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Keon met a hacker named Rob who claims responsibility for Russiagate and operates Ford Intelligence, a newsletter selling intelligence to CEOs, heads of state, and private security, pitching it as "Palantir for civilians."
On July 29th, a critical vulnerability in Coldcard's firmware led to many users' Bitcoin being swept, stemming from a bug that prevented the hardware's random number generator (RNG) from being used for seed generation.
The Coldcard bug, present for five years, affected MK3, MK2 (with updated firmware), MK4, MK5, and Q models, enabling an attacker to steal nearly 1,000 coins, totaling $70 million, within 24 hours.
The attacker's actions were deemed "amateur" by experts, as they consolidated funds immediately, reused addresses, and paid high fees (80 sats per vbyte), making the attack easier to trace.
Bitcoin seeds typically require 128 or 256 bits of entropy; however, the vulnerable Coldcard MK3 only provided 32 bits, while MK4, MK5, and Q models had 70 bits, significantly lowering security.
The bug was a subtle misinterpretation of a C preprocessor macro, `ifndef`, meaning "is this symbol defined" instead of "is this symbol zero," leading to the use of low-entropy code.
Keon anticipates hundreds of millions of dollars in further thefts, as the initial attack targeted low-hanging fruit (MK3) and subsequent attackers using AI tools like "Kimi" could exploit other vulnerable models or remaining UTXOs.
Coldcard users should immediately move funds to a new, securely generated seed, ideally using a hot wallet or an exchange for safety, or direct to miner transactions to avoid mempool snipers.
Justin Shocknet suggested that the Coldcard vulnerability could reduce the anonymity set of CoinJoin rounds for affected users, as attackers with compromised seeds could de-anonymize their transaction history.
Jason B, a jazz musician and aspiring Bitcoiner, draws parallels between Bitcoin and jazz, both lacking a central "ruler" or fixed canon, aligning with his preference for systems without needless control.
Nathaniel Whittemore reports SpaceX is conducting the largest IPO in history, priced at $135 per share, implying a valuation just under $1.8 trillion. This makes SpaceX the world's seventh-largest company upon debut.
Bloomberg reports retail investors submitted over $100 billion in orders for the SpaceX IPO, which offered $75 billion worth of stock, reducing retail allocation from 30% to 20%. The retail portion was nearly 7x oversubscribed.
A Reuters opinion piece warns of significant risk for retail investors in the SpaceX IPO, citing the company's relative lack of revenue: a $5 billion loss on $18.7 billion revenue in 2025.
Goldman Sachs, simultaneously managing the SpaceX IPO, forecast the company could achieve $474 billion in revenue by 2030, with its AI division growing a hundredfold.
Nathaniel Whittemore believes the SpaceX IPO will not serve as a referendum on AI models, arguing Elon Musk's unique market position and SpaceX's recharacterization as a "Neocloud" infrastructure company separate it from frontier AI labs.
Jeff Bezos' AI startup, Prometheus, closed a $12 billion funding round, valuing the company at $41 billion, with participation from JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock.
Prometheus aims to build an "artificial general engineer" (AGE) capable of designing and manufacturing complex equipment, having already hired 150 people across global offices.
Bezos dismisses fears of an AI jobs apocalypse, asserting AI will create a labor shortage by generating tenfold more opportunities, even while reducing the number of people needed by ten times.
Prometheus is also exploring a $100 billion fund for industrial buyouts, intending to apply private equity roll-up models and proprietary AI to enhance productivity in the manufacturing sector.
Meta completed an operational split from Manas, its AI acquisition, following Chinese government orders in April to unwind the $2 billion deal.
The Chinese government investigated Meta's acquisition of Manas in March and later barred Manas founders from leaving the country, despite Manas attempting to circumvent tech export controls by relocating to Singapore.
The unwinding of the Manas deal has created a chilling effect in China, prompting numerous startups, including StepFun, Kimi Creator Moonshot, and Kling, to consider unwinding foreign corporate structures to reincorporate domestically.
Eugene Wang of Wintell & Co. states that dismantling "red-chip" corporate structures is no longer optional for Chinese tech firms, with the focus now on efficient restructuring. Chinese officials are also seizing passports of key AI researchers and executives.
Google is evaluating Samsung's 2-nanometer process for components of its 10th-generation TPUs, Icefish, due to years-long backlogs and capacity limitations at its exclusive manufacturer, TSMC.
Google has also placed orders with Intel for 2028 production for advanced packaging services, indicating a strategy to diversify its chip supply chain beyond TSMC for less sensitive components.
KKR and Nvidia announced Helix Digital Infrastructure, a $10 billion data center construction company backed by KKR and Kuwait sovereign wealth, with Nvidia providing chips and former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky leading.
Adam Selipsky stated that fragmentation in data centers, power, and connectivity has created industry-wide bottlenecks, hindering AI's benefits. Almost half of current data center projects are reportedly delayed.
Goldman Sachs strategists, led by Ryan Hammond, forecast 2027 AI spending at $1.1 trillion in a baseline scenario and $1.4 trillion in a bullish scenario, significantly exceeding Wall Street's median $920 billion estimate for next year.
Goldman Sachs predicts token consumption will increase 24x by 2030, driven by agent deployment, believing strong AI demand will keep pressure on supply chains and further drive up build-out costs.
Nathaniel Whittemore highlights a "token panic" on Wall Street following Citadel Securities' "Silicon Valley LLM Token Expenditure Index," which social media misinterprets as declining token demand or volume.