bitcoin wallets that cannot be hacked in 2016 malte moser, @ittayeyal and @el33th4xor published “bitcoin vaults” and “bitcoin covenants”, describing how a simple, harmless upgrade to bitcoin script could help build hack-resistant wallets the secret is simple: instead of attempting to build a perfect self-custody system, accept that humans are imperfect and WILL make mistakes. therefore mistakes must be recoverable moser-eyal-sirer “vaults” add a delay to transactions. imagine if your hardware wallet had a 24 hour delay whenever sending transactions. during that delay, if you notice something is fishy (you’re getting hacked!) you hit a special button and your funds are directed to your coinbase deposit address instead, for example that’s it! you only rely on coinbase (again, just an example) if your main wallet got hacked. if you’re not hacked, you use your wallet normally and coinbase cannot control it. you simply have to wait 24 hours when sending. for long-term storage this is usually fine in crypto (non-bitcoin), institutional grade solutions like Safe on EVM and Squads on solana protect over $100B in assets in constructs that are similar to the 2016 vault proposal. many/most major companies in those ecosystems use those solutions and they are considered an obvious best-practice over there but in bitcoin, this can’t be implemented without simple upgrades like OP_CTV, OP_VAULT, OP_CAT, or others over the years, in addition to moser, eyal and sirer, many experts like @jamesob, @JeremyRubin, @kanzure, @EliBenSasson — and even retards like yours truly — have attempted to promote any of those proposals to enable this kind of safer custody. it still hasn’t been done, imo mostly due to political and puritanical reasons (various versions of “i don’t like the people who proposed this”) but the truth is that if this feature was in bitcoin, many coldcard users would’ve been directed to use it, and would’ve been safe today. vaults and covenants don’t require wallets and humans to be perfect. they assume that they aren’t. people who don’t want to use vaults and covenants don’t have to. but people who want to use them should be allowed to. it’s time to give bitcoiners covenants.

everybody i know who’s in cybersecurity (not just in crypto) is going absolutely apeshit this weekend trying to asses how broken their stuff is meanwhile the bitcoin podcasters: jUsT uSe DicE bRO o_O

🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: BIP-110 DELAYED due to the coldcard incident, BIP-110 community leaders have decided to DELAY ACTIVATION. a new activation date will be announced at a later time. the bitcoin ecosystem is currently dealing with unprecedented coordinated cybersecurity response. attempting a soft fork at the same time would distract from this important activity and could harm victims. therefore, the BIP-110 community has decided to POSTPONE BIP-110 ACTIVATION EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. if you are running a BIP-110 node, please revert to a non-BIP-110 version IMMEDIATELY to avoid premature activation. 🚨🚨🚨PLEASE SHARE AND RETWEET THIS TO MAKE SURE THE COMMUNITY IS INFORMED! 🚨🚨🚨

i consider @nvk a friend (even if we frequently disagree on so many things) i know coldcard was controversial even before yesterday. the losses are tragic and heartbreaking. customers deserved better i still think it was a fantastic product. i know countless people who took their first steps in self-custody thanks to nvk and coldcard. the cynics will say it was all for nothing but i disagree. and while it doesn’t make the losses any easier to digest, there are also many people who were able to hodl for years thanks to coldcard and did not end up being victims of the attacks. coldcard was first to innovate many security features that were later adopted by competitors and improved security for everybody. ultimately the devastating nature of cybersecurity is that one mistake erases a decade of strong decisions. coldcard failed where it matters and there’s no way to erase that fact but i do hope that nvk and the gang, after doing what they can to help remedy the situation as much as possible, and after taking time to regroup, will come back one day and keep on building. bitcoin will be better for it

the idea of your bitcoin or crypto resting easy in some secret location while you enjoy life not worrying about it is currently unrealistic it was somewhat realistic before. but the cost of cybersecurity attacks went down exponentially, and continues to go down exponentially on a monthly basis as new, more capable AI models are publicly released what this means is that your cybersecurity must now be actively managed. it cannot be passive. someone must worry about your shit every day and every night, actively dismiss old assumptions and attempt new approaches on a weekly basis to adapt to a dynamic landscape of new threats so your options are: 1. be the one who is worried. assess developing threats yourself on a daily/weekly basis, stay up to date with new models and tools as soon as they’re launched, analyze your own security practices ruthlessly day and night. for most people, including most experts, i think this is highly impractical. but you’re welcome to try 2. store your coins with a competent third party service that you trust to do the worrying for you. they should have the resources, skills and incentives to actively manage the cybersecurity risk for you. if you don’t want to worry yourself you need to pay someone else to be worried. it is what it is i’m not trying to shit on self-custody. technically you can have someone professional actively worry about your self-custody setup, that’s fine too one day, the threat level will plateau and will stop increasing exponentially on a monthly basis, and then passive security will gradually become acceptable. but today is not that day

Neat to see Popkins as a Guest collection on the Wizard Portal from @TaprootWizards 🧙‍♂️ Listings are displayed in fiat value, uses Privy wallet and and can even be paid using Apple Pay (ie: with your new X Money card) Props to @udiWertheimer

this is a great question the trick was to film this scene first an inexperienced director might shoot this on the last day, but then if the actress tumbles down the edge and dies you have to throw all the previously shot footage and start from scratch with a new actress

fuentes understands israel’s motivations pretty well by now (took him a while, he was wrong about it for most of the last 3 years) most of this video is correct. but the last few seconds are not. israel is not doing this to “dominate” the region, and really the situation he’s describing isn’t “domination” it’s equilibrium. with iran significantly weakened, saudi/UAE/qatar will dominate the region. not israel. israel is too small, too poor. but with IRGC out of the picture, an equilibrium can and will form where all middle eastern can finally work together constructively using internal resources it will end the dependence on american funding and middle eastern capital will finally start flowing into the US instead of the other way around israelis want nothing more than an equilibrium that allows them to be financially independent in the region. that’s it.

not that anyone cares, but my opinion is that this is a great idea in private conversations i’ve veen saying for a while that i believe bitcoin treasury companies, etf issuers, exchanges, etc should assume a leadership role in bitcoin development no one else was going to do it. the “reddit troll who is also a part-time software engineer” software development model for bitcoin stopped working roughly 10 years ago hilariously the bip110tards are crying about this, but only a few weeks ago they crucified gloria for daring to contribute to bitcoin while (allegedly) not owning any btc the only logical conclusion would be that bitcoin protocol development should therefore be driven by the largest holders. it makes perfect sense and is the best available way to align incentives that is not to say that they will immediately do a good job. they’re just starting out. they’ll probably make mistakes. but they have the incentives to course-correct over time, and that’s all you can ask for for most of the last decade, a group of reddit trolls convinced bitcoin holders that bitcoin protocol developers shouldn’t care about bitcoin price. that they should be “above it”. that is stupid. that approach failed. 100% of the controversy around bitcoin code stewardship has been due to that misalignment the choice of words here is also very telling. the corporations view the role of the software devs they fund to be “securing the network”. not developing it. they are not decision makers. they are janitors. good.

pro tip if you’re a film director don’t waste your time and money on imax 70mm cameras or whatever the fuck, just make sure your most important scenes look good in 9:16 vertical video because they’re all gonna end up on tiktok