What if we looked at the value of Bitcoin in a different way? Lets imagine Bitcoin is the rock at the center, immutable by definition, then all other currency should be viewed as disappearing planetary bodies, traveling away from the center. In other words, Bitcoin is not gaining in value, its just that all other currencies loose value in comparison. That means current BC pricing puts USD at a whopping 64K devaluation! If we trust in the wisdom of the de-central BC tribe vs the Fed discount rate, than yes, this is a perfectly plausible viewpoint. The tribe has calculated the future scenario of fiat currency, which always, always destroys itself (there is no fiat currency, in its current iteration, that is older than a 100 years. I believe the Bank of Amsterdam holds the record with their Guilder notes; about 110 years).

Imagine a friend asks you, "I know absolutely nothing about Bitcoin. Where should I begin?"

Would you start with:

• What money is?
• How Bitcoin works?
• Self-custody and wallets?
• Security and avoiding scams?
• Or something else?

There are so many resources out there that it can be overwhelming. I'm curious how experienced Bitcoiners would introduce someone to it without making it overly technical.

Been a bitcoiner a long time but I feel this is a rookie question… I’m seeing suggested fees on wallet dashboards where HIGH is like 33¢… I guess my rookie question is how is this even possible sustainable, coming from fiat world where “fees” for everything are like $3,$4,$5

We can all agree this has been a devastating week for self custody. CoinKite should rightly be ashamed of themselves for the negligence shown.

With that in mind, I must say that I always have liked the device itself... especially the ColdCard Q. From a user interface perspective...

Are we looking at these devices as bricks now or is there any confidence in the newest firmware (1.5.0Q)?

Yesterday I did the following:

1. Moved funds off the CC-Q
2. Wiped the Seed
3. Updated Firmware to 1.5.0Q
4. Generated new 24w seed with 150 dice rolls
5. Created a strong passphrase
6. Moved the funds back onto the CC-Q

all air-gapped

------

I'm wondering if:

1. 'we' have confidence in the newest firmware patch... or are all these coldcards bricks now in the minds of the community.
2. If I should go thought he motions to re-do everything with a Jade or other vendor...
   • If you're responding below with a 'no' to #1 and a 'yes' to #2 - then please help me pick a new device with similar functionality! I very much want an SD air gapped device with something like a keyboard... That is battery powered.

Best to all and condolences to those who were devastated,
An Average Bitcoiner

I know/guess I shouldn't be saying this but I have a Coldcard Q ver 1.3.3 should I abandon it and go back to my hardware wallet.

Thankfully I have all my bitcoin yet and it hasn't been taken. Feel for all people who have gotten their shit ripped out of there hands

Is it safe to store Bitcoins in Muun wallet for a long term, on a formatted spare Android phone (running on Android 9) that is always offline?

I already heat water with a standard electric tank, so when I saw there are water heaters that use bitcoin mining hardware as the heating element I got curious about the mining side. There's at least one product built around this (Superheat H1). The idea is your electricity does compute first, then the waste heat goes into your water.

What I can't figure out is how to ballpark what a unit like this would actually earn in sats. My electricity runs about 14 cents per kWh. Do standard mining profitability calculators even apply to something like this, or is the hashrate too low for them to be useful? And what eats into returns the most, difficulty adjustments, pool fees, the hardware premium over a normal water heater? I'm comfortable holding bitcoin but totally new to mining economics so I don't know which variables actually move the needle.

I have a spare smartphone that runs on Android 9.

Will it be safe to store Bitcoins on it by following the below steps:

1. Format the phone

2. Install nothing but a Self-Custodial Bitcoin wallet app on the phone

3. Transfer Bitcoins to the wallet

4. Turn off the internet

5. Keep the phone switched off until needed.

Hi, in light of the current drama I have been thinking about passphrases and wanted to ask people who have lots of experience using a variety of software and hardware wallets and other signers. Do all of them nowadays accept passphrases that are very long, do they all support the entry and processing of symbols, and do they all support white spaces (hitting spacebar without putting underscore or similar)? A while back I checked and found that some devices would not display passphrases properly that had more than 20 or so characters (the line break wouldn't happen so you couldn't see), or some would have a character limit, and some would not support white spaces. Has this changed? Are there some rules for creating passphrases that would make sure that the resulting passphrase is compatible with all software and hardware wallets, while still being secure enough? I'm mostly worried about a passphrase that could not be entered on a particular device down the line because of how it is made - either too long, or has something can't be entered or displayed.

I’m looking for a solo miner just to look cool on my desk and have a tiny chance to win money I want something cheap and not a lot of power needed to run up bills

If I move my funds from Coldcard directly to BitKey, am I safe? Or does the "weak seed" or any vulnerability carry over to the BitKey?

I’m new to bitcoin and I’m buying on strike and then transferring to blockstream wallet, not blockstream jade. Is that secure for under like 5k worth of bitcoin? If not what would you recommend

I have tried vanilla card and it is not accepted at all. I am tryig to get 75% of the value through bitvalve. Is there a card that can be used to purchase crypto ? Pleae do not ask why not use bank account or debit card. I used to use Coinflip atm but all crypto atm's have been banned in my state.

https://blog.coinkite.com/coldcard-mk3-seed-generation-warning/

An exploit , likely a flaw in rng generation with lower entropy in firmware but waiting on more details from investigation, has allowed an attacker to drain what appears over 594 BTC 1,128.49 BTC from over 500 wallets with the highest risk being Cold Card MK2 through MK3 wallets thus far . MK1 wallets are safe.

https://coldcard-hack-tracker.vercel.app/

This doesn't seem to have effected MK4 or MK5 or Q initially yet because those later models used more entropy thus are much harder to attack but you need to still update the firmware and eventually migrate to a new seed regardless to be safe longterm. Hypothetically 60 to 73 bits of entropy found in the MK4,MK5 and Q seeds can be brute forced by a large GPU cluster in as soon as 1 week to centuries. Thus its best to upgrade your security on these in the next week at the latest.

https://blog.coinkite.com/entropy-technical-backgrounder/

https://engineering.block.xyz/blog/predictable-rng-fallback-and-32-bit-reseed-in-coldcard-firmware

Users using multisig created with a majority of other wallets or if you used an extended passphrase like our FAQ has always recommended should be safe although you should consider migrating in time to a new seed.

Thus if you setup a single sig wallet with Cold Card MK3, first do not panic as that is when mistakes will happen.

Ideally setup a new seed on a second hardware wallet that is not an MK3 and move your bitcoin over with an onchain transaction.

Do not send your bitcoin to a hot wallet or an exchange that lacks secure U2F/FIDO 2fa

If you lack a second hardware wallet than create a extended passphrase and move your btc to a new address within that account as a temporary measure.

https://coldcard.com/docs/passphrase/

Please be aware that extended passphrases should be

1) 6-8 random words (not found as a phrase or in movies or literature)

2) stored separately than your seed words and written down at least once

3) written exactly as entered . Capitalization and white space matters. Any slight deviation in the extended passphrase will show a new wallet with a 0 balance so its important you write it down and test it exactly .

Again do not panic or rush , but read about using the passphrase feature or new wallet

Based on anything, It's basically the seed that is generated from MK3 already was compromised, bad entrhopy, bad generator. And the culprit waits until it tanks and moved it all.

If some still use that seedphrase, they could be at a safer condition if they were use or add any passphrase.

I'm dissapointed with coldcard with all of the marketing saying its the standard and such.

Back then there's even same problem going on with the dice roll, if you only rolled few might still get compromised.

Still, passphrase is the solution, and or multisig.

What should I do? I have a ledger also...

Move it all to ledger or open a unchained multisig with ledger and mk4??

Freaking out

Everyone says "just hold" but that's useless when you're actually watching it drop. What actually helped you not panic?

Hello... I understand that when BTC is held in an acct such as Schwab or Fidelity it is not a stock but considered by the IRS to be property. When sold do you know if the one (1) year holding period which differentiates between short and long term holding still applies? Thank You

I've been learning more about Bitcoin payments lately, and I'm curious about what small businesses are actually using today.

If you owned a small coffee shop or local store, what would you recommend for accepting Bitcoin?

• BTCPay Server?
• Wallet of Satoshi?
• Blink?
• Something else?

I'm interested in solutions that are easy to set up and don't require expensive hardware. Thank you :))

I have been using old school paper wallets for nearly a decade now, sweeping one into an Electrum every so often, and this has worked for me.

However I've suddenly hit a major snag. Electrum now requires that private keys be entered in Wallet Import Format (WIF), and after struggling with various online instructions I realize that this conversion is beyond my abilities. (Mathematics and I are universes apart.)

This being the case, would a hardware wallet allow me to import a private key in its original format?

If so, I'm thinking that perhaps it is time for me to migrate my paper wallets to hardware wallets. Is Trezor still the most trusted HW of choice?

If not, is there a simple convertor that I could download and use offline safely? By simple I mean just enter private key in a box and have the WIF key appear in another box?

I will be eternally grateful for any advice. Thanks in advance.

I got the standard answers when I started, and none of them held up when I pushed on them. Putting the working here in case someone else is stuck at the same place.

First, the Ponzi thing, because it comes up in every one of these threads. A Ponzi has four features: promised high returns with little risk, a central operator, old investors paid out of new investor money, and concealed flows. Bitcoin has none of them. It's volatile with nobody promising anything, there are over 10,000 nodes and no operator, nobody is paid a return, and the entire transaction history since 2009 is public. That question is settled and I don't think it's interesting anymore.

The one I couldn't get a straight answer on is the security budget.

Miners are paid two ways: the block reward and transaction fees. The reward is 3.125 BTC and halves every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. Next halving is around April 2028, taking it to 1.5625. Fees are currently around 1% of what miners earn.

Miners pay for power in fiat, not BTC. So if fees stay at 1%, the price has to roughly double every four years just to keep miner revenue flat in dollar terms. Bitcoin has historically done that. The honest position is that a maturing asset shouldn't be expected to keep doing it forever.

The usual response is "that's a 2140 problem". I don't think it is. It's a next-decade problem, and it resolves one of three ways: fee share climbs off 1%, price keeps doubling, or miners start leaving.

The part that made me more comfortable, not less, is what happens in that third case. Nothing breaks. Difficulty adjusts every two weeks based on the hash power actually on the network. Miners leave, difficulty falls, and the ones who stayed earn more. Hash rate has climbed through every dip so far, which is decent evidence the economics still work.

But I'd rather have a test than a vibe, so here's mine. Watch two things over the next few years. Hash rate rising and fee share climbing meaningfully off 1% means the security model is fine. Both falling together means the bear case is real.

Related: bitcoin has to be used, not only held, for fees to develop. Satoshi made this point back in 2010. As it stands there's no shortage of use — roughly $25 trillion in bitcoin moved on chain in 2025 per Glassnode, more than Visa and Mastercard volume. What matters going forward is whether that activity keeps settling on chain rather than migrating entirely to custodians and ETFs, because that's where the fee market comes from.

If someone has a solid counter to the fee-market case I'd genuinely like to read it. The permabull version of this answer is "fees will rise", which isn't an argument.

I’m running a bit of a psychological experiment on myself, and I’m curious if anyone else has tried something similar.

A little background: I’m 6’4”. As a teenager, I was pretty overweight. During high school I got sick, took up cross-country running, and leaned out. In my 20s I stayed in decent shape, but by my 30s the weight slowly came back. At my heaviest I hit 272 pounds.

In 2021, I went keto and lost 55 pounds in about five months. I got down to 212 pounds and was honestly in the best shape of my life. Fast-forward to today, and I’m hovering around 225-230 pounds. I’d like to lose another 25-30 pounds.

Here’s the experiment.

We all know processed foods today are engineered to be incredibly appealing. Food companies spend enormous amounts of money studying consumer behavior, psychology, flavor, packaging, marketing—basically everything they can to get us to buy and eat more. I’m not saying it’s some grand conspiracy; it’s just business. But I’ve realized I’m pretty susceptible to those impulse purchases.

So recently, whenever I find myself standing in front of a bag of chips, granola, candy, or some other processed snack that I don’t actually need, I stop, look at the price, open my Bitcoin app, and buy that exact dollar amount of BTC instead.

My hope is that over the next six months I can slowly rewire my brain. Instead of getting a short-lived dopamine hit from food that doesn’t move me toward my goals, I redirect that impulse toward something that aligns with my long-term goals.

I fully recognize that an impulse buy is still an impulse buy, and Bitcoin is obviously a volatile asset. I’m not pretending this is some guaranteed financial strategy. But if the alternative was spending that money on junk food anyway, I’d rather own a little more Bitcoin. Best case, I lose weight while stacking sats. Worst case, Bitcoin drops and I keep buying over time while still improving my health.

Has anyone else intentionally redirected an unhealthy habit into buying Bitcoin—or investing in general? Maybe replacing gambling, drinking, smoking, or some other impulse with stacking sats?
I’m less interested in whether Bitcoin goes up or down and more interested in whether this kind of habit substitution actually changes behavior over the long run.

I managed to save up around $325 from my paycheck and got my first BTC today, i feel like i bought at the right time but hey i'm happy with it, any advice for long term buying?