The Bad Crypto Podcast

A five-year-old firmware bug quietly turned "cold storage" into a guessing game, and roughly $88 million in Bitcoin walked out the door without anyone touching a device.
Joel Comm and Travis Wright open year ten of The Bad Crypto Podcast with the Coldcard entropy flaw: a March 2021 build error routed seed generation through a predictable software fallback instead of the hardware random number generator, leaving affected seeds with about 40 bits of entropy instead of 128. Galaxy Research mapped the first sweep — 1,196 addresses drained in 41 minutes — and later waves pushed the total past 4,500 addresses. Updating the firmware does not fix a seed that was already generated.
Also on this episode: BitGo CEO Mike Belshe posts a wallet holding 100 BTC and dares Anthropic's Claude to take it.
Strategy sells another 1,638 Bitcoin to cover STRC preferred dividends while sitting on $10.9 billion in unrealized losses.
Trump's executive orders move the federal post-quantum deadline to 2031, and BIP-361 raises the question of what happens to Satoshi's coins.
Truth Social starts selling early access to the President's posts.
And American Bitcoin posts a $57.2 million quarterly loss while growing its treasury to 8,002 BTC.
Then the hosts swap notes on what they've been building. Travis is turning the marketing canon into installable AI skills at MRKT.NG, finished two screenplays that sat in a drawer for twenty-six years, and rebuilt his site around a news-reading audio agent and a council of nine AI advisors.
Joel made a short film, wrote and produced an original song with AI, and makes the case that "slop" is a skill issue — the work is in the directing, not the prompting.
Closes with a practical tutorial on building character reference sheets so your AI-generated characters stop changing faces between shots. This episode is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial, investment, or trading advice.
Support the show: https://badcryptopodcast.com
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Nine years ago today, two dudes had an idea. That idea became The Bad Crypto Podcast — and 812 episodes later, we're still here. To celebrate our ninth anniversary, Joel Comm and Travis Wright are doing something useful with all those dead NFTs in your wallet: turning them into a tax write-off.
Most of the NFTs we bought are abandoned, rugged, or worth pennies. But in the U.S., a crypto loss is a capital loss — and those losses can offset your gains (plus up to $3,000/year against ordinary income). Joel built a tool with Claude that scans your wallets, finds the damage, and hands you a report for your CPA.
👉 Scan a wallet FREE at https://rektwriteoff.com — this episode's sponsor.
Also in this one: Stripe and Advent's ~$53B bid for PayPal and the stablecoin angle, where the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts stand, the great NFT market reset, the Spain vs. Argentina World Cup final and FIFA's $999 "Right to Buy" NFTs, plus AtomicHub/WAX going multi-chain.
⚠️ Not financial or tax advice. Joel and Travis are not CPAs or financial advisors. Talk to a tax professional before harvesting losses or burning assets.
Support the show: https://badcryptopodcast.com
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Where have we been? The real question is — where have YOU been?
Joel and Travis hit record with zero show notes for a fully spontaneous Episode 811.
On the docket: the third bear market and the halving-cycle math that points to a bottom this winter and the next top around fall 2029; record June Bitcoin ETF outflows of roughly $4 billion; the launch of X Money with its 6% APY and metal Visa card; Trump's freshly-disclosed $1.4 billion in 2025 crypto earnings; the return of Anthropic's Fable 5 model; and two daredevils unfurling a peace banner on top of the Empire State Building while the guys were recording.
Plus: why stablecoins are really just the digital dollar people wanted, MiCA and the Circle-vs-Tether split, the US debt clock spiraling past $39 trillion, and some genuinely good news — Travis's CoinResearch.ai tool drawing a majority investment from the Hilton family office technology fund. No plan. No polish. Pure bad. Stay bad.
NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. For entertainment and informational purposes only. Crypto is volatile — do your own research and consult a licensed professional.
Support the show: https://badcryptopodcast.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Worst It'll Ever Be: AI Apps in 20 Minutes, SpaceX's $1.8T IPO & Saylor's Head Fake — Bad Crypto Podcast #810
It's a bear market, so the bad boys of crypto are doing what builders do: SHIPPING. Bitcoin sits at $61,873, the altcoins are in the crapper, and Joel has officially divorced his bags. Travis explains why the 4-year cycle is alive and well — mapping this pullback exactly to previous cycles, with a projected bottom around mid-October.
Then it goes full mad-scientist. Travis builds a viral-worthy "Culture Shock" site of World Cup visitors reviewing America in 20 minutes flat with Claude's new Fable model, then ships Viddl — a desktop app that downloads video from YouTube, X, TikTok, Instagram or LinkedIn with FFmpeg baked in. Joel premieres his AI-generated origin story film (1978, a food court paycheck, and a TRS-80 in a Radio Shack window) and announces his Acumen daily puzzle games are headed to the App Store.
Plus: SpaceX IPOs as $SPCX at a $1.8 TRILLION valuation with ~$250B in demand, OpenAI and Anthropic file to go public, Michael Saylor's 32-BTC head fake, a trader who built his own exchange from a 42-page prompt, and the AI video tool stack the guys actually use (Kling, PAI, Higgsfield, Seedance & more).
"The technology that we're using now to build stuff is the worst that it's going to be." — Joel
⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open & liftoff
1:04 Episode 810 kicks off — semi-retired no more
3:48 Bitcoin's 4-year cycle is mapping exactly
4:45 Saylor's head fake: sells 32 BTC, buys 1,500 more
6:40 Market check: BTC $61,873 & Joel divorces his altcoins
7:49 The AI trading edge: OKX & the 42-page prompt exchange
10:24 SpaceX IPO ($SPCX): $250B demand, $1.8T valuation
11:27 Trillion-dollar AI: Anthropic & OpenAI file to go public
15:48 Culture Shock: World Cup visitors review America
19:09 Viddl: download any video, built in a morning
23:06 Joel's AI origin story: 1978 & a TRS-80
26:30 The AI video stack: Kling, PAI, Higgsfield, Seedance
28:08 Acumen: 9 daily puzzle games headed to the App Store
31:56 Travis's Pixar-style get-well video for his brother
35:03 "The worst it's ever going to be" — why the opportunity is NOW
37:18 The fine print
🔗 LINKS
🎮 Play Acumen free: https://games.aiforeveryoneshow.com/app.html
📕 Pre-order Joel's new book AI Made Simple (Dec 1, 2026): https://aimadesimplebook.com
🎬 Joel's origin story video: https://www.youtube.com/joelcomm
🎞 PAI by Utopai Studios (story-to-storyboard video): https://pai.utopaistudios.com/login
📈 MSTR Today with John Lee Dumas (the Saylor breakdown): https://www.youtube.com/@MSTRtoday
🤖 Travis's market tools: https://coinresearch.ai
⬇️ Download Viddl: https://badco.in/viddl
📝 Full show notes: https://badco.in/810
⭐ Enjoying the show? Leave us 5 stars and a funny review on Apple Podcasts!
DISCLAIMER: Not financial advice. The Bad Crypto Podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only. Prices and valuations quoted reflect the moment of recording. Do your own research and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
Stay bad. 🤘
#BadCrypto #Bitcoin #SpaceX #SPCX #AI #ClaudeFable #BearMarket #Crypto #MichaelSaylor #VibeCoding
Support the show: https://badcryptopodcast.com
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In this sponsored episode of The Bad Crypto Podcast, Joel and Travis welcome back Markus Levin, co-founder of XYO Network, a project first featured on the show back in the ICO days of 2018. Unlike many projects from that era, XYO is still building.
The conversation centers on a huge problem in both crypto and AI: digital systems are often blind to the real world. Smart contracts, AI agents, apps, and autonomous systems can process data, but they do not automatically know whether that data is true, where it came from, or whether someone tampered with it.
That is where XYO comes in.
Markus explains how XYO has evolved from a proof-of-location network into what the team describes as a truth layer for real-world data. Using devices, mobile phones, sensors, NFC tags, cryptographic proofs, and its own data-focused Layer 1 blockchain, XYO is working to verify events, actions, assets, and real-world information so AI systems and blockchain applications can operate with greater certainty.
Joel, Travis, and Markus also dig into the COIN app, which allows users to earn rewards for contributing real-world data, and the broader XYO ecosystem, including the XYO token, XL1 token, proof of origin, zero-knowledge privacy protections, and the newly announced AI infrastructure verification partnership with Setter Labs.
The big idea: as AI becomes more powerful, the question may not be whether a model can generate an answer. The question is whether it can prove where that answer came from.
Topics Covered
Why AI agents and smart contracts are still “blind” to the physical world
How XYO began as a proof-of-location project in 2018
Why GPS and location data can be spoofed
The role of blockchain in verifying real-world events
What “proof of origin” means and why it matters
How XYO collects and verifies real-world data
Why bad data may be one of AI’s biggest problems
How verified data could reduce AI hallucinations
The COIN app and how users can earn rewards for data collection
XYO’s Layer 1 blockchain and the XL1 token
The difference between XYO, XL1, COIN, and other ecosystem assets
How zero-knowledge proofs help preserve privacy
Why decentralized physical infrastructure networks may become increasingly important
How XYO is moving into AI infrastructure and AI agent verification
The new XYO AI SDK and what developers can build with it
Why long-term survival matters in crypto
Joel’s reminder that sponsored projects must still pass Bad Crypto vetting
Featured Guest
Markus LevinCo-founder of XYO Network
Links Mentioned
XYO Network: https://xyo.networkCOIN App: https://coinapp.coBuild with XYO: https://xyo.network/buildPartnership inquiries: partnerships@xyo.network
Disclosure
This is a sponsored episode of The Bad Crypto Podcast. Joel and Travis were compensated to feature XYO Network, but the project passed their vetting process before being brought to the Bad Crypto audience.
Support the show: https://badcryptopodcast.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.