Mailbag, incl: Berkshire Hathaway or an ETF? September 13, 2026

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

A LISTNER PRODUCTION Shares, the SP, the ISX, stocks. This is the Motley Fool Money Mailbag.

Scott Phillips (0:10)

Welcome to Motley Fool Money. It's Sunday, it's special. The sun is out where I am. I hope it is where you are as well, because this man has been up since well before dawn. Such is the passion, such is the drive, such is the enthusiasm. And frankly, well, we can't be sure he's not trying to take over the world in the background. He is, of course, Andrew Ram Page, the man who invented, gave birth to, who nurtured, and who has taken strawman.com to unicorn style heights. Mr. Page, how are you?

Andrew Page (0:36)

Very good. That'd be nice if that was all true. And I'm capable of suspending disbelief enough to...

Scott Phillips (0:44)

To think it's partially true. So, it's kind of like...

Andrew Page (0:49)

It's so distant from that, that it's funny. But hey, you know, I'll take the ego boost.

Scott Phillips (0:55)

Theatre of the mind, mate. Theatre of the mind. I am of course, Scott Phillips from the Motley Fool. This is Motley Fool Money. And on Sunday mornings, if you're listening to this, as it gets released or at any other point during the week, we do a mailbag episode where we ask you for your questions, thoughts, comments, feedback and suggestions, and then do our best to not completely trample all over them, but actually add a slight amount of value. And yeah, some days we do, some days we don't. But today, hopefully, there will be one of those days where we do. Mate, got a first question from an anonymous questioner. We talked about the Coldcard exploit, the Bitcoin kind of thing. I'll get you to explain that in a little bit. But we had a listener who we talked about at the time, but an email wrote in and basically wanted to know some more detail, mate. So, morning, gentlemen, of the pod machine goes the question. Long time listener, first time emailer. Thank you. Consider the ring duly kissed.

Now, our listener was smart enough to realize that that is not enough. So he says, or she says, but should that prove insufficient, permit me to lower myself to the floor and grovel before the god kings and overlords of the pod machine, whose investing genius is matched only by their divine wisdom, their omniessence and their patience with pedants like me and their questions.

SPEAKER_1 (2:04)

That's how it's done.

Andrew Page (2:05)

Thank you.

Scott Phillips (2:07)

You can learn a few things. My question is for Andrew.

Andrew Page (2:10)

God, okay.

Scott Phillips (2:10)

Keen for your take on the Coldcard exploit and whether you are thinking about doing anything different in future.

Given the failure was in seed generation, rather than anything the user could see or control, are you changing your own setup at all? Or is your view that this is a single vendor's bug rather than an indictment of hardware wallets generally? I currently hold on a hardware device with a different provider and I'm now weighing whether to move it off entirely.

Is that an overreaction? What would your practical advice be for making a Bitcoin holding more secure right now? We did talk about it at the time, so this is a little bit old ground, but I thought it's a very specific question. And we should also say one person's decision around how they handle and store the Bitcoin is obviously different from someone else's. So don't do whatever Andrew is going to do or not do as a result. And that goes for all the comments that we make. But mate, maybe if you want to talk about what you're doing or not doing, feel free. If you don't do that, that's completely cool. We don't dox you or anything else you're doing. But in the context of the question, are there things that our listeners should be thinking about if they hold their Bitcoin and are worried that the Coldcard thing may happen to them or something similar?

Andrew Page (3:20)

Yeah. So super quickly for those who are going, what the hell is this about? There was a private company, they made what's called a hardware wallet. Really, it's a bad description. It's really a sign of the vice.

Scott Phillips (3:31)

Anyway, honestly, I'll go down there. The whole dynamic, let's review the whole thing. Anyway, keep going.

Andrew Page (3:38)

It's unnecessarily complicated, but getting a lot better. But anyway, there was a vulnerability in it. Someone used AI to exploit it and they sold a bunch of bitcoins. And what was so heartbreaking about it was that really a lot of people just did the right thing. You listen to all the maxis out there and people like myself are like, oh, it's good to have self custody and this is the safest way to do it. It's a very reputable brand too. So it really was a gut punch for a lot of people and it was a tragedy for those that lost a lot of money as a result of it.