First ColdCard wallets were drained. Then tampered Ledger devices showed up from third-party sellers. You see, the people who did everything “right” got burned, while the person who left their coins on Coinbase came out fine. Q sits down with Frank Corva (Fedi, ex-Bitcoin Magazine) to unpack the hardware wallet debacles. They talk about why “don’t trust, verify” broke down, community custody and open spec, what Frank saw in Venezuela and Kibera, and why “if Bitcoin remains digital gold, it fails.” Not your keys, not your coins still holds. But the setup that’s right for you might not look like anyone else’s.

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Bitcoin Well is Canada's non-custodial bitcoin company, established in 2013 and publicly traded since 2021 ($BTCW.V). We offer Bitcoin ATMs, personal bitcoin services, and an online bitcoin platform.

Future-proof your money.

Bitcoin is trading around $86,000 with ETF demand still accumulating, but the rally is only half the story this week. Bitcoin Well just launched a Bitcoin IRA, and CEO Adam O'Brien is back on the podcast to explain why a non-custodial company built one, how it works, and where it sits on his counterparty ladder.

Adam breaks down the custodial IRA through BitGo, a custodian Bitcoin Well has trusted with its own inventory for years, and the self-custody version offered alongside it. He is direct about the catch: a retirement account is still a captured account, the tax code is a counterparty, and a lost key or a coin migration inside an IRA can cost far more than it would outside one. We also get into this week's market, what a rally near $86,000 does and doesn't tell you, why Bitcoin's difficulty adjustment lets the network adapt to stressed miners without anyone picking winners or arranging a rescue, and how that contrasts with the bank consolidations happening in traditional finance.

If you hold Bitcoin and have a 401k, an RRSP-style account, or any retirement savings sitting in index funds, this conversation will help you decide which rung you're actually on.

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Subscribe to Bitcoin Well for bitcoin news, financial sovereignty, and how to buy, sell, and use bitcoin.

Bitcoin Well is Canada's non-custodial bitcoin company, established in 2013 and publicly traded since 2021 ($BTCW.V). We offer Bitcoin ATMs, personal bitcoin services, and an online bitcoin platform.

Future-proof your money.

Adam O'Brien has spent thirteen years trying to subtract counterparties from his life: the bank, the exchange, the custodian, anyone who could freeze, lend out, or lose his bitcoin. This summer proved that subtraction has a floor. The ColdCard entropy failure drained $116 million from people who did everything right, generating their own seed on a trusted device. The Liquid Network lost $320 million without a single key being stolen. Neither failure involved a custodian.

In this episode, Adam walks through what he calls the counterparty ladder, a six-rung framework running from captured legacy retirement assets all the way to bitcoin purchased privately in self-custody, and makes the case that the real question was never "is this trustless," it's "which rung am I actually on." That framework is also the foundation for something Bitcoin Well is launching: a Bitcoin IRA, held custodially through BitGo, with a self-custody option coming after. Adam explains why a company built on non-custodial principles is launching a custodial product, what it would take for him to call the IRA a failure, and why he chose to say the quiet part out loud in the very article announcing it: a retirement account holds captured funds no matter what's inside it, bitcoin included.

Sign up for Bitcoin Well: https://bitcoinwell.com/signup

Learn about Bitcoin Well Infinite: http://bitcoinwell.com/infinite

Follow Adam O'Brien: https://x.com/adamobrien

Subscribe to Bitcoin Well for bitcoin news, financial sovereignty, and how to buy, sell, and use bitcoin.

Bitcoin Well is Canada's non-custodial bitcoin company, established in 2013 and publicly traded since 2021 ($BTCW.V). We offer Bitcoin ATMs, personal bitcoin services, and an online bitcoin platform.

Future-proof your money.