The Bitcoin Standard Podcast

Lecture 3 in The Bitcoin Standard explains how primitive moneys gained and lost their value, why difficulty of production was essential to their monetary role & how the stories of Rai stones, glass beads & seashells illustrate the dangers of easy money.

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At the Property & Freedom Society, Saifedean presents his latest book, The Gold Standard, an alternative history of the 20th century where hard money ended WWI, made governments compete for citizens & enabled free trade & self-determination.

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Lecture 2 in The Bitcoin Standard explains the problem money solves, how the solution shapes the desirable properties of money: salability across scales, space & time; why the latter property, expressed through hardness, is the critical feature of money & how it can be measured.

Join the live discussion seminar on Twitter/X Spaces on Tuesday October 27 at 2pm GMT. Follow @saifedean on Twitter to be sure to join.

BitGo: Institutional custody, now available to every Bitcoiner. Sign up on https://www.bitgo.com/saif/

CrowdHealth: The Bitcoiner’s answer to fiat health insurance. Get your first 3 months for $99/month with code SAIF at https://joincrowdhealth.com/

Starting this week, Saifedean will be sharing a new online course on The Bitcoin Standard, revisiting the book almost 10 years on. This first lecture covers the prologue: how Bitcoin started, how it gained value, and why it is digital cash and digital hard money.

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Throwback to Saifedean's 2018 launch of The Bitcoin Standard with his first book talk, held in Vienna, fittingly enough!

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Saifedean is hosted by Bitcoin Magazine TV to discuss his recent work on Bitcoin mining and stablecoins, as well as the US fiscal outlook.

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Saifedean examines whether growing stablecoin demand can reduce price inflation & help US fiscal solvency. He focuses on often-overlooked trade-offs: lost seigniorage, displaced long-term Treasury demand & bank credit, & more fragile short-term funding & rollover risk.

Marina Azzimonti and Vincenzo Quadrini — Digital Assets and the Exorbitant Dollar Privilege

Marina Azzimonti and Vincenzo Quadrini — Digital Economy, Stablecoins, and the Global Financial System

Stephen Miran — A Global Stablecoin Glut: Implications for Monetary Policy

Rashad Ahmed and Iñaki Aldasoro — Stablecoins and Safe Asset Prices

Congressional Budget Office — How Changes in Economic Conditions Might Affect the Federal Budget: 2026 to 2036

Saifedean Ammous — Bitcoin & Tether: Drinking the Dollar Milkshake — Bitcoin 2025

Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee — Report to the Secretary of the Treasury

Saifedean argues bitcoin mining electricity consumption and capital expenditure may have peaked, and presents the argument as a testable hypothesis, and discusses the long-term implications for bitcoin, mining, and AI.

Full Article:

https://saifedean.substack.com/p/bitcoin-electricity-consumption-mayhttps://x.com/saifedean/status/2099782818138128866

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Swan - Your Partner for Generational Wealth - https://swan.com/saifThe Saif House - High quality cloth hardcover bitcoin books by Saifedean & more delivered worldwide, with 10% off for paying in bitcoin - https://TheSaifHouse.com

Saifedean hosts a debate between JW Weatherman and Giacomo Zucco on whether hardware wallets are a security liability. They discuss the Cold Card entropy backdoor, multi-vendor multisig, the code review process in Bitcoin Core, using generic laptops, and how to think about your threat model.

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Learn more: https://yeticold.com/

Follow Giacomo Zucco:https://x.com/giacomozucco

Follow JW Weatherman: https://x.com/JWWeatherman_

Saifedean talks to Ben Westgate and @BtCPavao about how to store bitcoin safely with Bitcoin Core and an old laptop, generating and backing up keys, the problems with BIP39 seed phrases, when multisig makes sense, custodians, and why gambling and lending destroy stacks.

Saifedean joins Mark Moss to discuss how fiat money and central banking are destroying people's ability to build wealth, why Bitcoin beats gold as a store of value, the recent Cold Card hack, self-custody, and whether borrowing to buy Bitcoin is a smart strategy.

Bitcoiner HAC invites us to rethink Bitcoin hardware from scratch. What does a signing device actually do and can you do it yourself? He makes the case for why DIY Bitcoin with generic hardware is better than specialized Bitcoin hardware.

Twitter: https://x.com/heavilyarmedc
Yeticold: https://yeticold.com/Mentioned GitHub: https://github.com/bowlarbear/yeti-2.0WTF Happened in 1971: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Saifedean reads Chapter 9 of his latest book, The Gold Standard, in which the world gets a decentralized and censorship-resistant international gold clearance system that changes the course of history! You can buy the full audiobook on Audible or http://saifedean.com, and get your physical copies from Amazon or http://saifedean.com

Founder of the Seedsigner open source project joins us to discuss the Coldcard hack, how the Seedsigner works, and the advantages of open source solutions.

Seedsigner website: https://seedsigner.com/

Twitter profile of Seed Signer: @seedsigner

Twitter profile of Seed: @sesi_the_man

Twitter profiles of other key contributors: @KeithMukai @newtonick @easyuxd

Important security update for anyone using a COLDCARD.

There has been a serious vulnerability disclosed involving the randomness used by some COLDCARD devices when generating Bitcoin seeds.

If you use a COLDCARD, I recommend moving your bitcoin to a completely new seed generated somewhere else. If you use another wallet today but you generated the seeds on a coldcard, you should also move your bitcoin.

First, an important reassurance: if you followed best practices and generated your own seed using at least 50 fair, independent, private dice rolls, you are not considered at risk from this specific randomness vulnerability. Similarly, if you used a strong passphrase, that provides additional protection. And there are several COLDCARD devices and seeds that fall outside the specific affected firmware ranges.

But my recommendation is simpler than trying to determine exactly which model you have, which firmware was installed years ago when you generated your seed, how many dice rolls you used, whether you remember every detail correctly, and whether further vulnerabilities may be discovered.

With something as important as your bitcoin, I would rather eliminate the uncertainty than take a risk we don't need to take. If you rolled your own dice more than 50 times and have a strong passphrase, you probably have more time. If you relied on the device to produce the randomness, you need to act immediately.

Either way, act decisively and with high focus. Take your time and use whichever migration option you are most comfortable and competent with. Rushing a Bitcoin transaction or improvising a security setup you don't understand can create its own risks.

If you decide to migrate to another hardware wallet or an airgapped computer you understand well, here's the process:

First, generate a completely new seed on an unaffected device you know is safe from bugs and is not connected to the internet.

Second, carefully record and verify the new seed backup.

Third, verify the wallet fingerprint and receiving address on the hardware wallet itself or the airgapped computer. Do not simply trust what your online computer or phone shows you.

Fourth, send a small test transaction.

Fifth, confirm that everything works and that you can access and spend from the new wallet before moving the remaining funds.

And keep your old seed backup until you have fully verified that the migration is complete.

If you're not comfortable setting up another self-custody wallet immediately, another option is to temporarily move the bitcoin to a reputable exchange or custodian that you already trust while you take the time to establish a new self-custody setup properly.

Again, the point is not to rush. Choose the option you understand best. But do move.

If you used a strong, unique BIP-39 passphrase, that provides an additional independent security barrier. If you used sufficient private dice entropy, that also protects you from this particular randomness problem. But personally, given what has been disclosed, I would still rather create a fresh seed somewhere else and remove the uncertainty entirely.

One final warning: scammers will absolutely try to exploit this situation.

Never give your seed words or passphrase to anyone. Never enter them into a website, chatbot, unsolicited recovery tool, or a link somebody sends you. Nobody helping you migrate needs your seed words.

Don't panic. Don't ignore it either. Take your time, verify every step, and move your funds in whatever safe way you are most comfortable with.

Be sure to hold on to all your devices and seeds, as they may be useful in demonstrating ownership of the coins if the hacker is caught.

Also be sure to follow the latest disclosures from Coinkite to understand if your device is affected, and to follow all the latest updates on the issue. I recommend Twitter for staying up to date.

Description: Four talks from Rothbard's centenary celebration last month in Porto:

Ammous: Rothbard on Palestine

Hoppe: Hurdles, Obstacles, and Surprises on the Road to Rothbardianism

Kinsella: Rothbard's Greatest Hits

De Mombynes: Rothbard & Bitcoin

The accompanying book, Rothbard at 100, is available from https://thesaifhouse.com/

Cory Klippsten, founder and CEO of Swan, joins us to discuss the accelerating surveillance state, why bitcoin is the alternative to the left and right, and why stablecoins, gold, and CBDCs don't threaten Bitcoin.

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The final lecture of Principles of Economics makes the case for civilization, how it emerges when reason restrains instinct & lowers time preference, enabling capital accumulation & division of labor, increasing peace & prosperity over generations, & how it can collapse.

Get all course notes and slides on https://saifedean.com/poecourse

Saifedean joins Nick Carey to discuss money as a civilizational force: why mainstream economics has an inflation blind spot, how banks "mine" fiat through credit creation, why the rich hold negative fiat balances to acquire hard assets, and how inflation funds war, corrodes morality, and raises time preference.

Lecture 17 of Principles of Economics explores the economics of defense as a market good rather than a uniquely governmental function, how law and order emerge through voluntary provision, the failure modes inherent of the state's monopoly over defense & law, and what a free market in defense would look like.

Get all course notes and slides on https://saifedean.com/poecourse