The response from the plebs has been incredibly encouraging and consoling. Probably today is the first day im somewhat back from feeling under water. I have, say, 10 orange pilled plebs that I've guided by hand. Some was before I used coldcard myself, so when I helped them set up cold storage, I acquired ledgers for them, as that is what I used myself. I travelled across the globe to attend a bitcoin conference and as a bonus, I could acquire coldcards with cash, leaving no data trail. I purchased more than I needed for myself as I knew my friends and family would benefit. After the trip, I transitioned to coldcard. To do right by the people I had helped with ledgers, I informed them how I was changing my setup, and if they wanted help transitioning, I was ready to help them out. Newly orange pilled friends and family, coldcard was my advice for cold storage. Whatever I knew, they would learn. Whatever I changed they would be informed. I was not smart enough to understand the level of entropy needed to generate a seed phrase. I had outsourced that to NVK. Today I've learned how unacceptable that is. ONE person from my circle (close relative) is a geek like myself and he is a bitcoiner, but not as a result of my orange pilling. He acquired his coldcard by himself and did not receive help from me when setting it up. He actually had an even better process than mine when setting up his cold storage. He rolled dice, I didnt. He followed instructions from coinkite to the dot. By the time we sat down at our crisis meeting, he opened up his laptop, sparrow sync'ed and he could see his whole stack gone. We scrambled to get the rest of the wallets at the table moved in what had turned into a nightmare while the heartbreak ate me up from the inside. God knows what emptiness he must have been feeling, though he found the strength to help others at the table with their stacks right after losing the biggest stack at the table. My mind was broken - I froze and could barely move - although he is his own man - he learned about coldcard through me. I literally broke down in tears as the feeling of guilt just ate me up and I wished to god it would've been my stack gone instead. The feeling of betrayal and my own stupidity just made me, a grown ass man, just break down in tears in front of my wife and my dearest friends/relatives. With all due respect to his stack, it wasnt really the money that broke my heart. It was probably more a mix of betrayal, embarrasment, feeling of intrusion, feeling of inadequacy, helplessness. Maybe also fear of what this was going to mean to Bitcoin, the experiment. All that combined just hit me square in the mouth and knocked me the fuck out of balance. The response to the notes I wrote on nostr received more attention than I'm used to, both in reactions and zaps and I want to say thanks for that, it was really encouraging. I added a lightning subwallet on my self hosted albyhub where I've moved the combined zaps. Waiting for my homie to get back on his feet mentally so I can give him the connection string so he can finally get started using lightning. (He hasn't dabbled yet) I thought it was fitting that he could begin his spending journey with those zaps when he is ready to hear the word bitcoin again.

After this coldcard catastrophe, anybody that doesn't recognize the truth in @Bitcoin Mechanic saying bitcoin culture has been changing and that we need to be vigilant about that is blind. The collective bitcoin community has been guilty of complacency for the past 5 years and I can easily see truth in Mechanic spotting the subtle declining trajectory bitcoin culture has been on. This catastrophe had nothing to do with the bip110 debacle, but it sure makes you think whether we need to be going in a direction that creates more noise or in a more conservative direction.

For wise-asses moving the goalpost of securing your bitcoin today, you can royally go fuck yourself. If a person has taken the steps to: 1. Buy a bitcoin only hardware wallet, which is widely respected and mentioned by most of the big bitcoin proponents in the space where one might be getting their info from, such as podcasters etc 2. Keeping it airgapped 3. Not even sharing home address during purchase to avoid wrench attacks 4. Taking good care to stamp seed on steel 5. Maybe even doing yearly drills to check up on funds and hardware 6. And lost their funds today despite all the above measures 7. NOT following the vendors guide under the subpage /paranoia 8. Being told to only do multi-sig only if very comfortable to avoid locking yourself out of funds Then don't be coming at them today and say "you should have known you needed to roll dice too, it's your own fault" The steps this person has taken were FAR BEYOND what is imaginable for a non-techie person and accusing them of not taking enough care to secure funds is bat-shit crazy to me and is simply evidence that this experiment has failed. Bitcoin has not been secure today. Loss of funds from highly secure setups has occurred. "Best devs in the world" claim thoroughly debunked, now both on the bitcoin software implementations side AND the bitcoin hardware side. This event is devastating and as much as the loss of funds breaks my heart it is also an identity crisis on my effort and belief in this incredible project. Bitcoin has not been secure today and the threshold to actually make it secure has shown to be overwhelming and not at all ready for anyone who is not an expert in cryptography. I'm just so devastated and this has been a hard day and i'm extremely tired and sad.