BTC Sessions - BREAKING: $400M STOLEN! Coinbase Bitcoin Attack | WTF Just Happened?

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

BREAKING: A $400M Bitcoin attack involving a Coinbase insider has just been leaked, and the crypto world is in shock. WTF just happened? Here’s what we know—and why it could change everything.🔥 Don’t miss this action-packed episode! Subscribe, hit the bell, and join us LIVE to stay ahead of Bitcoin’s biggest moves! 🚀—------------------------------BOOK private one-on-one sessions with BITCOIN MENTOR! Learn self custody, hardware, multisig, lightning, privacy, running a node, and plenty more - all from a team of top notch educators that I've personally vetted.https://bitcoinmentor.io/—------------------------------FOLLOW Simply Bitcoin & BTC Sessions on other channels:Simply Bitcoin on Youtube: youtube.com/@simplybitcoinSimply Bitcoin on X: x.com/simplybitcointv Nico on X: x.com/bitvoltBTC Sessions on X: x.com/BTCsessions—------------------------------SHOW SPONSORS:BITCOIN WELL BUY BITCOINhttps://bitcoinwell.com/btcsessionsMINING DISRUPT CONFERENCEhttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/mining-disrupt-conference-2025-fort-lauderdale-florida-tickets-980017277057?discount=BTCSESSIONSCOINKITE/COLDCARD (5% discount):https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions AQUA WALLEThttps://aquawallet.io/NUNCHUK HONEYBADGER INHERITANCEhttps://nunchuk.io/individualsHODLHODL NO KYC P2P EXCHANGEhttps://hodlhodl.com/join/BTCSESSIONDEBIFI LOANShttps://debifi.com/#bitcoin #crypto #btc #money

Over one million Coinbase customers compromised. $400 million in damages already on the table, and that's just so far. But how did the attackers actually pull this off? The answer might surprise you, and it looks really bad for Coinbase. This is the brutal reality of today's surveillance-driven financial system. Know your customer laws force companies like Coinbase and others to collect and store your most personal details.

Details that are now, once again, in the hands of criminals. And this isn't just a financial risk. It's a physical one. Imagine attackers knowing exactly who you are, where you live, and that you hold Bitcoin. This has happened time and again, and we've got examples today to really, really drive home the point. All of this comes just days after Coinbase was approved to be added to the S&P 500, celebrated as a symbol of trust and stability. But behind that corporate shine was a brewing disaster and a harsh reminder of why trusting third parties with your wealth and your information can be catastrophic. Today we're going to watch CEO Brian Armstrong's response to the data ransom he received.

and it's likely not what the attackers anticipated. So stick around because we're breaking down exactly how this happened and what you need to do to be safe. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your weekly session. All right, I want to bring in my co-host with the most, Mr. Nathan Fitzsimmons of Bitcoin Mentor. How you doing, buddy?

I'm doing pretty good, man. I'm curious. Is your wonderful wife they're going to vote for the new Irish president, Mr. McGregor. Well, she doesn't have the passport yet, but I'm not convinced that I don't know if he has her vote either way. We'll see. We'll see.

But other than that man, crazy day, I don't know about you, but I'm getting the weirdest phone calls from Coinbase. Yeah. Sports keeps hitting me up. Very odd. I mean, I haven't gotten those, but apparently ledger support is very, very excited about me upgrading to prevent myself from being hacked. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Yeah, I think so. Well, dude, let's dive into this whole Coinbase debacle here. Let's hear from the CEO of Coinbase himself, Brian Armstrong, about what happened and how they're currently handling it, which is very interesting. So here we go. Hey, everyone. I want to make you aware of a disturbing email that we received recently at Coinbase. It was a ransom note demanding $20 million in Bitcoin in exchange for these attackers not releasing some information. they claim to have obtained on our customers.

Now, we like to do things transparently here at Coinbase, and so I'm going to respond publicly to these attackers by saying no. We are not going to pay your ransom. In fact, I have a few next steps in mind that I'm going to share at the end of this video. But for the rest of you watching, wondering what happened, we did an investigation here, and these attackers have been approaching our overseas customer support agents, looking for a weak link, someone who would accept a bit of,

bribe in exchange for sharing some customer information with them. Now our support tools have limited access to customer information. There was no passwords or private keys or funds accessed as part of this. But customer support agents do have access to personal information like name, data birth, address, etc. The attackers still want access to this information because it allows them to conduct social engineering attacks where they can call our customers impersonating coin-based customer support and try to

try to trick them into sending their funds to the attacker. Now unfortunately, they were able to find a few bad apples. Our systems are designed to mitigate the impact of something like this. So less than 1% of our monthly transacting users had their records accessed. But this is still unacceptable. And I want to tell you what we're doing about it. So first, any customers that were socially engineered as a result of this incident, we're going to reimburse them.

There's more details on our website, on our blog posts, about the reimbursement process. You can read more there. Any customers who have been impacted by this or have been notified at this point. Number two, we're hardening our systems around customer support to make something like this much more difficult in the future. And third, we're actually relocating

some of our customer support operations as a result of this. But the last step is maybe the most important. which is that instead of paying this $20 million ransom, we're turning it around. And we're putting out a $20 million award for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of these attackers. For these would-be extortionists or anyone seeking to harm Coinbase customers,

know that we will prosecute you and bring you to justice. And now you have my answer. Ooh, he got spicy there, didn't he? A little bit, right? I can't wait for the internet sleuths to go after that one. So, I mean, this is interesting because, okay, I will say the turning it around, the offering a bounty on this is a solid move. But the issue in and of itself is not resolved. At the end of the day, you leave, you have KYC, know your customer laws, and you're required to give ID, date of birth, your home address.

All of the example. Yeah, exactly. Your first born child. Basically all of this stuff. And it just sits there in a honeypot and paints a target not only on the custodians back because people are trying to get in there and actually steal the funds, but just the information that you have bought Bitcoin or, you know, shit coins at some point. And all of the information of what you bought when, probably how much you still have,

if it's in the account, if it's not where you've sent it to, all that kind of stuff, it's just, it's just there. And until you can get out of a realm where that's the norm, this continues to happen, right? Oh, it's absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, like the biggest issue here is the fact that we have these KYC-A-ML requirements. Like the fact that you have to take people's information and then hang on to it. Don't quote me, but I think in Canada, it's something like seven years is absolutely ridiculous. Computers by their very nature are not ultimately, kind of safe. Unless you're using proof of work, right? It's always going to be vulnerable. Somebody could find their way in. There's going to be a person. You could pressure. You could

bribe. You could threaten all that stuff. Right. And so to have your most sensitive information regarding possibly the biggest purchases and asset you have also be stored on someone else's computer. Because I know that they have to keep up things for compliance, but you might be a little more adversarial and protective of it if it's something that you're controlling. We shouldn't have to entrust these people with it. And man, for Coinbase, it just feels like blunder after blunder. Right. We just had this come out. They've lost customer information. They're going to have to reimburse some people. Plus they're putting up the bounty. Not to mention that what? They had like a 14 year head start on Sailor, but they turned down the idea of a Bitcoin reserve.

Like, I have no idea what they're thinking at this point in time. I'm pretty sure Brian would have been better off just buying Bitcoin, not doing the company and just hanging on to it this whole time. Yeah. Yeah. Again, like they're they definitely they haven't had the best track record. Actually, back, I'm trying to remember when, I think might have been 2019. I made, there was a hashtag going around delete Coinbase. So I made an explainer video of why you might want to delete Coinbase. It was 30 minutes long just on gripes of dumb shit that Coinbase had done. And that was like four or five years ago. So it would be much longer. I made it into the Coinbase documentary because of that. So side note, probably don't use Coinbase. But I mean, so just some examples here of real world

examples, not of just people losing money, but actual physical threats. Because there's been a lot just recently. Okay. So this one, this was in March. And I'm bringing this one out because, again, it directly relates to Coinbase here. Although this one was this girl's fault. So this is Caitlin Syragusa, but her, she goes as Amaranth,

she's a streamer. And so she was targeted by armed thieves that broke into her home. And so basically, this was her problem because she went and she showed a screen grab of her

her balance with something like $20 million worth of Bitcoin. And she said, and she said, oh, should I buy, should I sell or keep my Bitcoin? And more or less three gunmen broke into her home and, and went in and tried to hold her at gunpoint and force her to, to move the money. Her, I think, boyfriend shot one of them, which I mean. Good for him. Yeah. F around fly now.

Yeah, exactly. But again, like, you can't go flaunting this kind of stuff on the internet. But, like, yeah, here's the, if I show here. But you see the three gunmen basically, I believe they're chasing her into the home. And. Yeah, yeah. So they're making her go in to get her access to her Bitcoin. And then you.

hear a shot. There we go. Multiple shots. And then they all bail. One of them actually did get shot. He didn't die or anything. But like one of them, you can hear him in the back. I got shot. I got shot. So like, but like that is horrifying.

You know, and this isn't the only example. Just the other day in France. This is a CEO's daughter. Yep. And they are trying to abduct their young daughter on the street. Like, you know, just so you know, this broad daylight in France, they're trying to shove them into a van and get away so that they can, I assume, hold them for ransom. One of the attackers dropped their firearm and then some passerbyes helped, and then they all escaped and ran away. But, like, again, broad daylight this happened.

It's absolutely crazy. And again, yet another example, once again, from France. Holy hell. But one of the CEOs of Ledger was kidnapped and actually had his finger cut off. Yep. And this is just this is this year so far. And these are just a few examples. it is terrifying to basically be flaunting this stuff around.

You need to actually be quite conscious of this. I mean, like, some of these examples, these people were quite well off. Like the girl that made the mistake of flaunting her 20 million worth of Bitcoin. You can't really do much if you're like a family member of a CEO of a major Bitcoin company or something like that or a crypto company. but it's it just goes to show that you really do need to treat this stuff properly and be careful. And so, you know, there's a few things that you can do. And I think it's worth giving actionable advice in and around this stuff. So there's actually a privacy playlist that I put together here.

And I encourage everybody to take a look at some of these things. So there's a QR code on the screen where you can go scan that, save it in your bookmark. and just kind of start sorting through some of the options there. But, I mean, the big things are, number one, if you can, obtain your Bitcoin with no K-Y-C. Okay? So then there's no honeypot of your information in the first place for it to be leaked. So, you know, I've got one here. Bitcoin well, you can buy via the ATMs with cash and no K-YC.

There's other options like Hoddle-Hoddle, Robosats, BISC, or just straight-up peer-to-peer, go to Bitcoin meetup, paying cash, gradually accumulate that way. There's lots of options that you have out there. Then also on-chain privacy, there's a recent video on Wasabi that I did where you can sub in the coordinator, it still functions and you can still coin join. Ashi-Gar wallet, there's some privacy measures there in the way that you spend, but that can be helpful for small amounts, cashew, fetaments, all stuff like that. even join market is still a functioning way of coin joining and and then just general UTXO management that's you know that's a huge help to people that are looking to that are looking

to gain privacy Nathan I mean like in your experiences like is this you know have you seen more I mean you must have seen more stories about this you must take some privacy measures in terms of like just how you handle your Bitcoin. No, 100%. I think it's something that we all have to consider. Like I think I've seen NVK posts about this several times, but you should treat your Bitcoin security like it's 10x the value that it is today. But that goes beyond just your direct setup and yourself custody.

You have to start being conscientious of what you're putting out there, what information about you is online, how you're talking about it publicly, where are you going, who's with you, and being just aware that even if not today, at some point in time, it's a bare instrument, guys. And I think in the example from Marath, if it was the only fans model there, that it's a bare instrument. There's no safety net. You have to treat it as such.

The people may be, especially as peak clown world just gets worse and worse and worse in some places where people will become desperate. They may try and take the opportunity. It may hit a price point where it's worth it to them. And even just things like pointing on UTXO management, just making sure that even when you're spending,

that you're not necessarily revealing your entire balance or a huge chunk for a small purchase. Because again, if you're, you know, I know you use this example, that if you're buying a nice new hat online and you're spending from a million dollar value UTXO, well, the person that you're spending it to is going to see the change coming back and they're going to have your address from where they're shipping that product too. So something to be conscientious of, it's something to start thinking about

and something to plan for it too. And this is another great example. I mean, I love multi-sig and passphrase. And I think they have different kind of applications sometimes together as well too. Not a multi-sig isn't for everyone. And I want anyone to feel like get the rush and kind of make that sort of thing happen. However, distributed keys, this is where that advantage kind of comes into play, right? Where if you have the ability to secure key material at different geographical locations,

and at least gives you the possibility of saying, like, I legitimately, I can't hand it to you. You can take the one key. That's fine. But it's not possible for me to move the rest. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There are tools out there that can help protect. But, I mean, number one thing is just being careful in the first place. no KYC if you have that, if you have all options available to you, on chain privacy,

and then making it again with Malteseg, great point so that you can't even comply in a quick job. Like if somebody is just trying to break in and get a key and run, then it puts a barrier. Even just have decoy amounts. You could have decoy dollars with like a few thousand bucks or something. And then in that instance, you have something to give and then they can get the hell out. again, I see in the chat as well, people mentioning time locks, things like that. Yeah.

There's definitely ways that you can protect yourself. Just be privy to the tools. And again, check out the privacy playlist that can help a little bit in that realm, too. But always be careful. So either way, we are going to jump to the next section after a quick shout out to our sponsors. But you teased about it a little bit. we have an MMA legend that is running for the Irish presidency, and he's got Bitcoin top of mind.

So we're going to be chatting about that next. Everybody, if you're enjoying the show so far, make sure you smash that like button, and we'll be back in just a minute. Bitcoin Well is the best place to be buying and selling Bitcoin in Canada and the U.S. And now with Bitcoin Well Infinite, it's also the best place to be making large buys at their OTC desk of over $50,000. Their white glove service gives you fast transactions, no slippage, and the lowest fees. You can scan the QR code on the screen or simply head to Bitcoinwell.com slash BTC sessions to sign up today.

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All right, we are back in. Everybody bust out your lightning waltz. I forgot to give you the heads up, but we're giving away some sats, as we always do in this show. So I'm on Bitcoin Well, which we mentioned as a possible non-KYC source for your sats.

If you so, please. You can check them out, of course, by hitting up the QR code just below us right now. But we're going to give away some sats. Get your lightning wallets ready. Whoever scans the QR code within the browser window. First, we'll steal the sats from everyone else. And as a reminder, every time you sign up, buy Bitcoin, refer friends.

You earn points that you can toss in the wishing well and potentially win up to a million sats. So off we go. And again, whoever scans it first is going to snag the sats from everybody else. And it looks like we've got 658 sats, oddly specific. But we like that. Either way, whoever scans it first, congratulations. If you're in the chat, let us know if you got it.

But we will move on to Mr. Connor McGregor. I'm going to read the tweet. Go ahead. And we'll chat a little bit about this, not just him, but again, more sovereigns that are getting interested in Bitcoin. Crypto in its origin was founded. That word crypto, I don't know. It's terrible. It's forever sullied for me.

Crypto and its origin was founded to give power back to. to the people. An Irish Bitcoin Strategic Reserve will give power to the people's money. I will be co-hosting a Twitter space to talk about what I want to see changed victory to Ireland. And I said just below, make sure Ireland holds its own keys. Very important. Very important. That's the craziest thing even just jumping back to with everything we talked about Coinbase. Let's not forget. They're like the major custodian for all the ETFs and strategy and a whole bunch of things here too. Yeah.

Yeah. It's unbelievable that there's such a honeypot for every major institution. Some countries, like, it's just, come on, guys. I think we can do better than this. But, I mean, that eventual train rack is going to do wonders for self-custody. You know, everybody's learning at higher and higher thresholds of rug pulls. So I do want to outline just a couple others that have been peeking at this. Latvia, their economy minister, says it's only a matter of time until they establish a strategic Bitcoin Reserve, quote, I see no major risks with it.

I mean, that's pretty solid when you contrast that with the governor of Arizona. Yeah, Katie Hobbs. No, no good. No good, dear. Yeah, Katie Hobbs kind of dropped the ball in that one. She did sign something, but it's not nearly as impactful as what New Hampshire did. And then just one more here, just in South Korean presidential candidate list Bitcoin and crypto, as official top priority, if elected, the next Bitcoin president, perhaps, who knows? But again, we have these examples of, of new sovereigns that are looking into this.

And it's not just on this full on country level. It's, you know, we've seen lots of states, local reserves and U.S. states coming online, but also on the municipal level. Now, I'm going to just for a second here, we've got the New York mayor, Eric Adams. He says his goal is to make New York City the crypto capital of the globe. And I'm going to call bullshit here because there's some. major things in his way, namely this little piece of legislation called the bit license. If this is gather around children, this is a relic of epochs past, but a bit license is a business

license issued in by New York State Department of Financial Services, NYDFS, for virtual currency activities. It's essentially a regulatory framework designed to. ensure compliance, so compliance is defiance, protect consumers. I'm sure they feel so protected. We'll see an example of that soon. And promote transparency in the cryptocurrency market within New York State. Just to give an example of how well protected people in New York State are, this is on Reddit from a year ago. What platforms am I limited to in New York State as a residence? This, by the way, is a direct symptom of the bit license.

So the person said, what platforms am I limited to as a New York State resident? I have tried. Cracken, Swan, Gemini, Binance, Buy Bit, Gate, Strike, and every other major trading platform, but not all the miners. and the only one that seems available for trading in New York State is Coinbase, which I don't particularly like. So, so safe. That man is the safest of all. And this bit license, again, little history lesson here, brought to you by a steaming pile of shit by the name of Ben Loski. This guy is just awful.

You need to look at his face because that is what a piece of shit looks like, I tell you guys. He created the bit license back in 2015. It's just a regulatory mountain of paperwork and fees, millions of dollars to get a bit license in New York State, which is why so many institutions just don't even bother. You cannot use strike in New York State. It's insane. And so not only did he draft this legislation and bring it into law, he immediately left his job with the government and went to join the board of Ripple so that he could coach them in navigating his legislation. Again, this face, if you look in the dictionary under piece of shit, that is what you will see. Ben Loskey, congratulations, New York State.

So I really, I know I went on a tangent there. Ben, tell me how you really feel. He has stained the name Ben and thank God for the High Council of Bitcoin Ben's undoing all the damage done by Ben Loski back in 2015. But this dude, we've got work to do. Let me tell you. But I digress. Lots and lots of different people.

interested in the idea of Bitcoin, Bitcoin reserves, having it on the balance sheet, because they know what's up. And just to further bring that point home, just a couple clips of some institutions that are basically saying this is happening. And so this is a clip. They're talking with somebody from Bitwise. And they are chatting about various countries buying two hundred, 100,000 Bitcoin worth $20 billion this year. Let's take a quick listen to this one. Yeah, so last year, ETFs bought half a million Bitcoin. Again, remember, the Bitcoin network only produced 165,000 Bitcoin. So it bought three times the total supply.

Corporations bought 250,000 Bitcoin. Governments, I think this year, could buy a couple hundred thousand Bitcoin. So I think if you look at those three sources, I think they'll buy more than a million Bitcoin this year. And where is it going to come from? The only place it can come from is people who already hold Bitcoin. The only way they will sell is if the price goes up.

That's why I'm so bullish on the market. So government? Which branch of the government? Look, the US already established a strategic Bitcoin reserve, right? It already holds $17 billion in Bitcoin. And the executive order from President Trump told the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of Treasury to figure out ways to acquire more Bitcoin without impacting the tax holder. could they do that? They could sell some of the gold that the U.S. has. They could sell other

crypto assets that the U.S. had and plow that into Bitcoin. I think we're going to see that happen this year. I think the U.S. is going to increase. And not just the U.S. We found out that Abu Dhabi bought half a billion dollars of Bitcoin. We've gotten calls from multiple other governments that are investigating Bitcoin. I think you're going to see 10, maybe more governments around the world make their first allocation to Bitcoin this year. It's happening. People aren't talking about it that much, but it's happening and it's a very big deal. And it's not just bitwise chatting about it. Vanek had something to say about sovereigns aggressively buying and using, not just buying, but using Bitcoin soon. So let's take a listen

to them. We think there's a good chance that central banks and sovereign wealth funds will start to get more aggressive in adopting Bitcoin, not only as a store of value but also as a medium exchange. So this year the Czech Republic, the governor of the central bank there, has initiated a study to analyze Bitcoin for inclusion in their central bank reserves. And then just this week, Russia did a trade with China partially denominated in Bitcoin, beginning to really use Bitcoin for the first time as a medium of exchange. And that's not for individuals buying coffee. That's for large-scale transaction.

where countries are using Bitcoin as an intermediary currency to do, say, an oil trade. And in that scenario where Bitcoin denominated trade could be, say, 5% of global trade, we get to a $3 million price per Bitcoin. That's a long-term prediction, like 2050. But that's going to be necessary, we think, to elevate Bitcoin into the millions per coin. Ooh, yeah. So, I mean, three million per coin. Again, it's funny, after being in Bitcoin for a while and seeing, you know, that that thousand dollars seems like moon, 10,000 seems like the moon, 100,000 seems like the moon. It's like price calls like that no longer seem outlandish. They seem just inevitable. But I just want to clarify, again, when we are, bringing up stuff like this. I'm not necessarily celebrating governments accumulating Bitcoin,

but I am wanting to point out that game theory is real and that governments are understanding what's going on. And it's a race to stack sats. And so, you know, you need to be aware of this and you need to appreciate it for what it is. It's just people understand that Bitcoin are scarce. And we'll touch on it the next segment, but perhaps even more scarce than teeth.

People in the chat know what's up. Yeah. No, dude, I completely agree. And something about like McGregor and the South Korean presidential candidate and everyone that we're seeing, all these countries coming aboard, all these politicians coming out, it's exactly as you'd expect the game theory. And I'd say that like, probably not the too distant future, like politicians saying that they're in favor of Bitcoin and they have a Bitcoin policy, it's going to become boring, right?

It's going to be like, yeah, that is the necessary requirement to get into political office. That is the necessary requirement to win your elections in the same way they're going like, oh, yes, we're going to lower taxes and give you free shit. They're going to all have to have a Bitcoin position. And to Eric Adams, I'm sorry, you're wrong. Fine. If you want to be the crypto capital, you go for it. Have fun with that.

We've got Mayor Ken Sims here over in Vancouver. We'll be the Bitcoin capital and you guys can just play in the mud there. The last thing I just really want to like get in there as well too is that I always can't help but chuckle whenever someone talks about like, oh, it's going from store of value to medium of exchange. It's like, well, first of all, you can't really separate the two. And second of all, I think Ross Ulbrick, God bless him, might have something to say about Bitcoin being used of a medium of exchange. This isn't new. We've been here before. You're just catching up. Yes, 100%. And I will also say medium of exchange. Shout out to the upcoming sat market in

Calgary. We've got the Bitcoin rodeo happening and we've got our fifth ever sat market where we built a circular Bitcoin economy here in Calgary. I encourage everybody to come and be a part of it. Friday, June 27th, it's going to be a night market and it leads into the weekend with the Bitcoin rodeo. And then we've got something special on the Monday that we have not announced publicly yet. So we'll be announcing that later on, but it's pretty exclusive. But either way, it's going to be a great weekend. So if you can get to Alberta, come. We've had people come from Vancouver, from Montreal, from Toronto.

I want to see some people come up from the U.S. and visit. I'd love people coming in from other countries. It'd be really, really cool to see. So come visit the sat market. It's going to be a good time. But on the other side of the jump, we were talking security. All of these sovereigns are going to have to deal with security as well. But we want to put the focus on you guys and what you can actually do.

What are your action items? How do you secure things for yourself? And there's something brand new in the realm of multi-sig that we're going to be looking at. It seems very interesting. And we can give you some other tips around that. but you're going to want to hear about this brand new. I guess what was it? It was a, there's a demo or some sort of like an initial foray into,

it's a pretty interesting set of devices, we'll call it. So we'll be back on the other side of the jump. Quick shout out to our sponsors. If you enjoy the show, please do. Give that like button to smash. It helps a ton. We'll see you guys in just a sec. Looking for a simple and secure way to manage your Bitcoin on mobile, Aqua Wallet has you covered.

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All right, we are back in. And side note on that whole cold card cue thing, we're given away a cold card queue every single month. And all you got to do is head over to the website and sign up for the newsletter. As a matter of fact, it looks so pretty. Yours is red and it bothered me that you have a nicer color than I do. But it's really simple. Just head over to, and I'll show you. I'm very proud of the new website.

So, yeah, but you head over to the website. You give a little scroll and right beside the cold card queue, drop in an email address, and then you can sign up. And again, you're automatically entered every single month to potentially win a cold card cue. First one going out this month. So yeah, go subscribe. You'll get updates and lots of fun stuff coming out of the newsletter. But either way, Nathan, let's chat a little bit.

about this new development in multi-sig called Frost Stamp. Now, I've seen this around a little bit, and it seems pretty damn interesting. So you see, we've got these like three little daisy chain. What were you calling it? Oh, I love it. It's the centipede of hardware wallets. And I think that's absolutely delightful. I need one.

Well, I guess technically I need three. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's kind of interesting. So it seems like it's a very simplified way of constructing a multi-person multi-sig. You can see like the name of each Nick, Adam, and Lloyd have created a multi-sig together. So I want to show their website and just kind of cover a little bit about what they're trying to do, namely the comparison of what multisig can typically be like versus this. So let's chat.

Legacy multi-sig versus Frostnap. So legacy multi-sig, transaction fees can be higher. That's because multiple signatures, multiple inputs, all that kind of stuff. Worse privacy because there's large on-chain footprints that designate, hey, this is a multi-sig transaction. It can be a technical setup, depending on how you're doing it. So there can be more technical barriers for the average person. You'd have your fixed signing devices.

Now, I'm, I would maybe, I don't know exactly how they're specifying that, but I would maybe push back on that. You can swap things out. And then there are descriptor backup gotchas, they're saying. So maybe they've simplified that process. Side note, of course, I'll be doing a video on this when I get my hands on it. But Frostnap, what they're saying, same fees as single signature wallets and hidden multi-sig. Now, that is possible because they are using shnob. signatures, which means that you can aggregate all the signatures from the different signers

and hash it into a single approval signature. So on-chain, not only is it less data, so it's cheaper, but it also appears as a regular single-signature transaction, which is kind of cool. And so this is something that taproot enabled. Now, simple and quick multi-sig, so I'm assuming the simplicity comes in the set up in the daisy chaining of devices during the initialization. Flexible signers with ability to add and remove soon, trademark. And then simple T of N recovery.

Okay, interesting. So I'm interested in kind of how they said this up again. This is they've got like their initial prototype going and everything. So I'm going to have to play around with. this, but again, anything that simplifies a setup for an individual to make themselves more secure, I think is great. And so I'm excited to see this come to fruition and start shipping. But I mean, Nathan, do you have any first thoughts here? No, that's exactly. I'm on the same sort of lines. There's like, whenever I'm talking to people, whenever I'm onboarding new people, I'm very

conscientious that more coins have been lost than been stolen. And so even in situations where multi-sig is definitely appropriate, I don't want to rush them there. because there is more to keep track of. There's more to worry about. There's more things that we have to manage. Sure, like the descriptor file. I got to make sure we got that backed up, saved. We're all good on that front.

So Cold Card is still my favorite, right? It's the one that I out there. There are lots of good products out there. But I love that there's more user-friendly multi-six setups. So this along with the, what is it, the big key? Yeah. Like, they absolutely have a wonderful purpose, and I think it's great, right? I'm glad to see there's more innovation.

We're trying new things, and we're continuing to level up self-custity. Like, self-custity security should be. and is the focus. If things are too cumbersome, if they're too hard, people are going to default to using idiots like Coinbase, and I don't want that.

So I'm happy to have additional options, maybe something a little bit simpler. And man, if I got my, like, say, wish list for this, is I want my little, like, centipad setup. If I can get that air gap with the QR code,

man, off to the races, that sounds great. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. That'd be a solid option there. Now, everybody that's watching that maybe hasn't dove into multi-sig, again, there's a playlist.

I encourage you to take peak, just head over to the channel and just search the playlist there. There's a full multi-sig one. But again, things like Nunchuk with built-in inheritance. Unchained is a great option. I believe they're only in the U.S. now, which is unfortunate. CASA did add Ethereum, but functionally, it's still, like it can be secure. You can roll it yourself with things like Sparrow and Nunchuk as well. Again, Blue Wallet even does multi-sig. There's Keeper. There's Leanna is very interesting with some of the stuff that they're doing.

There's a lot of options out there. So peruse through, take a look at what might be good for you. But, you know, first master cold storage before you start diving in to multisig. You've got to get those skills in order. And it's one step at a time. Now, I wanted to shift gears here a little bit. There's something that you brought to my attention, which is interesting. in and around the realm of mining and privacy with mining.

So this is kind of cool. Calais, who I love is awesome. Hashpool. This is an accountless and privacy preserving Bitcoin mining pool in development that uses cashew e-cash for payouts and accounting. It's designed for small individual miners like the Bitax. Hashpool could allow payouts of a single Satoshi per miner.

So there's a whole article on this, But more or less, using eCash mints, eCash being, there's a trust tradeoff there, of course, but it's kind of designed for small amounts in the first place. And that's what he's saying here. You can get eCash payouts. So there's no on-chain fees. There's not even lightning fees. You just get paid out to an e-cash wallet.

Transactions on e-cash are near perfectly private. And then you can, you know, from there, zap to a lightning wallet, whatever you want. And that's pretty compelling, especially if you're doing something like running a bidax or a future bid or something. If you're pool mining, that's pretty sweet. And I'm very much an advocate of if you're going to be using something that has a trust tradeoff and has a degree of custody involved for small amounts, then you may as well be getting the absolute best privacy that you can't. So I don't know, Nathan, do you have some thoughts here? No, very much are the same lines.

And for me, it's just I love seeing anything that enables more of this at-home pleb mining. Just for when you're getting that kind of robustness, getting other players in the space, I want to see things pulled away from the corporate side as much as possible. I know it's a giant mountain to climb, but it doesn't mean we can't try, right? Bedax in every home. And to make it easier, simpler, smaller payouts, get people learning, get people participating. better understanding, right? Sometimes a lot of these concepts

and more technical aspects of Bitcoin, you're not going to get them until you try to use them or play with them. So I absolutely love to see it. Yeah, absolutely. What were we laughing at? There's a great,

there's an excellent, excellent comment that lightning goats in the chat said, no way I'm trusting my teeth with CASA. I think we need to provide some comments. context here. We're deviating a little bit from the mining, but just really quick here, this financial times will call her a journalist. Why do they always look like that? Like her outfit and everything. Why do they have to look like that? Yeah. So here's here's the quote of this woman not understanding seemingly Bitcoin or just generally money. She said, my teeth are scarce,

but they're not worth billions of dollars. Her exact quote was, my teeth are scarce and pretty useful, but they're not worth a billion bucks, something like that. Anyways, financial times. Imagine writing for the financial times and saying that out loud.

No, imagine no one's stopping you in proofreading it or like checking it out beforehand and then also being like, yeah, I got them. Those Bitcoiners. It's it's astounding absolutely but I I digress I saw this one going around I'm curious that Mr. Sessions if you saw anything else this week you'd recommend to people to check out or anything else that'd be a cool suggestion yes absolutely so what's the Canute

Bitcoin Infinity Show yes Bitcoin Infinity Show so they are now doing live streams right they are they just had the first one I think it was like four days ago with Samson Mao. Now, they've done live stream before us, but I think they're like committing to they're going to do the live broadcast as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So shout out to Luke DeWolf and Knut's Van Holm. These guys are awesome. I believe I get to see Canute again in, I think he's coming to Calgary, right, for the Bickham Rodeo. If he's not, he better be now. You better be here, Canute. I know you'll see this. I'm pretty sure he is. And then he's also, I'm going to be seeing him, I think, in Oslo and Prodial.

coming up, which I'm very, very excited for. So, yeah, it should be. But Bitcoin Infinity Show, check it out. These guys are awesome. And now doing live streams. So awesome, awesome, awesome. And I'm going to, again, for our session suggestions, plural today, let's just go through those. We'll go through those playlists.

Once again, privacy playlist, QR code there, very relevant to the topics at hand. Study up, guys. honestly, if you're not coin joining, especially within Canada, and I'm not really at liberty to say anything more than that, but just know that coin joining is important, especially in Canada. I'm leaving- Then where is coin joining really important? I know there's somewhere that's really important. Especially in Canada.

Again, not at liberty to say much more, but just there are things that you need to be aware of. And one of them is coin join. Nonetheless, check out the privacy playlist and start learning there. Also, multi-sig, start peeking around at that if you haven't already. And just in the realm we were talking about the privacy mining, home mining, just as like a fun thing to dip your toes into a playlist on just home mining with cheap devices. Again, the Bitax, Future Bit, Bairns mini-miner, the Nure. X, which is a fork of the bidax project, even repurposing something like an S9.

So all of that, super, super important. And if you feel a little like I can't handle that myself, there's somebody in the room, Nathan, that you can book a one-on-one strategy call with, of course, with Bitcoin Mentor. So again, our team over at Bitcoin Mentor, incredible educators to help you through your Bitcoin journey, make sure that your setup is strong and bulletproof. And yeah, so you can scan that QR code on the screen, have it to little chat with Nathan, just figure out what you even, you know, need to learn, what you, what your learning trajectory looks like and what you might need some help with, you can reach out. I mean, Nathan, you've been dealing with a lot of different people,

a lot of different people at different levels. What's the experience been like so far? Well, it's been fantastic, because it's a nice thing, too. One thing that I take for granted at this point in time is that so many people I talk to have actually never talked to another Bitcoiner. They don't have somebody in their life. They haven't found a meetup yet or a group of people that they can relate to. And so a lot of times it's like a wonderful conversation, something technical, some suggestions, things we can kind of go from there. But it's also nice just to say hi, right?

To talk to somebody else who understands this and has that alignment on worldview and ethics and morality and what's important here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, well, I mean, it's very, very important to make sure you're on top of the tools at hand. There's tons of free stuff on the channel for you to read up on. But between social engineering, between physical attack, between databases being compromised, your data being leaked, and real world information about you being out there, you need to have all the best tools at hand. One of them is your digital hygiene, but then also your security. We're going to be having

Matt Hill on Why Are We Bullish tomorrow evening, alongside Brian DeMint and Ant. It's going to be an awesome, awesome discussion. We're going to find out why they're bullish, but I have a feeling that, I mean, Matt always gets so spicy in and around this digital hygiene and digital sovereignty and all of that. He is so passionate about it. So I'm very, very excited for that. And, yeah, it should be a good time.

Also, Nathan, who did you have on mentor session earlier in the week? This week we had on Lenore Skinezy, a write-out reason magazine and author of Free Range Kids. So Bitcoin parents out there, you are parents, you're planning on becoming future parents. Check it out. It was basically full permission to ignore the looks of your neighbors and let your kids warm the neighborhood. Awesome, awesome. Well, that's great to hear. We're going to round out everybody again, if you enjoy the show,

make sure you give that like button a smash. And be sure to tune in for Why Are We Bullish and everything we got coming up next week and hit up BTCSessions.ca. Sign up for the newsletter because you can win a cold card queue every month. We're out. Keep stacking sets. Keep stacking skills. I'm Ben.

This is Nathan with the BTC sessions. And this was your daily session. We'll see you guys soon.