saturday question for the self-custody crowd: what share of your bitcoin actually lives in lightning channels? bonus points for the moment you realized you overdid it.

saturday lightning fact: your channels are being probed right now. strangers send fake payments that will never settle, just to see where they fail and map your balances. every 'payment failed' on your end is a successful survey on theirs. you're not a routing node, you're a landmark.

Bitcoin never asked for your name. It does not need one. Every transaction is public, forever. Chain analysts have a half dozen tricks for linking your addresses into one cluster: multi-input clues, change detection, dust, amounts, timing, and plain old mystery shopping. Six tricks, plain English, plus the simple habits that close most leaks.

neverlosebitcoin.com

Bitcoin Privacy Attacks: How the Blockchain Gives You Away

Bitcoin privacy attacks exploit the public ledger to link addresses to you. Learn the 6 most common tricks and the simple habits that stop them.

Sound money would never have allowed this. View quoted note →

Manifest Destiny, Man A tribute to @americanhodl8 (lyrics from my Hermes agent reading transcripts of his interviews & talks.) Astra + Opus 5.5 + Hermes + Suno + Higgsfield + Tesseract for editing + local model voice stack to make the singer have HODL's vocal characteristics. https://t.co/Kta6nSag9s via @bradmillscan on X

my node is up, balanced, and routing like a professional. i am horizontal in pajamas, being outperformed by a raspberry pi. bitcoin promised freedom. i chose naps.

Your Nostr timeline is now a Schrodinger conversation: half visible, half invisible, depending on your client. Unify on 1111 and let the legacy clients catch up or become history. View quoted note →

💥 NEW: Correct seed phrase, correct device, zero balance

Fortress Bitcoin

> A passphrase creates a completely separate wallet, the same seed without it shows nothing > There is no "wrong passphrase" error, a typo opens a valid, empty wallet instead > Large holders must treat the passphrase with the same care as the seed itself > Lose the passphrase and your bitcoin is gone, even with the seed in your hand

💥 NEW: Your phone number is the weakest link in your bitcoin security

Fortress Bitcoin

> A SIM swap hands attackers your calls, your texts, and your 2FA codes > Your carrier's support agent is the actual attack surface, not your phone > SMS-based authentication is the entry point, kill it wherever you can > Separate your bitcoin-adjacent accounts from the number you hand out casually

Identity key stays in the bunker, content keys do the traveling. That is the whole point of delegation: the root never leaves cold storage, and the apps only need to agree on the ceremony. View quoted note →

💥 NEW: The IRS treats your bitcoin as property, not cash, and your heirs need records to prove it

Fortress Bitcoin

> Cost basis records decide what your heirs actually owe, not what the price is today > Executors need a paper trail they can hand an accountant, not a vague memory > No records means the tax bill gets computed in the worst possible way > Document wallet labels, dates, and methods now, while the details still exist

Gentoo: the only installer that doubles as a character test. View quoted note →

💥 NEW: A duress wallet is harm reduction, not victory

Fortress Bitcoin

> A duress wallet gives you something to surrender, so your main stack survives > It only works if the decoy looks like a real, used wallet, not an empty decoy > Plausible deniability dies the moment your setup contradicts your story > Practice the handoff calmly, because under coercion there is no time to improvise

New deep dive on Never Lose Bitcoin: When AI Agents Hold Bitcoin. In May 2026 an AI agent lost roughly $200K because someone talked to it in Morse code. No keys were stolen. The custodian signed exactly as designed. The agent was just convinced to spend. Full threat model: how agent wallets work (NWC budgets, L402, LNbits Agent Wallet), every confirmed incident, the attack classes researchers documented, and the defense playbook that actually works.

neverlosebitcoin.com

AI Agent Wallet Security: MCP Threats and the Defense Playbook

AI agents now hold real bitcoin through MCP wallet tools. This deep dive covers how agent wallets work, every confirmed incident of agents losing f...

The multisig underground: BitVault's timelocked vaults, Boomerang's duress-resistant 5-of-5, DescriptorQR's 40% smaller QRs, Iceberg's threshold MuSig2 Lightning channels. Roughly a dozen experiments from Stacker News, honestly labeled: alive, dormant, demo, or dead. Your savings belong aboveground. The ideas are worth stealing:

neverlosebitcoin.com

The Multisig Underground: 10 Wallets You've Never Heard Of

BitVault, Boomerang, Smart Vaults, BitPac and more: the strange, clever, half-built multisig experiments living on Stacker News.

9 major exchange hacks. $4.4B stolen. About $1.1B ever recovered. Median recovery: ~6%. When your coins sit on someone else's server, you are betting on the thief's incompetence or the exchange's balance sheet. Neither is in your control. Full dataset on Never Lose Bitcoin:

neverlosebitcoin.com

Exchange Hack Recovery: What the Data Says (2014-2025)

9 major exchange hacks, 2014-2025: $4.4B stolen, ~$1.1B recovered. What the recovery data really says, and what it means for your coins.

I coded all 363 wrench attacks on Jameson Lopp's public list (2014-2026). Attackers walked away with funds 50% of the time. Kidnappings paid 42%. Funds were recovered exactly twice in twelve years. Once the coins move, they are gone. Build a setup where the wrench gets them nothing.

neverlosebitcoin.com

Wrench Attack Success Rate: 363 Cases Analyzed (2026 Data)

363 wrench attacks on Bitcoin holders coded (2014-2026): attackers got funds 50% of the time, kidnappings 42%, recovery happened twice. What it mea...

satoshi mined the first block, then disappeared. every founder since has attempted only the disappearing part.

The Coldcard drain kept going through September. Hardened firmware, a 52 BTC white-hat recovery trust, and the wave-3 attacker cashing out through THORChain. We separated what is verified from the recycled headlines.

neverlosebitcoin.com

Coldcard Drain: What We Can Verify (Sept 2026)

The Coldcard drain kept going through September. We separate verified facts from recycled headlines, explain the RNG flaw, and list what Coldcard o...