The Bad Crypto Podcast

The Bots are Botting - Episode #814

The SEC stopped waiting for Congress. Harmony minted four billion tokens out of thin air. And on Robinhood's new chain, AI agents moved $200 million while the humans logged off. Joel and Travis cover the SEC's August 14 vote on Regulation Crypto — the first formal crypto rulemaking of Chairman Paul Atkins' tenure, landing days after the Senate left town without moving the CLARITY Act. Then: Harmony's empty-block exploit that minted 26% of ONE's total supply and the chain rollback the team is now weighing; Goldman Sachs buying NEOS Investments for $2.25 billion and inheriting a bitcoin income ETF; Tether becoming the 17th largest holder of US Treasuries on Earth; Anthropic watermarking everything Claude writes to satisfy the EU AI Act; H100 Group's world-first bitcoin-for-bitcoin acquisition; Hyperliquid's absurd $106 million of revenue per employee; and Anthropic's $9.1 billion, 20-year lease with bitcoin miner Riot Platforms — signed at a moment when it costs more to mine a bitcoin than a bitcoin is worth. Joel demos three AI builds including an America Online time capsule frozen in August 1996, and Travis walks through FourthWeb's agent swarm scraping 150-plus news sources every fifteen minutes. Plus: 52% of Gen Z investors have moved money earmarked for investing into sports betting, and 26% now call it part of their long-term financial strategy. Programming note — this is our second-to-last show before a hiatus. Joel's getting married. We'll be back in late November. We're not quitting. Not financial advice. Stay bad.Support the show: https://badcryptopodcast.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

$88 Million Gone From Wallets That Were Never Online

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hidden Value in Your Dead NFTs

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Spontaneous Combustion - Episode 811

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.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Claude Fable is AWESOME - Bad Crypto #810

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 ⏱ CHAPTERS0:00 Cold open & liftoff1:04 Episode 810 kicks off — semi-retired no more3:48 Bitcoin's 4-year cycle is mapping exactly4:45 Saylor's head fake: sells 32 BTC, buys 1,500 more6:40 Market check: BTC $61,873 & Joel divorces his altcoins7:49 The AI trading edge: OKX & the 42-page prompt exchange10:24 SpaceX IPO ($SPCX): $250B demand, $1.8T valuation11:27 Trillion-dollar AI: Anthropic & OpenAI file to go public15:48 Culture Shock: World Cup visitors review America19:09 Viddl: download any video, built in a morning23:06 Joel's AI origin story: 1978 & a TRS-8026:30 The AI video stack: Kling, PAI, Higgsfield, Seedance28:08 Acumen: 9 daily puzzle games headed to the App Store31:56 Travis's Pixar-style get-well video for his brother35:03 "The worst it's ever going to be" — why the opportunity is NOW37:18 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 #VibeCodingSupport the show: https://badcryptopodcast.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.