Real talk time. I've watched NVK attack devs, contributors, and competitors for years. I've also met him a few times in person, had a good time, and gave him a few 🤙🏼 and 🫂.
If I'm being honest, NVK is that friend who's just a dick sometimes. Hell, I'm a dick sometimes. A lot of us have someone like that in our circles. We know they're a dick. We look past it for various reasons.
For me, and I think for a lot of people in this ecosystem, we kept looking past it because he had the best product. Or at least we perceived he did. Coldcard was cyberpunk as fuck and you couldn't fuck with it. So he got a pass.
He knows he's the best, and he acts like it. He's a dick about it. But he's also kind of a friend, someone you can hang out with, joke with, have a good time. Again, so we look past some things.
Except apparently we were wrong. Coldcard isn't the best. It has failed people, many, many people. The one thing that justified all the dick behavior, the product excellence, turned out to be a mirage. The patience we all extended was spent on a product that didn't hold up its end of the deal.
And that changes everything. The product was the excuse. Without it, there's nothing left to look past.
I think that's why so many of us are having a really hard time here. We let cool as fuck tech cloud our judgement.
Replies (56)
I'm curious how likely a 3rd party security audit would have been to find the issue. Not with latest AI, but a few years back. The bug is clear once you spot it (I gather), but pretty subtle to test for maybe (not sure).
So your giving the hot tub time machine speech. He's an asshole but hes our asshole so we look after our assholes. Got it!
Great movie good times but the problem everyone is facing here is the echo chamber of promotions. The blind trust without knowing people just repeat what other people are saying.
I dunno man, we all use products or services from people that we might not 100% align with. I'm not canceling my Amazon subscription even though I may not be fully impressed with Jeff Bezos.
it seems like people did find it, some reported it, were told it wasn't an issue, and they didn't follow up. others apparently found it and didn't report it because when they did previously they were bullied.
Very cult like indeed.
D*ck riders. LOL
i don't believe it was intentional yet, because that doesn't make sense to me. why would he have done that?
that doesn't make sense to me. why do it now? why not do it when bitcoin was at 126K?
but it's the same trait. i see no different there.
I wish I could say that I saw him for what he was. At least I never bought anything of theirs after they closed their source code.
But I still listened to his circle of disciples.
So I can't really say that I did anything better than you did.
When people show you who they are, believe them. This is a lesson I have a hard time executing in my personal life with “friends” exactly like this, but time after time I regret making excuses for them.
the 'circle of disciples' are people i'd consider friends and love hanging out with at events. i say "we" speaking for them, but perhaps they don't feel the same way as i do and i shouldn't speak for them. im just making assumptions here.
people keep mentioning a "cult" and i guess i see the correlation. it's a weird cult. i am probably kicked out of the cult for saying these things lol.
oh well. if they're really friends they'll understand these things and drop me some 🤙🏻and 🫂 next time we see each other.
me too. i ALWAYS try to see the good in people. it's sometimes a weakness. sorry.
The jurys still out on the product, hardware is sound.. if it were just an ordinary bug in the firmware it would have been stamped out and updated and done as a software issue like hundreds of other bugs. the problem is in this case it was a bug that could cause a chernobyl fucking meltdown and responsible for the ONE job cold card has to keep funds secure. The fact this was overlooked or the more recent speculation that it was done purposely as people don’t believe they could be this negligent, and yet it is where the anger should be focused.
im actually curious how they would have even patched it. the commit message or changelog in the firmware update notes would have been damning. perhaps not as damning a few years ago without AI-assisted attacks.
That will actually be really interesting. Do you think this circle will survive this? How many are going to leave the space? Will the rest be able to look each other in the eyes?
Genuinely interested, and not in a malicious or gloating way. I just think having a nuclear bomb like this set off in the a group of people will change things permanently.
fair point. we just don't know what we don't know.
How one speaks says a lot.
Sound money deserves sound scrutiny.
lots of theories and speculation for sure.
You got high on your own supply and let the clique and "toxi maxi" virtue signaling suspend your critical thinking.
Who ever your talking to has me blocked so it looked like you was talking to yourself and i was very confusedfor a sec. Lol.
One day humans will stop letting us down, but not this day. We shall overcome 🫂
dynamics will change, but i think a lot of people feel badly because they were deceived and promoted things, hurting their own image, because of it. i think in bitcoin you don't get a lot of second changes when it comes to things like this. you have to burn your heroes sometimes. you learn, you grow from this, and try to not let the mistake happen again.
Yeah, I've seen a couple such posts but am suspicious about them.
Anyway, guess we'll get a better picture of things soon enough. I'll be curious to know the answer to this, as I'll be looking for security audit info in the future, and hope to better understand how solid their processes are for something like this (can you test quality of entropy without finding an explicit bug?), since I gather you can from things I've read here and there but have no clue how that works.
Thanks
Yeah, what I am curious about is how that will change the chemistry in that group. The "bro-ness" has to take a lot of damage. And that was really what was at fault here.
NVK is as smart as we all thought. that's how he was able to pull this attack off unnoticed
lesson: there is no good reason for someone to be a dick
that's a fair point if you believe this was a long game. i do not yet. i think it was just arrogance. time will tell.
it's why i try to look for the good in people and try not to be a dick back right away :)
I believe this was his "retirement attack"
sure, lots of lessons. i don't mind the personal growth from myself and others. i wish it didn't come about because of people losing their life savings.
ive seen that referenced, but he's been in bitcoin since the whitepaper was sent out. i really just think this was a huge fuck up. but again time will tell.
That's why it's a better policy to be nice to people.
At least someone talking openly him by name. I think
@gladstein also did that. At this point I am not even sure if this is an inside job, or a deliberate attack on Self Custody of bitcoin. Because this will make people scared and think the Self Custody has attack vectors they can’t understand and too risky.
It's not like we were close friends or anything like that. I don't think I've seen him in 2 years... But yes. I'd absolutely love to sit down and have a chat with him about a lot of this.
This all makes me wonder about the value of open source in the Bitcoin ecosystem if no-one is actually reviewing it adequately (except the thieves apparently). As an exercise, I want to crank up some frontier LLMs on the code branch that had the bug and see what it would have taken to find it.
I'm just talking to on the voices in my head.
That said, I think you have them blocked. That's how it works on the Nostr.
I don't think so. I always tell people what I'm using and why I like it. I talk about my passions and educate people on them. I've been doing this my entire life. Bitcoin is no different.
Subjective.
I wish I had a local meetup. It would be like a support group right now 😂
If you think "what I'm using and why I like it " isn't influenced by the producer of the product identifying as the same social group as yourself,
you're not as smart as you seem.
Incorrect. For example, I have never met
@greenart7c3 and I like using Amber and shill Amber every time I get.
Use Amber.
I don't need to find anything to know they're an underfunded open project with huge monetary reasons to attack it, and they say themselves don't use it for anything serious..
This was no longer open source. It was source verifiable which decreased the eyes on it... No incentive... Though I'd think any cypherpunk dev or investor invested in it, using and recommending it has an incentive to verify!
im not going to blame Odell or other 'podcasters' that recommended Coldcard. that *too* would be a dick move.
I believe NVK is as smart as he thinks he is, and he robbed all y'all.
the freedom tech stack is NOT Amazon.
people use products for various reasons from the management team, to customer service, to quality of devices, to locale of the company, etc. it's impossible to find something that checks every single box.
Being intentionally obtuse doesn't help
.
In a nutshell
nevent1qqsg5vnzs8d74pk56me7k28us2ap6c2mcjcxzxv70gzcyf36j533wjqpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsygqnhj2ajgwgk6exeu65jjtymtuxlycjlegfy3yr6fngy7temqyf05jd9xuk
And if you dont see that as a prime factor in how this exploit was so bad, then your opinion on it doesn't mean much.
This is still enabling talk, time to upgrade our culture and value integrity and good character and walk away from the rest.
Can I just say this? Because I really want to say it...
What usually ends up happening to people who are "just a dick" is that they eventually get fed one giant fat dick.
Sorry your dick friend has had a seriously giant one served to him, one that's probably going to take a long time to chew on, likely in jail... unless he's already on his way to a private island as we speak.
Too bad he first had to take down $100M—and counting—with him so the freedom tech maxis could finally learn to stop ignoring the giant red flags that were surrounding the giant 'just a dick' in the fucking room.
Okay. I can now go back to being appropriate. 😆
🤣🤣
Usually only have spam accounts blocked... 🤔
Care to send me the npub so I can investigate?
no need to apologize. this is well said.
All you bitcoin influencers should probably just stop using the internet
If the code is open source, yes. I'd do what everyone else is doing and have Kimi K3 review it.
A great reminder that public figures in any industry will have close ties to each other, enabling biased endorsements and a fake perception of respect. It's an insider's social club, going against the grain will not open doors for you, so it eventually becomes a circle jerk.
This happens ALL THE TIME, it's just human nature. But it still shocks me how much how people idolize and blindly listen to public figures even in Bitcoin. We're now seeing there were red flags all long, but Coldcards were still being recommended as the gold standard left and right by your favorite famous bitcoiner and their podcast best friends.
Be wary of herd mentality.
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