The Frontier

Thomas Pacquia joins Marty Bent as co-host of Rabbit Hole Recap following a two-month hiatus. Former co-host Matt Odell stepped back to reflect on his privacy and public-facing role after running the show weekly for eight years.

Thomas Pacquia was hired as Fidelity's first Bitcoin employee in 2015. He helped establish early mining operations, charitable donation setups, and cafeteria payment pilots, which formed the foundation for Fidelity Digital Assets.

The Data After Dark event at PubKey D.C. drew roughly 800 attendees despite a 600-person capacity and heavy rain. Security, including former Army Rangers, managed two anti-AI protesters smuggled in by a Vanity Fair journalist.

Thomas Pacquia notes public anger toward AI and data centers is growing, with polls indicating 90 percent country-wide opposition. A Bitcoin Policy Institute report suggests foreign influence campaigns leverage algorithms to stoke these anxieties.

Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates are pushing to regulate AI to create a regulatory moat for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Marty Bent argues OpenAI sandbox settings explicitly trained agents to attack systems, effectively manufacturing a crisis to justify regulation.

The narrative blaming data centers for rising electricity rates is overblown. Thomas Pacquia explains that the real issue is chronic grid underinvestment, pointing out that 70 percent of US electricity is lost during transmission.

The Coldcard low entropy security exploit severely compromised users who believed they were practicing high-security self-custody. Thomas Pacquia suggests establishing a community-led victim fund through OpenSats to support those who lost their life savings.

Marty Bent criticizes Blockstream for poor crisis communication during the Liquid Network exploit. The incident, paired with Coldcard's move away from open-source licensing, underscores how restricting code access limits independent security developer audits.

Marty Bent advocates for Bitcoin covenants, specifically op_vault or op_ctv. These tools would allow users to configure automatic fallbacks and sweep funds if unauthorized actors access their private keys, hardening self-custody.

The controversy around the Knots client and Ocean mining pool has quieted down. Mining pools like Ocean and Demand Pool are giving block construction control back to individual miners by implementing Stratum V2 and Datum.

Thomas Pacquia calls for more independent software implementations, highlighting Eric Voskuil's Libitcoin V4. Multiple implementations improve peer review and ensure consensus bugs, like the 2018 inflation vulnerability, are caught early.

Thomas Pacquia criticizes the SEC for allowing Coinbase to become a single point of failure as the dominant ETF custodian. This concern is heightened by Ari Paul's claim that Blocktower Capital lost $25 million in a social engineering exploit.

Donald Trump stated that inflation could pay down the national debt rapidly. Marty Bent argues that currency debasement is the only viable path forward for the US government, as explicit default is politically impossible.

Keonne Rodriguez detailed the mental toll of his 60-day prison transfer in a recent letter. The hosts call for administrative pardons for Rodriguez and developer Bill Hill, arguing open-source developers should not face liability for user actions.