#797: The ColdCard Hack Was Only The Beginning with Erin Redwing

SPEAKER_1 (0:07)

You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

SPEAKER_2 (0:10)

When you talk about a Fed just going nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

SPEAKER_1 (0:18)

I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

SPEAKER_2 (0:29)

I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_3 (0:31)

If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

Marty Bent (0:36)

Erin, I wish you weren't as dead on as you were when we last spoke. What was that? End of June, beginning of July?

Erin Redwing (0:45)

A lot has happened.

Marty Bent (0:46)

I'm shell shocked, I think is one way to explain the feeling in the air. It was just in DC at the BPI Summit.

Erin Redwing (0:54)

Yeah. We've all witnessed man-made horrors beyond our comprehension over the last couple months. I feel like when we first met at end of June, I was trying to do my Paul Revere like, something's coming guys, something's going to happen. Just be aware, just be aware, and then should hit the fan basically immediately after we posted that episode.

We have to review it. We obviously have to go back and do a retrospective.

Marty Bent (1:25)

Where should we start? Let's start on the Bitcoin side. We'll get to the AI, obviously cold card.

That is, I think, the bomb that went off first, and there's been a ton of lingering and expansive vulnerabilities discovered. Obviously, we have a liquid bunch of lightning infrastructure getting attacked as well. Like I was saying, I was just in DC for BPI, and I was saying it a bit tongue in cheek, but there was a lot of developers, HRF has a hackathon going on today, down there. So a lot of the developers were in DC, and I think Shellshock is an apt description of how many people were feeling this week. It was good to get a bunch of people in one spot, and let loose at a beefsteak, and have some drinks at PubKey DC, but there were some more stories being told.

Erin Redwing (2:21)

Yeah. I think at least from the astrological perspective, which by the way, if you've clicked on this video, not knowing that that's my perspective, that's my perspective, bear with me. The Shellshock major tower collapsing moments are going to chill out for a little bit, although I also would say it's becoming the new normal. I think that's part of it as well, is that we maybe weren't expecting that something like Cold Card could have had a vulnerability on the level that they had, and certainly not that it could have been exploited and found by something that would have taken a developer or a hacker hundreds of hours probably to find.

I think there's some aspect of the hacks will continue, but this is the new normal. But I think in terms of the paradigm shift, we have a second to process that. That was what I was actually saying just before we started recording, is I think right now, we basically have to process the PTSD. We have to actually move through it and figure out what it looks like to be in this new normal. And I think for Bitcoin developers or anyone who's really making software that has to be really secure, if you're making something that secures people's money, it has to be extremely robust and secure. It's a new normal. It's a new paradigm where there is super intelligent capabilities of attack, and you also have some of those abilities at your disposal, depending on which models agree to let you red team your own software and which ones downgrade you, which I'm sure we'll get into.

But yeah, I think it's good to do things like, as you said, like have a beef steak, go out for a drink with a friend to talk because ultimately, the thing that we do that AI doesn't do is we are humans and we have human experiences. And I think it's easy when we're going through extremely transformative times where it feels like I can't look away from the timeline like, what if another hack happens? What if all my Bitcoin gets drained? I can't not look away, which was unfortunately a lot of the story of the cold card incident, right? It's like, if you weren't on Twitter basically, that first day or two, you were screwed. And so I think it's really difficult to find that balance as we're moving into this extremely accelerating age where you don't want to lose your mind. You don't want to become the machine and completely fuse with it and lose your human aspects. So at least from the astrological perspective, I think right now we're moving into an era where, at least for the next six weeks, a couple months, it's good to just withdraw a little bit and look back at the year and be like, wow, what the hell happened? Where was I in January 2026? What did I think was going to happen this year and what has actually happened this year? Because it's been really crazy and I definitely think, at least for me, July and August, I feel like I was on red alert for weeks on end and I wasn't even a developer who had to deal with it. I was just watching in horror. I don't know, I assume you probably had a similar experience.