There is a strange and unsettling irony in the fact that bitcoiners want ordinary, hardworking people to “roll the dice” to secure their wealth.

Money has to be dead simple to store and use, allowing people to get on with the parts of their lives that their money is supposed to enable. Coldcard users rested in the assurance that their wallets did just that. It wasn’t a dice roll. It was a solid and secure solution to the problem of holding their money so they could go about day to day life. We all know now it was a false assurance.

The result of this catastrophe is that ordinary, hardworking people who had started to hear about and see firsthand the benefits of bitcoin and self-custody will now be so unsure about who to believe that many will give up on self-custody, if not bitcoin entirely. This won’t be just Coldcard users, but users of any self-custody solution. If you can’t trust the people who are supposed to know these things, then why believe anyone? People just want to get on with their lives, and right now bitcoin isn’t allowing them to do that the way it was promised by those “in the know.”