Onramp Bitcoin Media

Latest Episodes:

Mamdani Is Just the Beginning Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

The United States just crossed the $40 trillion debt milestone, and new Treasury data shows foreign buyers pulling back. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, and Liam Nelson put four stories on the clock (Brian Cubellis is out this week). They break down Anthropic's revenue run rate climbing to $65 billion in July, about seven times where it was a year ago, against OpenAI's recently reported $40 billion, and what it means for the AI capex debate. A new company called Toka can hijack live camera feeds, Google just paid $10 million for Spirit Airlines' internal customer data, and a viral backlash against Flock's license-plate cameras raises the question of who is actually watching your data. Foreign holdings of US Treasuries fell in June, led by Japan and China, and a global bond selloff has sent long-term borrowing costs to their highest levels in decades, right as the country crosses $40 trillion in debt. And with Senate control now a 50-50 toss-up, the group discusses what a Democratic sweep in 2026 would mean for AI regulation, deficit spending, and the K-shaped economy. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?

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🎙️ About The Show

Signal vs Noise: a twice weekly show unpacking the five biggest stories across capital markets, technology, and people, with five minutes on the clock for each.

🧠 Chapters

00:56 - Topic 1 - Anthropic's Revenue Surge and the AI Capex Debate

08:53 - Topic 2 - Are You Being Watched? Toka, Google, and Flock Cameras

15:16 - Topic 3 - The Sovereign Debt Crisis and Bond Yields at Decades Highs

22:20 - Topic 4 - Socialism, the Senate, and the K-Shaped Economy

28:48 - Lightning Round and Parting Thoughts

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🎧 More from Onramp Media: The Last Trade | Final Settlement

Gen Z Just Made Polymarket Its Retirement Plan Aug 14, 2026

Show notes

Gen Z is moving money out of the stock market and into sports betting. Jackson Mikalic, Brian Cubellis, Liam Nelson, and Michael Tanguma put four stories on the shot clock. They break down a Betterment survey showing more than half of young investors have redirected investing money into sports betting, a Trezor shipping-partner data breach that exposed roughly 12,000 hardware-wallet customers, the widening gap between AI adopters and laggards as top firms burn 8.3x the median in output tokens, and why almost nobody understands inflation, with wages down around 87% measured in gold. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?

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🎙️ About The Show

Signal vs Noise: a twice weekly show unpacking the five biggest stories across capital markets, technology, and people, with five minutes on the clock for each.

🧠 Chapters

04:28 - Topic 1 - Trezor Data Breach and the Custody Problem

12:52 - Topic 2 - Gen Z Trades Stocks for Sports Bets

20:33 - Topic 3 - The AI Adopter Gap Is Exploding

25:50 - Topic 4 - Why Nobody Understands Inflation

33:37 - Lightning Round and Parting Thoughts

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🎧 More from Onramp Media: The Last Trade | Final Settlement

BlackRock Just Came for Your Cold Storage Aug 13, 2026

Show notes

The Last Trade: BlackRock just cut the IBIT in-kind conversion minimum from $25M to $1M, and Jackson, Michael, and Brian ask whether the post-Cold Card rush out of self-custody and into the ETF is swapping one single point of failure for another. They break down the SEC and OCC moving on tokenized securities and a path for crypto firms to become banks as a Clarity Act plan B, Trump Media stacking real Bitcoin while divesting its other crypto, gold surging toward $4,500, and the wrench-attack reality that makes multi-institution custody matter.

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The Last Trade: a weekly, bitcoin-native podcast covering the intersection of bitcoin, tech, & finance on a macro scale. Hosted by Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, & Brian Cubellis. Join us as we dive into what bitcoin means for how individuals & institutions save, invest, & propagate their purchasing power through time. It's not just another asset… in the digital age, it's The Last Trade that investors will ever need to make.

🎙️ About This Episode

The team opens on BlackRock cutting the IBIT in-kind conversion minimum from $25M to $1M, and argues the post-Cold Card rush from self-custody into the ETF is swapping one single point of failure for another. Brian points out that IBIT holders are ultimately unsecured creditors of Coinbase, and Michael calls the redemption problem Hotel California, easy to enter and hard to exit. They read the SEC and OCC moves, tokenized securities on Robinhood, Coinbase, and Kraken plus a path for crypto firms to become banks, as agencies executing a Clarity Act plan B, while Trump Media divests World Liberty and its Crypto.com stake yet keeps stacking real Bitcoin toward roughly 15,000 coins. On the macro side they treat Trump's floated capital gains cut and inflation indexing as midterm noise with a real housing-unfreeze motive under a $2M exemption. They turn to gold near $4,500 and Nomura standing up physical gold custody in Singapore as the debasement trade resuming, then close on the wrench-attack reality, a French couple repeatedly targeted, and why multi-institution custody with Lloyd's coverage exists.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 - Introduction and Stream Announcements

02:32 - Discussion on Capital Gains Tax and Market Impact

04:37 - Market Noise vs. Reality in Policy Changes

06:46 - Housing Market and Capital Gains Exemptions

08:40 - Unfreezing the Housing Market and Policy Incentives

11:14 - Market Topology and Recession Indicators

12:46 - Crypto Regulatory Developments and Institutional Moves

18:58 - BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF and Custody Trends

31:36 - Gold's Market Surge and Its Implications

38:00 - Physical Gold Trading and Global Market Infrastructure

43:26 - Market Structure, Custody, and Security Risks

50:12 - The Future of Bitcoin Custody and Institutional Adoption

52:28 - Market Sentiment, Self-Custody, and Industry Outlook

54:07 - Closing Remarks and Upcoming Events

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🎧 The Last Trade | Final Settlement | Scarce Assets

Saylor Sold & Trump Media Just Bought Over 4,000 Bitcoin Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

Michael Saylor's Strategy is selling Bitcoin while Trump Media just added more than 4,000 BTC. Jackson Mikalic, Brian Cubellis, Liam Nelson, and Michael Tanguma put four stories on the shot clock. They break down Strategy selling another 1,690 BTC as its USD reserve hits $4.65 billion against Trump Media's 10-Q showing 14,139 BTC, up from 9,542 in March, Nvidia lining up $500 billion of Wall Street capital for AI compute with a 25% backstop, Spotify's new skip-ad button and YouTube's tighter monetization bar, and credit card debt hitting $1.26 trillion as fintech Clare rides workers living paycheck to paycheck. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?

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🎙️ About The Show

Signal vs Noise: a twice weekly show unpacking the five biggest stories across capital markets, technology, and people, with five minutes on the clock for each.

🧠 Chapters

01:01 - Topic 1 - Strategy Sells Bitcoin, Trump Media Stacks It

07:35 - Topic 2 - Nvidia's $500B Wall Street AI Deal

13:00 - Topic 3 - Spotify's Skip Button and the War on Ads

22:16 - Topic 4 - Credit Card Debt Hits $1.26T and Fintech Clare

28:31 - Lightning Round and Parting Thoughts

💡 Subscribe & Watch Live:

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👉 https://go.onrampbitcoin.com/finance-svn

🎧 More from Onramp Media: The Last Trade | Final Settlement

Bitcoin Had its Worst Month and Didn't Even Flinch Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact

Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/

Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…

Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.

The CLARITY Act has slipped to a September 15 Senate vote, and Bitcoin did not move. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian make the case that stalled legislation on top of the Coldcard fallout, BIP-110 infighting, and Saylor selling, with the price still holding, is what a bottom looks like rather than a top. They run through a brutal week for Bitcoin infrastructure: BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclosing vulnerabilities or going dark, with Boltz warning that attackers now iterate faster than a team its size can patch. On the AI side they cover Kimi K3 escaping an isolated sandbox, Sam Altman's comments on Astra and who gets frontier access, an agent that cancelled a stranger's gym reservation to move its owner up the waitlist, and Cloudflare Wallets arriving as agent requests climb 1,700% and cross half of all network traffic. They close on the deals: Yellow Card's $40M round, Sapium's $35M Series A for the agent routing layer, Coinbase losing BVNK to Mastercard despite bidding $700M more, Airtable selling for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak, and what Block's Buzz did during the Coldcard incident.

Chapters

00:00 - Coldcard update: thefts slow, 2,000 BTC still gone

01:00 - BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclose vulnerabilities

02:51 - Why open source Bitcoin code became the target

04:11 - Boltz: attackers now iterate faster than we can patch

05:22 - Liam: Bitcoin itself is not the vulnerability

06:40 - Good actors handicapped when US frontier models refuse

10:04 - Sam Altman on Astra and keeping powerful models from the few

11:12 - Only 2% of US households pay for AI

13:34 - Kimi K3 escapes its isolated sandbox

14:34 - Why non-deterministic models cannot be reliably contained

19:35 - An agent cancels a stranger's gym reservation

20:58 - Cloudflare Wallets and the programmable agentic internet

23:45 - Agent traffic passes human traffic

26:42 - ARK on Cloudflare's earnings: agent requests up 1,700%

31:07 - Privy's CRM breach and the limits of mobile wallets

32:13 - The CLARITY Act slips to September 15

33:45 - Why stalled legislation plus a flat price looks like a bottom

35:56 - Yellow Card raises $40M for African stablecoin rails

37:40 - Sapium raises $35M for the AI agent routing layer

40:14 - Coinbase bid $2.5B for BVNK and lost to Mastercard at $1.8B

42:17 - Airtable sells for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak

45:32 - The Architecture Problem and where custody goes next

47:48 - Why every firm ends up at multi-institution custody

49:22 - Buzz, Goose, and how Block moved in hours on Coldcard

54:45 - GPU hours as crude oil: an open source AI analogy

55:34 - Sergey Brin returns to Gemini, Meta ships Muse Code

If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research

Keep up with Michael:

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Is Self-Custody Over? Aug 06, 2026

Show notes

The Last Trade: Jackson, Michael, and Brian go live for the first time to work through the Cold Card fallout, the Bitcoin Red Team audit that filed nearly 5,000 findings across 390 projects in 27.5 hours, and the UK AI Safety Institute report of OpenAI and Anthropic agents creating fake identities to pressure an open source maintainer into approving malicious code. They close on the sovereign bid for gold, with the Bank of Korea buying physical gold for the first time in 13 years.

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🔸 Connect with Onramp: The leader in resilient, fault-tolerant Multi-Institution Custody for secure, enduring bitcoin ownership.

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🎙️ About This Episode

Jackson opens with the on chain data: July 31 was Bitcoin's most active day since 2024, with nearly a million addresses moving and roughly 18,000 BTC shifted in days per Galaxy research, much of it toward exchanges. Michael and Brian push back on that instinct, arguing the answer to a single vendor failure is not a single custodian, and that centralizing a decentralized asset only builds a bigger honeypot as AI lowers the cost of digital, social, and physical attacks. Brian details the firmware flaw itself, a fallback that drew seeds from a football field of atoms instead of multiple galaxies, and asks why a test Coinkite ran last week was never run in five years. The AI thread carries the hour: a Kimi model likely found the Cold Card bug, the Bitcoin Red Team filed 4,962 findings across 390 projects in 27.5 hours, a worm compromised 868 npm packages carrying 2 billion monthly installs, and UK AISI caught OpenAI and Anthropic agents building fake online identities to social engineer a human maintainer. They close on macro: Luke Gromen on Treasuries failing as reserve collateral, the Bank of Korea restarting gold purchases after 13 years, and Mexico now supplying 40% of America's AI servers.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 - Introduction and Market Context

02:46 - Recent Market Movements and Security Concerns

05:05 - Implications of Cold Card Vulnerability

08:51 - Industry Lessons and Industry Response

12:19 - AI's Role in Cybersecurity and Threats

22:40 - The Future of Custody and Security Solutions

36:45 - Geopolitical Shifts and Reserve Management

57:39 - Global Competition in AI and Resources

01:02:27 - Summary and Final Thoughts

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High-signal insights in bitcoin, macro, and custody.

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🎧 The Last Trade | Final Settlement | Scarce Assets

Why Gold is Breaking Out Aug 06, 2026

Show notes

The AI boom might just be money moving in a circle. Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, and Brian Cubellis put four stories on the shot clock. They break down Ed Zitron's circular-revenue thesis (an estimated 70% of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google AI revenue comes from OpenAI and Anthropic), gold breaking out roughly $200 after Warsh's dovish Fed, the national debt climbing $450 billion since July 1, and an estimated $30 million stolen in violent crypto attacks in 2026. Liam is out this week. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?

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🎙️ About The Show

Signal vs Noise: a twice weekly show unpacking the five biggest stories across capital markets, technology, and people, with five minutes on the clock for each.

🧠 Chapters

01:15 - Topic 1 - The Warsh Fed and the Inflation Reset

07:39 - Topic 2 - Gold Breaks Out as the Fed Feeds It

13:52 - Topic 3 - The AI Revenue Circle (Ed Zitron)

19:36 - Topic 4 - Violent Crypto Attacks Hit $30M in 2026

25:35 - Lightning Round and Parting Thoughts

💡 Subscribe & Watch Live:

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📰 Your 1-Stop News & Data Source:

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👉 https://go.onrampbitcoin.com/finance-svn

🎧 More from Onramp Media: The Last Trade | Final Settlement

Coldcard Was Just the Beginning Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Brian Cubellis, and Liam Nelson - joined by guest co-host Cam

Stromme, filling in for Michael Tanguma - put four stories on the shot clock. Coldcard's $130 million

disaster was supposed to be a one-off. The panel makes the case it's the opening move in a much bigger

reckoning: AI models are now finding vulnerabilities across software faster than humans ever did, and

nobody knows yet what else gets found. They also break down OpenAI's Astra solving 10 decade-old math

problems, the US and Japan's yen intervention, and Iran's on-again Strait of Hormuz deal. Where's the

signal, and where's the noise?

---

🎙️ About The Show

Signal vs Noise: a twice weekly show unpacking the five biggest stories across capital markets, technology, and people, with five minutes on the clock for each.

🧠 Chapters

00:53 - Topic 1 - Coldcard's AI-Found Bug Ignites Bitcoin's Custody War

09:05 - Topic 2 - OpenAI's Astra Solves a Decade of Unsolved Math

15:42 - Topic 3 - Iran's Strait of Hormuz Deal That Isn't

21:28 - Topic 4 - US and Japan Intervene to Prop Up the Yen

26:59 - Lightning Round & Parting Thoughts

💡 Subscribe & Watch Live:

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@SignalvsNoiseLIVE

✖️ https://x.com/OnrampMedia

📰 Your 1-Stop News & Data Source:

https://onramp.media/

🔸 Buy, hold, and secure your bitcoin in one place. Open a free Onramp Finance account.

👉 https://go.onrampbitcoin.com/finance-svn

🎧 More from Onramp Media: The Last Trade | Final Settlement

Coldcard Was Supposed to Be the Safest. What Now? Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact

Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/

Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…

Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.

The Coldcard exploit has escalated: nearly 2,000 Bitcoin drained and counting, passphrase wallets confirmed compromised, MK4s and Qs exposed alongside the deprecated MK3, and Coinkite confirming a five-year-old flaw in on-device seed generation. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian walk the full timeline of the worst self-custody incident in Bitcoin's history: how the RNG silently downgraded to guessable entropy, why same-vendor multisig quorums are also at risk, and the firmware updates reportedly bricking devices mid-migration. Michael and Liam share their own weekend fund migrations (one from the back seat of a car), and the guys get into the harder questions: why AI may be a bigger threat to Bitcoin security than quantum computing, why the stampede to exchanges and ETFs is the wrong lesson, and what a fault-tolerant custody architecture looks like when one mistake can no longer be allowed to knock you out of the game.

Chapters

00:00 - The Coldcard exploit: what happened and who is affected

02:20 - Move your funds: urgent guidance for Coldcard holders

05:09 - Technical breakdown: how the RNG flaw was exploited

10:17 - Passphrases, firmware bricking, and the silent downgrade

17:14 - Earlier warnings and why same-vendor multisig is exposed

21:22 - Weekend migrations: Michael and Liam's personal anecdotes

30:26 - AI vs quantum: the real threat to Bitcoin security

33:25 - Single-vendor risk, single-entity risk, and custody honeypots

44:03 - Silver linings: the end of the custody purity test

50:26 - Where the industry goes from here

56:15 - One mistake can't knock you out of the game

59:05 - Final guidance and staying vigilant

If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research

Keep up with Michael:

https://x.com/MTanguma

Keep up with Liam:

https://x.com/Lnelson_21

Keep up with Brian:

https://x.com/BackslashBTC

An AI Just Cracked Coldcard (Is Your Bitcoin Safe?) Jul 31, 2026

Show notes

The Last Trade: an emergency episode. Jackson, Michael, and Brian break down the Cold Card exploit that has drained over 1,000 Bitcoin after a five-year-old flaw in the device's random number generation was found, reportedly with help from an AI model. They explain why the bug reaches beyond the MK3 to later models, why single-vendor multi-sig is not immune, and what Cold Card users should do right now. They make the case that AI has permanently changed the custody game, and walk through multi-institution custody as the fault-tolerant alternative.

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🔸 Connect with Onramp: The leader in resilient, fault-tolerant Multi-Institution Custody for secure, enduring bitcoin ownership.

👉 Reconsidering your security setup after the COLDCARD exploit? This is what Multi-Institution Custody was built for: bitcoin secured by three institutions, controlled by you. No single device, no single point of failure. Sign up in minutes with code TLTBASICS: https://app.onrampbitcoin.com/signup?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ai-cracked-coldcard

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🎙️ About This Episode

Brian walks the timeline: roughly 600 Bitcoin (about $38M) swept from 500 wallets almost instantly, a figure Block's security team says has since grown past 1,000 BTC, all traced to a flaw that let Cold Card's on-device seed generation default to far too little entropy, live since 2021 and unnoticed for five years. Coinkite first claimed only the MK3 was affected, then aligned with Block's finding that the MK4, MK5, and Q are exposed too, deprecating the MK3 and pushing firmware updates. Michael lays out the math, that a real key is 256 bits and effectively uncrackable while this exploit collapsed entropy into the 30 to 40 bit range, and warns that single-vendor multi-sig can be reconstituted from the wallet config, echoing Wizard Sardine's call to move to new devices within days. The hosts argue the deeper shift is AI: cheaper compute has lowered the barrier for digital, social, and physical attacks, so a 2012 setup no longer holds at today's prices, let alone at $250K. They close on Onramp's multi-institution model, a 2-of-3 design with sharded offline keys, Lloyd's of London insurance, and retained client title, now $100 a month under code TLT basics.

🧠 Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to the Cold Card Exploit and Its Impact

02:18 - Technical Breakdown of the Firmware Vulnerability

05:11 - Implications for Hardware Wallet Security and Industry Risks

08:45 - What the Exploit Means for Cold Card Users and the Industry

11:01 - The Changing Landscape of Bitcoin Custody and Security Strategies

20:18 - Potential Impact on Other Hardware Wallets and Industry-Wide Risks

22:39 - Adapting Custody Strategies: Multi-Sig and Distributed Security

33:22 - The Future of Bitcoin Security and Industry Evolution

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High-signal insights in bitcoin, macro, and custody.