I get it that people are a little edgy after a series of Bitcoin security incidents. But that doesn’t mean you should throw critical thinking out the window.
Reproducible builds are a good goal to strive for in any OSS project. But for Bitcoin self-custody, it is NOT a panacea. You should always assume the wallet coordinator (Sparrow, Electrum, Liana or Nunchuk) runs in an unsafe environment, and set up your Bitcoin wallet with that in mind. To say otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the security model.
And to the folks who are recommending average Bitcoin users to use Core on a clean Linux install as their main Bitcoin wallet: you are delusional.
The IDEA of risk isolation (separating sensitive key material from other wallet functionalities) and attack-surface minimization (going from general-purpose hot devices to single-purpose cold devices) is the right one. Just because one implementation of the idea was flawed, doesn’t mean the security principles behind it are flawed.
Similarly, as a general rule of thumb, devices that support shitcoins DO have a larger codebase and attack surface than devices that are Bitcoin-only. It’s almost definitional. Just because one Bitcoin-only device was flawed doesn’t mean shitcoins are suddenly a good thing. It’s crazy that this has to be said out loud.
It’s 2026. The whole world has figured out that sensitive keys need to stay in dedicated devices like Yubikey, even for non-Bitcoin activity. And you have Bitcoiners recommending people to go backwards. It’s freaking insane.
Reproducible builds are a good goal to strive for in any OSS project. But for Bitcoin self-custody, it is NOT a panacea. You should always assume the wallet coordinator (Sparrow, Electrum, Liana or Nunchuk) runs in an unsafe environment, and set up your Bitcoin wallet with that in mind. To say otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the security model.
And to the folks who are recommending average Bitcoin users to use Core on a clean Linux install as their main Bitcoin wallet: you are delusional.
The IDEA of risk isolation (separating sensitive key material from other wallet functionalities) and attack-surface minimization (going from general-purpose hot devices to single-purpose cold devices) is the right one. Just because one implementation of the idea was flawed, doesn’t mean the security principles behind it are flawed.
Similarly, as a general rule of thumb, devices that support shitcoins DO have a larger codebase and attack surface than devices that are Bitcoin-only. It’s almost definitional. Just because one Bitcoin-only device was flawed doesn’t mean shitcoins are suddenly a good thing. It’s crazy that this has to be said out loud.
It’s 2026. The whole world has figured out that sensitive keys need to stay in dedicated devices like Yubikey, even for non-Bitcoin activity. And you have Bitcoiners recommending people to go backwards. It’s freaking insane.
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