Everything you need to know about $100M Bitcoin Hack (Bitcoin Security EXPERT EXPLAINS) | EP 1562

**Nico** (0:01)
Yo, there is now over a hundred million dollars with the Bitcoin that has been drained from the cold card exploit. As new developments continue to come, the idea of holding your own Bitcoin is being put into question. So today we've got a Bitcoin self-custody expert on the show to help us navigate all of this and discuss all the best ways that you can hold your own Bitcoin safely. I want to welcome on the stage, we've got Dhruv. Dhruv is the co-founder and CSO of Unchained. He also studied mathematics and physics at Columbia University and pursued a Ph.D. and physics in the University of Texas at Austin.
So expert, to say the least, Dhruv, I haven't seen you in years. Welcome to the show. How are you? How are you doing? Crazy, crazy weekend. I would say July 30th was the day that will forever live in infamy in terms of regarding the Bitcoin movement overall.

**Dhruv** (0:59)
Yeah, one of the more intense weekends of my career in Bitcoin, for sure.

**Nico** (1:03)
So Dhruv, let's like kind of break it down. I'm going to piggyback off what I was saying yesterday. I think the idea of holding your Bitcoin on a single signature device, I think that especially if it's your life savings, if it's a token amount, that's a different conversation. But if it's your life savings, I think multi-sig should become the standard. I think the tricky part is navigating multi-sig, and multi-sig kind of adds complexity to that. So Unchained has this incredible product where you guys have an excellent UI, UX, where it makes it very easy for a user that perhaps isn't technically savvy to set up a collaborative custody setup. So could you talk a little bit about that? And then I want to talk more so about the cold card exploit.

**Dhruv** (1:50)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's a strange week, guys. I'll put that out there.
The tenor, the emotions.
If I'm honest, part of me feels strange talking about, hey, I have a solution to this problem when there's so many people who are just right now having the emotions and the reactions to what's happening to them. But at the same time, it is true. You know, if you're using Bitcoin in any way, you're kind of living in the future. And I think if you're engaging in self custody, even more so. And I would say if you're in multi SIG or collaborative custody, you're going to be unchain even more so. I think for a lot of people, getting into Bitcoin seemed okay. And then when you have exchange hacks, you sort of realize the value of self custody. When you're already in self custody and you have an event like what has happened this past week, you start to realize the value of not having single points of failure and wanting things like multi SIG or collaborative custody to protect you. I'm very happy to go talk more about that. But maybe we can talk more about the underlying events and what's happened. And I want to make sure anybody listening to this, if they're not already aware, is taking actions and steps to do the right things for their holdings.

**Nico** (2:54)
Absolutely. So what are you guys officially recommending? I can tell you a little bit what we recommended here at Simply Bitcoin. Out of an abundance of caution, I've been telling everybody move your funds away from the cold card device.
It's unfortunate because that was perceived to be the gold standard for a lot of the Bitcoin maximalist community. But out of an abundance of caution and precaution, move your Bitcoin off of the cold card device, especially as the dust settles. Unfortunately, what we've seen, just based on Chain Analytics, is that about 22,000 Bitcoin has moved from self-custodial wallets onto exchanges. Now, that could be a temporary measure, but I think our goal here at Simply Bitcoin is for individuals to reclaim back their financial sovereignty. And the way that you do that is via self-custody. So, what is your official position, Dhruv, in terms of what are you guys recommending? I'm sure you guys have had an incredibly busy weekend, especially since your product is collaborative multi-sig custody.

**Dhruv** (4:02)
Yeah, it has been busy. I would say that, first and foremost, I try to frame this as don't have single points of failure, but what's behind that? What's behind not having single points of failure is ultimately the irreversibility of Bitcoin as an underlying asset class, as a monetary network. Payments cannot be reversed, which means if you lose access to your private keys or if someone else gets access to them, whether that's through a leak or your computer being hacked, or in this case, a weak source of entropy, because there's no takebacks and that you really need to be able to survive multiple things going wrong.