Has anyone been through the @Start9 migration to 0.4.0. Given how important the Bitcoin node implementation has proven to be in the past week, and with BIP activation upon us this weekend, I don’t really feel like footgunning myself by messing with a smoothly operating Electrs instance in the next couple of weeks or until I get a redundant box set up. Thanks for comments. #asknostr

Hey does anyone have a resource for how to export the key from a Cold Card to a Sparrow wallet and also to another signer with full TX signing capability? Exporting to Sparrow by the normal means still leaves the physical Cold Card as a requirement for signing. Thx.

Now that my main migration away from seeds generated by CC4's with compromised firmware is long complete, I did a test tonight. I wanted to try this in light of reports of devices "bricking" immediately after installation of the new 5.6.0 firmware. I had 5 MK4's purchased over the course of 5 years. Some for use, some for testing. Anyway, I followed the same procedure for all five. Flash the new firmware, restart, enter pin, select seed tools, destroy seed. It worked on 4 out of 5 devices. On the fourth device, which happened to be bought at the same time in 2025 when I got another one, for which the process went smoothly, it bricked immediately after I destroyed the seed. The firmware install had worked and upon restart allowed me to enter my pin and get back in, to do the seed destruction. Immediately after I wiped the seed, it threw an error. I unplugged it and plugged it back in, using the same cable and power block as the last 7 devices. And the picture was the result. Has anyone isolated under what conditions the newly flashed devices will brick? I read about some of our Paraguayan brothers who encountered this as a result of variable power via weaker 9V batteries and cold power cables. The only thing I can think of that would have led to a possible power variation while I was performing the tests was the fact that we got a severe thunderstorm halfway through the batch. I am wondering if the rest of the working units are now somehow vulnerable to spontaneous bricking. So I thought I’d post about it. GN.

From the CounKite blog entry Sunday: “We destroyed our remaining COLDCARD inventory manufactured with the vulnerable firmware, and shipment was halted when the vulnerability was confirmed.” Why would they not just update the firmware instead of binning all that inventory? Seems like a larp.

Touching grass and trying to take a little break from obsessing over new approaches to self custody. The garden is starting to yield some good stuff. But I was pretty shocked when I woke up at 5 AM to see that we haven’t even officially made it to mid summer and we were into single digit plus temperatures overnight. Hopefully it’s just a temporary cold front.

I wonder if the founders and current partners at CoinKite will sell it off as a distressed asset and give someone an opportunity to clean house and revamp the company without necessarily throwing the baby out with the bath water. I see zero revenue generating capability going forward unless everybody’s cleared out. 

TIL that you can create a 7z backup of a cold card while the passphrase is enabled, the backup restores a wallet with a new master fingerprint with the passphrase already in place. So you can gain all of the entropy benefits of RNG+dice rolls+pass phrase, and build a new signer that you no longer need to enter a passphrase to sign TX’s. Pretty cool.

I see a rise in digital asset insurance services on the horizon.

This is Sparta.

@albertahodl Thinking about you brother.

I am a hair’s breadth from going full Mennonite right now.

PSA: don’t forget to change your deposit addresses with any p2p or KYC services you use. It’ll be pretty sad if a bunch of corn gets sent into the void because people overlook this. 

I don’t know what was worse: scrambling to sweep funds immediately with no margin for error,  in a computing mega-session, on no sleep, while I’m supposed to be at work, with family commitments unrelenting, while rendering a couple thousand dollars of signers and steel backups useless, or having to wait a couple weeks before this shakes out and a person can fully commit to a new redundant distributed model, and all the accessories to support it. I feel like it’s the early days of my self custody journey. Feeling like I had to check my addresses every day to make sure the corn is still there until I gained trust in the math. I mean, how long before even stopgap measures, updated firmware and adding entropy by other means are even proven safe? I’m already reading at least one report about cold cards bricking themselves upon attempted entry of passphrases. I should be stacking like a maniac at these prices but what the fuck?  This is the bitcoin equivalent of doing 1000 skydives with your trusty rig, only to find out that your reserve container was packed with dirty underwear instead of a working parachute.