Cypherpunk’d

Over $100M in Bitcoin vanished from hardware wallets — no phishing, no malware, nobody touched a device. Just a broken random number generator that sat in open-source code for five years. Matty sits down with Dr. Francesco Madonna — physician, former military medical officer, and founder/CEO of BitVault — to break down exactly how the Coldcard entropy failure worked, why "random" wasn't random, and what it means for the future of self-custody. Francesco also walks through his own near-miss with a physical attack scam, and how it led him to build a wallet where a stolen seed phrase still can't drain your funds — using on-chain time-locks and 2-of-3 multisig that always give the real owner priority over the attacker. In this episode: • How a single build flag turned "random" seeds into guessable ones • Why hardware wallets were never the whole story • Time-locked vaults, explained (the 80-year-old bank tech behind them) • Open source vs. closed source after a 5-year public bug • Francesco's Dubai-diamond-dealer scam story (and why he moved countries) • The 60/20/20 self-custody debate: are you a self-custody maxi? ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 Cold open 01:15 Dive in — what happened with Coldcard? 01:55 The RNG that was disconnected 02:36 The unvetted library & the ignored warning 03:02 "Less bits of entropy" — the seed phrase problem 03:42 1-to-100 vs 1-to-5: why randomness matters 04:36 Is your crypto safe? A dark week for self-custody ~09:00 Are you a self-custody maxi? ~14:00 Don't put all your eggs in one basket (the 60/20/20) ~22:00 Insurance, Coinbase vaults & Anchor Watch ~26:00 Time locks explained — the bank vault analogy ~34:00 The A/B/C multisig & why the user always has priority ~46:00 Open source vs closed source after the breach ~50:00 AI in wallet security / the red team 51:07 Lugano & Plan B 51:41 Final advice: self-custody didn't fail 53:59 Wrap & BitVault plug 54:25 Outro — cypherpunk manifesto quotes 🔐 Check out BitVault: https://bitvault.sv | @BitvaultApp 🎙️ Guest: Dr. Francesco Madonna — https://x.com/CiccioMadonna 🐇 Subscribe to Cypherpunk'd and head down the rabbit hole. ⚠️ Not financial advice. Do your own research. Bitcoin #SelfCustody #Coldcard #HardwareWallet #Cypherpunk #Multisig #BitVault #CryptoSecurity #Entropy

Kent Halliburton (Sazmining) grew up on a cranberry farm in Oregon, spent a decade in solar, and now runs a Bitcoin mining company from the jungle in Peru. This one goes deep. We get into why buying your Bitcoin on an exchange makes you a consumer instead of a producer, the 2013 split that broke how the community thinks about mining, "fiat hashers," and why the pubcos pivoting to AI might actually be a good thing. Then it gets real — Kent walks through the six-figure in-person scam that hit him in Amsterdam (yes, the one Wired covered), why the right to transact might be the most important right we have, and why he thinks Bitcoin is a 1,000-year project we're not building like one yet. Chapters: 00:00 Cold open 01:30 Cranberry farm to Bitcoin mining 09:00 Wild sats & the 2013 timeline split 18:00 Fiat hashers & mining centralization 27:00 The right to transact 34:00 KYC is a honeypot 41:00 The Amsterdam scam 52:00 Bitcoin as a 1,000-year project Sponsored by Sazmining and LEDN. Follow Kent: @khalliburton Subscribe for weekly Bitcoin, freedom, and sovereignty conversations. Bitcoin #BitcoinMining #Sazmining #Cypherpunk

After 49 years as a nurse, three children raised alone, and a husband lost to Agent Orange, Karen Faye saved every dollar she could into 1.67 Bitcoin. In April 2026, a phishing letter — sent to her real address with her real name, using data leaked in @Ledger's 2020 CRM breach — took it all. In her honor, we built Faye: a free scam-check tool. Point your phone at any letter, email, or message. Get an instant verdict. 🛡 When in doubt — Faye it out. https://protocolpulse.io/faye ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🟠 HELP KAREN REBUILD ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Verified Bitcoin wallet, created on a new hardware device: bc1qymlnquevxhedlqt52uutuz7h4qrkglf00dan42 Or scan the QR at: https://protocolpulse.io/faye100% of donations go directly to Karen. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🛡 THE THREE RULES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Anyone asking for your seed phrase, PIN, or wallet access is a scammer. Do not trust messages that come to you. Not email, calls, texts, DMs. "Urgent security problem" is always a red flag. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙 CYPHERPUNK'D ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Bitcoin intelligence. Cypherpunk values. Real stories. Hosted by Matty Ice — @MattyIceSensei 📰 protocolpulse.io🛡 When in doubt — protocolpulse.io/faye CHAPTERS 00:00 Cold open [fill in remaining timestamps] Bitcoin #Cypherpunk #Ledger #SeedPhraseScam #SelfCustody

Bruce Barone Jr. and his 10-year-old son Brucie Barone III join Cypherpunk'd to break down Civic Bitcoin, the Time Chain mythology, and why the most ingenious innovation in human history doesn't need any marketing to win. Bruce spent five years transforming Naples' Fifth Avenue South into one of the most exclusive commercial districts in the country. Now he's plugging Bitcoin into the financial DNA of cities through Civic Bitcoin, while building a faith-driven Bitcoin universe with his son through BrainSprout Studios that has already surpassed five million views. We cover flare gas mining as a civic utility, why Florida's three billion dollar surplus and zero income tax make it the natural home for Bitcoin-aligned governance, why mythology teaches Bitcoin better than a whitepaper, the transhumanist technocrat villain in their universe, what losing his father taught Bruce about durable value, and what a 10-year-old understands about sound money that most adults still miss. “If you could put one message on the timechain for kids 100 years from now, what would it say?” “Whatever you do… don’t sell your Bitcoin.” This is one of the most unexpected and entertaining conversations we've had on the show. Follow BrainSprout Studios: @BrainSproutStudios Subscribe to Cypherpunk'd for more sovereign signal. Bitcoin #MichaelSaylor #Crypto #AI #Blockchain #Freedom #CivicBitcoin #Timechain #Podcast #Cipherpunkd

William D. Cohan and Tyler Maroney spent four years hunting the most famous ghost in financial history. They interviewed Michael Saylor, Gary Gensler, Bill Gates, Sam Bankman-Fried, Katie Haun, Joe Lubin, Brian Brooks, and 25 other Bitcoin and crypto heavyweights. Almost every single one of them told them to stop. In this episode of Cypherpunk'd, the investigative duo behind the upcoming documentary Finding Satoshi sit down to explain why they kept going, what wall they hit, and what made them bring in a private investigator to break through it. They walk through the cypherpunk roots of Bitcoin going back to the 1970s, the financial crisis context that opened the door for the white paper, the Eric Hughes manifesto, the Metzdowd mailing list, Hal Finney, and the ethical question of unmasking someone who clearly never wanted to be found. The conversation gets sharp on the question that has divided every Satoshi investigation: can a $100 billion fortune sit untouched for sixteen years if the person holding the keys is still alive? Bill is a former 20-year Wall Street banker. He thinks he knows the answer. Cohan and Maroney are confident in their conclusion. They are also honest about what they cannot prove. This is the Satoshi conversation that takes the question seriously. Guests: William D. Cohan, investigative journalist, eight-time author, co-founder of Puck Tyler Maroney, private investigator, author of The Modern Detective Watch the documentary Finding Satoshi when it releases. Subscribe to Cypherpunk'd for sovereign Bitcoin journalism, cypherpunk history, and the conversations the rest of crypto media will not have.