I’d been meaning to adjust my setup for a long while. Was pretty sure if anything happened to me, my sats would be gone forever. It was all sloppy and in my head, no clear instructions anywhere. Even if I had instructions I couldn’t be confident they would be properly deciphered. Shuffling an SD card back and forth between the “calculator” and a computer I never use anymore running sparrow on it. Haven’t fired up the node in ages, that’s a lot of blocks to catch up on. How do you set it to use an external node again? Signing transactions and pins and secrets within secrets protecting squirled away little peanuts with a really bad UI/UX–for anyone–but especially if that someone has never sent a bitcoin transaction in their life and are trying to figure out what is going on.
But it’s one of those things that is easy to put off. Partially because I wasn’t exactly sure how to un-convalutue that mess and make it intelligible for someone who has absolutely no interest in the subject and generally starts to nod off within 30 seconds of it being brought up. But mostly because I’m just trying to live my life. I am blessed with family and friends and a job and I’d rather not think about the unpleasant but inevitable reality that necessitate things like inheritance plans and wills and life insurance. And so I put it off. Tick-tock.
One day I see a post from
@TFTC for
@Bitkey giveaway. I’ve already got the the calculator–and it’s THE BEST THERE IS– but what the hay, I might as well repost this and then maybe I can put the rock in the safe next to the calculator. It looks pretty and it’d be fun to have a new toy to play with. Well lo and behold, guess who the dad gum winner of that contest was? A few days later the folks from Block sent me that pretty new rock.
I took it out and fondled it a bit. It did feel nice. And then I set it down and went back to my life. I had things to do, and the calculator was already rock solid, or so I thought. I could get to setting up the rock later.
A few weeks later I was driving home with the family, refreshed from a week by a lake away from civilization, cell phones, and computers. Since this kids in the back were partaking in visual entertainment that I was not allowed as the driver, after a bathroom break I decide to pop in an ear bud and check the podcast feed. TFTC: “Coldcard is Compromised” is the title that immediately jumps out at me. Oh dear, that doesn’t sound good. I press play and hit the road. Still several hours away from home, I learned of the dire situation. I begin to get a little itchy and gravity seemed to be affecting my right foot more than usual.
Once home I informed the missus that I know there is a lot of unpacking to do but an urgent situation has developed that I need to take care of, and that no, it can’t wait. Accepting but not happy about it, she begins to unpack and gives me some space to do whatever I need to do.
First thing’s first, I had xpub in an easily accessible place that I load into a watch-only wallet in blue wallet and breathe a sigh of relief when I see that the sats are still there. But I know that is a temporary reprieve, so I press on. I need to get those sats somewhere else quick.
I was going to actually try and use the calculator to move my stack but I was feeling the time crunch and running into hurdles. Where’s the cord? Where’s the keyboard? HDMI cable? SD card? What was the password on the machine again?
Why did I think I needed all this super spy clunky cypherpunk shit anyway? I’m a nobody with a relatively small stack (though huge to me). For all of the warnings about hot wallets and the need for cold storage, I have used many different wallets on several different phones and computers over the years and never had anything stolen off of them, but now it seems if I don’t ditch the calculator pronto they are gonna be gone. So I ended up just saying screw it to the infernal calculator and dug up my backup seed words. Typed em right into blue wallet on my phone and there they were.
I took a few minutes to download the and set up the bitkey app and moved the contents of the calculator over to the rock, lickity-split. It felt a bit reckless and rushed but the clock was ticking.
My little footnote of a story within this cold card debacle had a happy ending and for that I am very grateful. If it hadn’t been for the fortuitous timing of podcast perusal, it may have turned out differently. Thanks to
@MartyBent for the podcast heads up.
My condolences to all the plebs who lost their stack. I can only image what you are going through. Don't lose hope. This story is not over.
