, Joe, one thing we didn't, we kind of talked, I think, a lot about, you know, the scams and those sort of things. But we didn't talk really about planning for the future, the state planning and the trusts and like those sort of things. And I think it kind of fits into a certain way. Like how do you, how do you secure your Bitcoin and make sure that it passes properly going forward? And I think that's, especially for us boomers, we all face the reality of a ticking clock. And so it's a concern.

So you want to expand on that maybe? Yeah. So a lot of it depends on the goal someone's trying to achieve and what their sophistication level is or what other assets may be involved. Sometimes things can be as simple as, you know, a clear will, will that names, you know, where the Bitcoin passed it on to. and then clear instructions about if it's secured with Unchained, where some key material is that can enable the inheritors or folks, the heirs to work with Unchained to get the Bitcoin. But increasingly, a very common account type of Unchained is a trust,

a trust entity. And so a family trust that may be just for the Bitcoin or could be other assets as well. And so that's one way that you can associate that Bitcoin. There are types of trust. where you can still control the asset. There are other types of trusts where you need more of a directed trustee or you need an institution to actually have control over the account. And that's made possible, at least in chain, through our subsidiary called Gannett Trust

Company. It's a Wyoming Charter Trust company that can perform those kinds of services or be a qualified custodian for clients in their Bitcoin. And that's, it's a great format because you can get a lot of the benefits here of, you know, still lack of counterparty risk. You know, if the Bitcoin is that an account at Gannett, the keys can be held still such that Gannett holds a key, unchained holds a key, and the client or the person instantiating the trust can also retain a key. So a lot of that kind of cryptographic proof for understanding of where the Bitcoin is at all times,

it's redundancy and how the keys are held. And then through that kind of structure, you generally trust when they're set up, it makes it very clear what's going to happen in the event of death or who inherits this or who has, who are the beneficiaries of that, that trusts in effect. So it's, yeah, it's where, you know, the rubber starts to meet the road or as you, as you start to hold Bitcoin for, for long enough and then consider it this, this long-term, generational asset that really does need to integrate with those types of structures. And that's, that's really what we started, can it, as well as, you being an institution

that can hold stock portfolios or be a place that, you know, other traditional assets can live that and kind of commingle with someone's Bitcoin. Do the people that reach out to about that, are there, is there a profile? I'm curious, are they younger, are they the younger bitcoins who maybe understand Bitcoin well and, and want to be prepared for the future? Or is it more the older people who are in the back nine of life who go, I got to deal with this problem? And what's the more common profile? It depends. I mean, certainly, you know, the impetus to set up a trust can come from a couple different angles.

On the younger side, it might just be tax. You know, thinking it had to like tax consequences or the use of moving assets into a trust today that helps you or your family in the future with not having as large of a tax bill when there's some realized gains. Acid protection, of course, as well, if you have liabilities because you're a liability because you're business owner or are you concerned and like, you know, marriage or other kinds of scenarios or getting married later, a trust is a way to segment those assets from those kinds of concerns. But definitely that still the majority of folks that are opting into Gannett or setting up a trust with Gannett's help, they are older.

They're thinking about, yeah, inheritance planning, estate planning kinds of concerns. And those are long cycles, you know, the cycle time of somebody wanting to go down that path that it could take six months of, you know, and usually, generally for any trust someone's bringing to Gannett, they've worked with an outside attorney to craft their estate plan to make sure that it addresses their personal situation. So these are, it's tend to be very customized or tailored solutions. they're this not like a cookie cutter one size fits all because everyone's situation is a little different different kids different um spouses or ex-spouses or things like that that have to be considered uh so that's that's always there on the personal situation and then when ganet receives trust documents we go through our own process to to diligence it and make sure it's uh it's clean and maps into what we understand the situation to be and how we can how gan it can

serve that client over their life and any errors. So, yeah, it's a spread as the spectrum, but it does lean towards the older folks that are thinking about this and have the time and bandwidth. I'm still in my late 30s. And so, well, I have a will. I have some of the basics. I haven't also gotten that next step personally into having a family trust or similar. Mid-30s.

That sounds pretty cool. Late 30s. Late 30s. Mid-40s, it sounds cool. Hey guys, I've got to go. I've got to another meeting. I've got to be Joe and Bob. I'll see y'all, I guess next month a bit, block boom.

Terrence, if you're interested in the past, hit me up and I'll take care of you. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that, Gary. Yeah. And I enjoyed it, guys. See you all later. Thank you.

See, Gary. Well, maybe as we wrap up, kind of go off topic for a minute, I'd just like to get your guys perspective on one other thing. I think there was a big milestone in Bitcoin, and I should point out, we're recording this on March 10th of 2026. And within, I think it was in the last 36 hours, we passed the 20 millionth Bitcoin being issued. And so we got a million, only a million potential left. And I say potential, by the way, because it's one of the things, you know, being a little more on the technical side and being a minor. I think one interesting thing about Bitcoin is that there's actually no guarantee of issuance that the miner who creates the block decides whether or not they want the Bitcoin or not.

And if they don't take it, it's gone forever. There's a one-time chance. And there are a few cases in history where it didn't happen. Unlikely to happen a lot, but certainly possible. But I just, I find it fascinating. And because of the way Bitcoin works as well, over the next five years, half of that million will be gone too. So it really is scarce. And, you know, you guys have both been around Bitcoin for a long time and kind of have watched this thing.

And just, you know, wonder what thoughts, emotions that that brings to you. you want to go first joke sure i can go for i mean really i think that thinking or appreciating that fact that most all bitcoin that will exist exists today uh it's really why unchange business model is geared towards long term financial services so and the add to that the fact that most bitcoin that's already here doesn't move in in a given year that at least 60% of bitcoin historically uh is older than a year in terms of sitting in the address that has been in. And so that's kind of, that's how Unchained is geared our business model towards long-term holdings.

And yet, that's why we exist really. Yeah. It's, it's really cool to think about, you know, we know that Bitcoin, of course, is finitely scarce, but when you suddenly realize that there's only one million left and it's going to be now spread out over, you know, the next 114 years or whatever, yet it took, what, 17 years to get 20 million. I think that's pretty cool. I like to sort of think about it in that, you know, there's 20 million private keys, you know, there's private keys available for 21 million Bitcoin, right? Like, we'll get private keys eventually because it's all there per the

code. We know it's there, just, you know, not in the circulating supply. But then, you know, yesterday I was just thinking, I was like, you know, what else, what other amazing commodities or assets or systems have come in this way. And I, and, you know, I don't know if Satoshi was thinking this at the time when he did it. I mean, I think it's obviously smart to incentivize the early adopters by getting more. And of course, when there's no price at all, or a few pennies, you want to start getting more so that it spreads out. But it's like, well, I think about like the gold rush in California. I think about like the oil boom in Texas. I think about just the the land rush, right? The early. pioneers running out and staking. And it's kind of like, there probably were these natural

halvings in a sense where other early people, oh, I can go get as much land as I want, you know, and look at all this oil in Texas. But it's like it starts crimping down, cramping down. It's, it's finite. And maybe that's a more fair system in that it's the, it's, it's, it's, it's egalitarian in that whoever wants to put in the work can get it. But it's not going to be equal outcome. Some people want to work harder. Some people want to contribute more to an economy. Yeah. And only those people that recognize it, like I said, that that may be over in the physical

world, maybe some other element or something will be found and there'll be some sort of an opportunity like that. But unlikely, I would say at this point that in the physical world, such a thing occurs. And I think you gave really good analogies. And this may be the only one in the digital world, because at least, you know, I don't know, I'm guessing you guys are with me that I don't think Bitcoin is replicable. So, you know, this might be the last opportunity and humanity for such a thing. And I think it is cool because not only do you have to put in the work, you have to identify that this is the thing, like that this is a thing worthy of that amount of energy and that amount of work to pursue.

And, you know, we all got it at a different point. I got it in 2017. others got it in 2015, 2013, 2011, and they got rewarded a hell of a lot more, right? And, you know, there's one other thing that I do a lot of speaking, I think, I'm going to speak a bit more, boom, about it is the scarcity of block space itself, I think will, it has a certain attribute like this because it's finally. There's only 53,000 blocks a year. And right now, I think as Bitcoiners, we take for granted that that block space will be there when we need it for essentially for free. And I believe that someday that won't be the case.

And I do a lot of reading on economics. And there's David Ricardo famous economist in the late 1700s. And there's something called Ricardo's rent there, David Ricardo's rent. theory. And what he did was he looked at the scarcity of agricultural land, much like, you know, you were referring to Terrence in Europe at the time, and said, well, there's only a finite amount. And what happens to the price of that land as demand grows when you have basically this thing of fixed supply and increasing demand? And as expected, it's an exponential reaction to that commodity.

And but, but, you know, this is a stark, I think, like I said, it's a stark reminder. I found it very cool. I just, I, this, that we pass 20 million, I just, I just find really cool. Because I won't see 21, right? I won't see 21 million. None of us will. None of us will, yeah. Yeah.

In fact, we don't actually even get there. We never get there. You mean just nominally. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, actually, it's more than nominal because in the history of Bitcoin, there are several instances where the full reward was not captured. Oh. Do they just not put their address in the Coinbase?

I mean, how do you not capture it? So, well, here's what happens. So when, so I'm a miner and I create templates, right? So I have the choice and or the responsibility to claim the subsidy and claim the fees, but I don't have to. And so there are cases in history where the minor, for whatever reason, didn't take the full amount. And that's some people believe it's like an homage to. to Satoshi. Like they would just, you know, it's, it's, it's not a burn. It's an issuance that never happened. So it's a, it's a subtlety. Right. And there's a couple of,

back in. It's not like it just loads back up. Yeah. Right. So, because what happens is the, what, what the protocol actually manages is the maximum amount you can take. Right. it doesn't say you have to issue it. It just says, hey, right now you can issue three and an eighth Bitcoin plus whatever the fees were, but you could choose or miscalculate and not take the whole thing. And like there's a, there is a couple examples, I think there are two, where right before a having, somebody clearly loaded the wrong template. And they took the post-having subsidy and not the pre-having subsidy. Wow. They have themselves. They have themselves early and then that that Bitcoin is gone forever. Like it's just not it'll never it'll never be in existence. There's no way for it to

come back in because it's each block is a unique opportunity for the subsidy to be released or the fees to be claimed. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's why there was a discrepancy yesterday when we hit. because it looked like at 939-999, that block. It's like, oh, 20 million. And then, you know, some of the technical basement dwellers were like, no, actually. That was me. That was me. No, I get it now.

Well, I'm the guy that, well, actually, we're not there yet. So wait a few minutes. Wait a few blocks. Then we'll get you. So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you hate being that guy, but, you know. No, but it's a great way to learn. And it always speaks to the fundamentals and properties of Bitcoin, which,

you know, I think we love. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, hey, guys, probably a good time to wrap up. Terrence and Joe, maybe just tell people how they can contact you and learn more about you. True. Happy to find me at us at Unchained.com. My email is Joe at Unchained.com.

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