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.

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.

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

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🟠 HELP KAREN REBUILD

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🛡 THE THREE RULES

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🎙 CYPHERPUNK'D

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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]

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.

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.

In this episode of Cypherpunk’d, we sit down with Mike Revy — former Lehman Brothers trader turned crypto founder — to unpack the hidden mechanics of money, credit, and the global financial system.

From surviving the 2008 financial collapse to discovering Bitcoin in its earliest days, Mike shares an unfiltered perspective on how Wall Street actually works — and why the current system may be fundamentally broken.

We dive into:

This conversation goes beyond surface-level crypto takes — it’s a deep exploration of power, incentives, and what comes next.

Welcome to Cypherpunk’d — where we explore money’s history, crypto’s future, and Web3’s role in advancing freedom and digital sovereignty.

Today's guest is Jason Leibowitz (@LeboBTC), head of business development at Meanwhile. Jason is a Wall Street veteran who has been in the trenches since 2013, moving from the trading floors of TradFi and leading blockchain strategy at Credit Suisse before helping build the first-ever life insurance company denominated entirely in Bitcoin.

In this episode, we move past the price action and get into the real financial infrastructure. We discuss why "being your own bank" is actually terrifying for most people, the nightmare of inheritance planning, and how a Bitcoin-denominated life insurance policy acts as a sovereign tax wrapper for your stack. Jason breaks down the math on how you can borrow against your Bitcoin at a stepped-up cost basis, essentially spending your wealth without ever selling your original sats or handing a cut to the IRS.

This is the conversation you need if you're thinking about 70 to 100 years of generational wealth.

Michelle Weekley spent years inside the Foreign Direct Investment world - touring China's ghost cities, watching data get fabricated to suit government narratives, and witnessing how the global elite operate behind closed doors.

Then she escaped. Using Bitcoin.

Now she's a global corruption whistleblower and Director of Product at ByteFederal, fighting on the front lines against Chokepoint 2.0 and the war on cash.

In this episode of CypherPunk'd, Michelle holds absolutely nothing back:

This is the conversation where we coined the term "fiat fraud."

🔔 Subscribe: @cypherpunkd_ 🎙️ Follow Michelle: @MichelleWeekley 🐦 Follow Matty Ice: @mattyicesensei 💼 ByteFederal: @ByteFederal

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TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - The Death of Fiat Currencies 08:15 - Why Americans Don't Understand Bitcoin 14:30 - "Everything Is In Ruin" 22:45 - Fiat Fraud: Minnesota, Maine & The Somali Pipeline 31:20 - Fire Pam Bondi 38:40 - The Samurai Wallet Situation & SDNY 47:15 - "There Is No Line They Won't Cross" 55:30 - Dr. Robert Epstein & Google's Power 1:04:20 - How Politicians Get Controlled 1:12:45 - Fiat Culture Weakens Men 1:19:30 - The Case for Balkanization 1:28:00 - What Comes Next for Bitcoin

Is Bitcoin under a coordinated internal attack? In this explosive episode of Cypherpunk’d, host Matty Ice sits down with legendary Bitcoin Core developer and Ocean CTO Luke Dashjr to discuss the "Node War" of 2026.

Luke reveals why he believes Bitcoin Core v30 is a "malicious attack" on the protocol, facilitating the storage of "illegal data" and "spam" that threatens the network's decentralization. We dive deep into the plummeting full node counts—dropping from 200k in 2017 to just 100k today—and why Luke gives Bitcoin a single-digit probability of success if users don't start enforcing the rules.

In this episode, we cover:

Don't just trust, verify. Run your own node.

In this episode of Cypherpunkd, we sit down with Natalie Brunell — Emmy-winning investigative journalist, host of Coin Stories, and author of Bitcoin Is for Everyone — to unpack how the 2008 financial crisis reshaped her family, her career, and her worldview.

Natalie shares her deeply personal story of watching her parents lose their home during the Great Financial Crisis, the disillusionment that followed, and how that experience fueled her work as an investigative journalist uncovering corruption and holding power accountable. We dive into media censorship, why trust in journalism has collapsed, how unelected financial elites shape the system, and why so many people feel left behind today.

Most importantly, Natalie explains how discovering Bitcoin helped restore her sense of agency, responsibility, and hope — and why she believes sound money is essential for a fairer future.

This is a conversation about money, power, truth, and what it means to rebuild hope in a broken system.

Topics covered:

📕 Bitcoin Is for Everyone 🎙️ Coin Stories Podcast