Humans are lazy, but we seriously underestimate where laziness is okay vs where it is absolutely a disastrous gamble.
The source entropy is basically that. For hot wallets and casual wallets, it's usually fine to take shortcuts, because the risk is minimal.
But many people have put generational wealth behind this risk and that has never been okay.
Yes, it's pretty terrible that an established company got this wrong and left it wrong for so long. But at the same time, it has been the bitcoiners war cry that there are two main concerns to consider:
1. Source entropy: we need a good source of entropy and we need a lot of it.
2. Concealment: once created, we need to learn how to practice secrecy and how to secure physical forms of information.
Beyond that we have more advanced things like monitoring, alerting and recovery plans.
For the first point, I think a lot of people have expressed how to find good quality entropy, and using a black box has never been that.
Hardware wallets have promoted themselves as two things that they are not:
1. They are NOT private key generators.
2. They are NOT private key secure storage.
What I mean is that they CAN do it, but that is not their primary role.
Their role is to
1. Securely hold a copy of your private key and
2. Securely utilise them offline to perform cryptographic operations like signing transactions.
Our job, especially when we are considering handling a significant amount of money, is to provide the high quality entropy and to secure and keep private our own personal copy of the key (because the devices cannot be trusted).
I think the message about "your device is not your key" got out after so many device losses and forgotten pins and device breaks. Now is the time for the second message to get out.
DO THE MOTHAFUCKIN RITUAL.
Heck, we do so many other rituals like wearing shoes before leaving the house, or turning off the oven after using it, or turning off taps etc. Closing and locking the toilet door before taking a shit.
We need to normalise this just the same.
Big Barry Bitcoin
npub1pk…tpxa6
2026-07-31 16:43:52 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…l8kk
Author Public Key
npub1pktmatjk0l8vn3jhfuwxaasjd65kn4ye9sce3egup7k993f8fg2q5tpxa6Published at
2026-07-31 16:43:52 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "ae34cc97e8dcb7991e6726237d511b367074ba357c9f5eb427ed9f7b134b0871",
"pubkey": "0d97beae567fcec9c6574f1c6ef6126ea969d4992c3198e51c0fac52c5274a14",
"created_at": 1785516232,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"0535e290ebc07d723bfa8a204e52aa0c07be9e1c709113bf42f10153cedc4c8f",
"wss://relay.damus.io/",
"root",
"f8d42124a72ed89896247ad912f47dd76ac6b6cdd10fe178f5e04acfead0d4a2"
],
[
"p",
"f8d42124a72ed89896247ad912f47dd76ac6b6cdd10fe178f5e04acfead0d4a2",
"wss://relay.damus.io/"
],
[
"client",
"Amethyst"
]
],
"content": "Humans are lazy, but we seriously underestimate where laziness is okay vs where it is absolutely a disastrous gamble.\n\nThe source entropy is basically that. For hot wallets and casual wallets, it's usually fine to take shortcuts, because the risk is minimal.\n\nBut many people have put generational wealth behind this risk and that has never been okay.\n\nYes, it's pretty terrible that an established company got this wrong and left it wrong for so long. But at the same time, it has been the bitcoiners war cry that there are two main concerns to consider:\n\n1. Source entropy: we need a good source of entropy and we need a lot of it.\n\n2. Concealment: once created, we need to learn how to practice secrecy and how to secure physical forms of information.\n\nBeyond that we have more advanced things like monitoring, alerting and recovery plans.\n\nFor the first point, I think a lot of people have expressed how to find good quality entropy, and using a black box has never been that.\n\nHardware wallets have promoted themselves as two things that they are not:\n\n1. They are NOT private key generators. \n2. They are NOT private key secure storage. \n\nWhat I mean is that they CAN do it, but that is not their primary role.\n\nTheir role is to \n1. Securely hold a copy of your private key and \n2. Securely utilise them offline to perform cryptographic operations like signing transactions.\n\nOur job, especially when we are considering handling a significant amount of money, is to provide the high quality entropy and to secure and keep private our own personal copy of the key (because the devices cannot be trusted).\n\nI think the message about \"your device is not your key\" got out after so many device losses and forgotten pins and device breaks. Now is the time for the second message to get out.\n\nDO THE MOTHAFUCKIN RITUAL.\n\nHeck, we do so many other rituals like wearing shoes before leaving the house, or turning off the oven after using it, or turning off taps etc. Closing and locking the toilet door before taking a shit.\n\nWe need to normalise this just the same.",
"sig": "af538d1d476cc04e985ae1720f11967bcd2367629b810daee57b886840944f548e74efee2bbf74b8db428df4ff2204d62f55937a69119b8ee34f80b6d79cac01"
}