The smell of fall in the air, this weekend I indulged in apple delicacies, watched the changing leaves, and oh yeah, traveled to make sure my Bitcoin custody is up to date…

If you follow me on X, you know that I hold Bitcoin with Casa, a multisig security provider, and that I use the service to manage a few different multisig vaults for various purposes.

This requires keeping a number of keys and wallets up to date, and since I don’t keep any key materials at home, it requires some degree of routine and dedication. 

I’ve self-custodied my Bitcoin since 2020, and I’ve built up some good habits along the way. That said, something that always strikes me is just how much more nerve-wracking it is than trusted set-ups.

One thing that always gives me pause: the firmware update.

As I’ve written before, I’m not super technical. My specialty in Bitcoin is history, and while, sure that necessitates that I know about network theory and architecture, there is something about watching digital gears and a loading bar that just makes me super uncomfortable.

I say this all because it’s a less-known issue with the Bitcoin hardware wallets most use to self-custody. These devices, termed “signing devices” by Coldcard creator NVK, do just that, they manage your key material, and they sign on your behalf when making a transaction.

But, being live digital devices, they’re not infallible. They require some upkeep. All you need to do is to scroll past a few updates of people losing Bitcoin on firmware updates to know the drawbacks

It’s a common problem, and the culprit is always a corrupt hardware device (and a lost back-up). Add that multisig vaults, which require a combination of keys to sign a transaction, aren’t yet the norm, and the number of lost Bitcoin just seems to always be up and to the right.

The most common issue – the user doesn’t update their firmware often, waits, and later borks their device, thereafter finding they’ve also misplaced their seed phrase. 

Here’s Andreas explaining firmware updates in more detail, though he doesn’t actually update his firmware, he just manages his seed phrase.

Suffice to say, it’s an example of why the world of self-custody, however improved it is, still makes me uneasy. In my case, I updated my wallets without much of an issue. Only one of the wallets even needed a firmware update, and it was simple. (Taking all of a few minutes to prove my coins are safe).

That said, I had to make sure to check my other keys beforehand, and that I had a plurality of the multi-sig keys needed in a worst-case scenario, as well as my seed backups.

This is what makes Bitcoin custody such a high-octane process: you can never be too careful. When you’re your own bank, there’s always a chance that something might go wrong.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

​ Live digital devices, Bitcoin hardware wallets are not infallible. They require some routine upkeep, or at least a seed phrase backup. 

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The other week, I made my opinion clear that I believe Donald Trump is the best candidate for Bitcoin in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Aaron responded, and after reading it, I feel he’s still missing the bigger picture. Aaron’s main points seem to be that Trump is just using Bitcoiners for their votes, and that he won’t follow through on his promises.

While I partly agree with the former point, I disagree with the latter. Contrary to what I’ve seen some Bitcoiners online say, I do not think Trump has to be a hardcore Bitcoin maximalist and cypherpunk to be a great Bitcoin president. Here’s why.

Trump needs all the votes he can get. Of course he is going to try and appeal to our voters, especially when most of us already have right-leaning political views. It makes sense for the Republican party to adopt freedom money, given they lean more towards the principles of freedom now, while the Democrats have become more authoritarian.

Voting for Trump, then, is a win-win. He gets more votes (some in critical swing states), and we get a better environment for our industry. Sounds like a good trade to me.

And that leads me into what I disagree with Aaron on. I believe that Trump will keep most, if not all of his promises he’s made when it’s come to Bitcoin. Because, well, most of the promises he has made seem like relatively easy things to implement. It’s not like he’s alone on the issue – there are now many pro-Bitcoin senators and congresspeople to hold him accountable.

There’s Senator Cynthis Lummis, who wants to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve (using BTC already owned by the government). There is Congressman Tom Emmer, who already wants to fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler and appoint someone better for the industry. You can go to StandWithCrypto.com to see the rest.

If elected, Trump would have loads of other, arguably more important issues on his plate to deal with. The fact that his policies would give Bitcoiners a friendly regulatory environment to build in, stop anti-Bitcoin politicians from continuing to attack this industry, all without Trump meddling in it, sounds like the perfect storm for innovation.

The fact that he’s done things like bring Bitcoin miners to Mar-a-Lago to better understand the industry is enough evidence to make this point.

I think many are overly critical of Trump because he said he wasn’t a fan of Bitcoin in 2019. But that was ages ago, and everything has changed since then. It doesn’t make sense to hate on people for coming around to Bitcoin after not being a fan of it. (I do, however, think it is ok to be critical of the non-Bitcoin initiatives Trump has promoted, like World Liberty Financial, but even that isn’t worth losing all the benefits of his presidency.)

So, why would Trump free Ross now when he already had the chance to last term?

In politics, as in Bitcoin, it’s all about incentives, and the incentives here are aligned.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

​ Trump would allow a friendly regulatory environment for Bitcoiners to thrive in. 

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This interview on the Danny Jones Podcast episode 263 both felt like it was being channeled from my own brain while also hitting me with an overload of new information. It hit the spot, as someone who has long held the opinion that all modern wars and psychological operations are symptoms of easy fiat money, and that the government is simply the biggest criminal cartel that grows large enough to self-legitimize its racket and assumes the role of moral authority. Kruse postulates that the goal of globalist transhumanists is to replace the U.S. Constitution, a document that is designed to protect individuals from government, with the U.N. Charter, a document designed to usurp it and provide tyrannical power to proxies of the industrial military complex.

“I would sit down with, probably, Adolf Hitler before I would sit down with Sergey Brin.”

I wasn’t expecting to hear about Bitcoin when I started listening, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear him bring it up early and often, framed as a kryptonite to the transhumanists he portrays as his “mortal enemy”.

“The reason why Bitcoin content gets removed is because DARPA is not interested in Bitcoin. Their energy to fuel their whole process is cheap fiat money.”

Uncle Jack hits on topics like Kleiber’s law, allodial wealth, DARPA, MK-ULTRA (and it’s subsequent versions), the Stanford marshmallow experiment, JFK’s assassination, sunlight medicine, SV40, cancer, COVID and the jabs, and even invisibility, somehow connecting it all subtly to Bitcoin, with a ‘fix the money, fix the world’ subtext.

“There’s a pattern with the Industrial Military Complex. When they want to do something, they don’t ask for forgiveness, they don’t ask for permission either, they just do it.”

The main ingredient was essentially that the Federal fiat system is a big Ponzi scheme, citing Roth IRAs and retirement funds specifically. And that there is a mortal war waged on us by The State to make sure enough of us die through cancers, wars or otherwise so that we aren’t all performing a bank run.

The Industrial Military Complex is a machine that is powered by cheap money: fiat money. Kruse aligns Bitcoin as a solution to the fiat war machine, which is preaching to the choir for me, but exciting to hear on a non-Bitcoin show with a large audience like the Danny Jones Podcast.

This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

​ A self-proclaimed Bitcoin pleb and actual brain surgeon, Dr. Jack Kruse, has the sauce and I want everyone to try it.