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Trust Revolution

Trust Revolution

Written by: Shawn Yeager
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Unfiltered conversations with builders, thinkers, and operators in Bitcoin and beyond. Exploring the systems we trust, why they work (or don't), and what comes next.

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  • Your Money, Your Data, Your Mind | Jesse Posner

    Your Money, Your Data, Your Mind | Jesse Posner
    Feb 19 2026
    “If somebody gets control over your personal AI — all your health data, all your financial data, all your emails, everything you've thought about — they own you.” Jesse Posner built FROST threshold signatures and shipped BitKey at Block. Now he's building Vora because he realized individual self-custody is still a LARP — and the stakes are about to get much higher. Episode Summary Most people think a hardware wallet means they've solved self-custody. Jesse Posner spent years at Coinbase and Block learning exactly why that's wrong. Without a full node, your wallet leaks your balance and IP address to third-party servers. Without physical security integration, your keys are one wrench attack away from worthless. Without verifiable hardware, your entire setup might be compromised from the factory floor. Vora is building the integrated answer: a sovereign device combining a full Bitcoin node, air-gapped hardware wallet, tamper detection, and emergency response — all designed so that attacking a Bitcoiner becomes more expensive than it's worth. But Posner isn't stopping at money. He argues the next frontier of self-custody is your mind. As personal AI agents accumulate our most intimate data — health records, financial decisions, private thoughts — whoever controls that AI controls the person. Vora's “guardian AI” architecture uses hardware-backed isolation to guarantee that no prompt injection can reach your most trusted model, while still letting you harness frontier cloud models for non-sensitive tasks. The same cypherpunk principles that protect Bitcoin keys now protect the most valuable asset of all: your autonomy. About the Guest Jesse Posner is CEO and co-founder of Vora, a startup building Bitcoin-grade self-custody for both digital assets and AI. A trained lawyer turned cryptographic engineer, Posner spent over four years at Coinbase on key management, then helped build BitKey at Block. He created the first BIP-340 compatible implementation of FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures), supported by a Brink grant. His work sits at the intersection of cryptography, constitutional law, and physical security — bringing an unusually broad lens to the question of individual sovereignty in the digital age. X/Twitter: jesseposnerNostr: jesseposner on PrimalLinkedIn: Jesse PosnerGitHub: jesseposnerCompany: Vora Key Quotes “We wanted to make self-sovereignty real — where you can control your Bitcoin, maintain your privacy, protect yourself from physical attacks, and resist government seizure.” — Jesse Posne“If somebody gets control over your personal AI, they own you. You could literally lose control of your identity.” — Jesse Posner“The nation-state system is like a dead man walking — the ground has already shifted and we're just seeing the slow collapse.” — Jesse Posner Key Takeaways A hardware wallet without a full node is a privacy leak: Every time your wallet checks your balance through a third-party server, it reveals your UTXOs and IP address — giving attackers a map to your Bitcoin and your front door.Self-custody must include physical security, not just key management: Vora integrates tamper detection, time-delayed spending, and emergency dispatch into the custody system itself, making the economics of attacking a Bitcoiner unprofitable.FROST threshold signatures eliminate the privacy and cost penalties of multi-sig: Traditional multi-sig reveals your entire key setup on-chain. FROST produces a single signature indistinguishable from a solo signer, with the ability to refresh, revoke, and add key shares without moving Bitcoin.Your personal AI is the next self-custody frontier: As AI agents accumulate intimate personal data and gain the ability to act on your behalf, controlling that AI becomes as critical as controlling your keys — and the same cypherpunk architecture applies. Timestamps [00:00] Introduction and Jesse's background at Coinbase and Block[03:16] How institutional vs. individual self-custody differs[06:30] Executive Order 6102 and constitutional resistance to government seizure[09:05] Physical security: integrating alarms, tamper detection, and emergency response[14:31] The $5 wrench attack problem and why it gets worse as Bitcoin appreciates[17:53] Why a full node matters for privacy — your wallet is leaking data[22:48] Supply chain attacks and the case for verifiable hardware[27:23] Trusted execution environments: powerful but not impervious[32:40] How FROST threshold signatures work and why they matter[39:29] Proactive security: refreshing key shares without moving Bitcoin[44:37] Self-custody of AI: why controlling your mind is the next frontier[48:58] Prompt injection attacks and the “lethal trifecta”[52:47] Guardian AI architecture: hardware-isolated models that can't be corrupted[54:57] Fiduciary AI: confidentiality and undivided loyalty in a single concept[1:06:02] Vora's product roadmap: AI product this ...
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • S03E04 John Robb — Total Surveillance Is One Switch Away

    S03E04 John Robb — Total Surveillance Is One Switch Away
    Feb 13 2026
    “All it takes is the political will or the political mistake to turn it on. And it's there.” John Robb maps the path from post-national identity collapse to automated totalitarian surveillance—and explains why most of the tools people are counting on won't stop it. Episode Summary The systems holding society together are breaking down faster than most people realize. John Robb returns to Trust Revolution to connect two accelerating forces: the collapse of shared national identity that made trust and governance possible and the rise of autonomous AI that makes population-scale surveillance trivially cheap. When common identity dissolves, everyone treats the state as a system to loot—and those benefiting from the looting need tools to maintain control. That tool is what Robb calls “the long night”: AI assigned to every individual, building profiles, manipulating behavior, punishing dissent, all automated by a small group with network access. Musk buying Twitter delayed but didn't prevent it. Asked whether Bitcoin, encryption, or decentralized networks can counter state-level AI surveillance, Robb is blunt: probably not. What individuals can do is leverage AI aggressively for personal economic advantage, build persistent AI agents they actually control, and resist the emotional manipulation that makes authoritarian lockdown feel necessary. Robb gives the window at roughly ten years before the economic singularity separates those who paired with AI from those who didn't. About the Guest John Robb is the editor of the Global Guerrillas Report on Substack and Patreon, where he publishes predictive frameworks at the intersection of war, technology, and politics. A former USAF special operations pilot who flew Tier 1 missions with Delta and SEAL Team 6, Robb later earned his MPPM from Yale, became Forrester Research's first internet analyst, and co-founded Gomez Advisors (sold to Compuware for $295 million). He is the author of Brave New War, a military strategy classic on open-source warfare. His work focuses on how networked systems create both unprecedented fragility and opportunity for individuals navigating institutional collapse. X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnrobbSubstack: https://johnrobb.substack.comPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnrobbLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-robb-97518/ Key Quotes “We don't trust each other anymore. Everything anyone else says, you treat it like an attack.” — John Robb“If you find yourself being enraged—absolutely anything, even if you think it's justified—walk away. You are being played.” — John Robb“Every investment [of data] you make is going to be siphoned off to the cloud and used by them to compete against you.” — John Robb Key Takeaways The surveillance state doesn't require a conspiracy — just a switch: Corporations already built every component of totalitarian AI surveillance through normal product development. Automated, individualized manipulation at population scale is now a matter of political will, not technical capability.Bitcoin and encryption probably won't stop the long night: Robb is direct — decentralized tools can't match the degree of control a fully deployed AI surveillance system would exert. The political and social dynamics driving demand for that control are stronger than the technical countermeasures available.AI leverage is the individual's economic lifeline: The gap between those who pair with persistent AI agents and those who don't will widen into an unbridgeable economic divide within a decade. The priority is building AI tools you control locally — centralized services siphon your intelligence and use it to compete against you.Empathy triggers are weaponized at network speed: Viral content manufactures tribal identity in days — what took nation-states years of propaganda. Recognizing when you're being conscripted into an emotional swarm is a core survival skill for anyone navigating algorithmic media. Timestamps [00:28] Why post-nationalism and AI autonomy are the two forces reshaping everything[03:19] What autonomous AI actually means — and why current systems fall apart after eight hours[07:58] The long night: what a modern totalitarian surveillance state looks like[14:58] Why Musk buying Twitter only delayed the surveillance threat[17:08] How the end of the Cold War began the structural replacement of the middle class[20:44] Surveillance as a service — what job it does for the cosmopolitan elite[28:31] Why Bitcoin and encryption probably can't counter state-level AI surveillance[29:17] Data ownership as the missed opportunity — sharecroppers on your own land[38:25] Building persistent AI agents as personal economic leverage[45:21] Top 10% now drive half of consumer spending — what that means for technology development[54:13] Empathy swarms: how viral content manufactures tribal identity in days[1:01:10] Staying connected, staying skeptical, and screening your family's ...
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • S03E03 Aaron van Wirdum – Bitcoin's Origin Story and the Unfinished Fight

    S03E03 Aaron van Wirdum – Bitcoin's Origin Story and the Unfinished Fight
    Feb 6 2026
    “The cypherpunks who tried to build digital cash before Bitcoin might one day be remembered like America's founding fathers.” Aaron van Wirdum spent five years writing The Genesis Book—and warns the fight for money outside of government control isn't over. EPISODE SUMMARY Bitcoin didn't appear from nowhere. For decades before Satoshi, a scrappy band of cryptographers, privacy activists, and heterodox economists tried to build digital cash that could operate outside government control. They all failed—until one anonymous inventor synthesized their ideas into a system that actually worked. Aaron van Wirdum, author of The Genesis Book and former editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine, traces this lineage from David Chaum's DigiCash in the early 90s through Nick Szabo's Bit Gold to Satoshi's breakthrough: using proof of work for consensus rather than as currency itself. But the origin story doesn't end with invention. Van Wirdum covered the 2015-2017 block size wars in real time—when miners, exchanges, and venture-backed startups controlling 80% of economic activity tried to change Bitcoin's rules and lost to anonymous node runners in basements. Today, the threat has shifted. Mining is concentrated, privacy developers face prison, and incremental regulation slowly suffocates self-custody. The question isn't whether Bitcoin can survive a 51% attack. It's whether it can survive becoming as monitored and controlled as email. ABOUT THE GUEST Aaron van Wirdum is the author of The Genesis Book: The Story of the People and Projects That Inspired Bitcoin and former editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine's print edition. He discovered Bitcoin in 2013 and spent over a decade documenting its technical evolution and governance battles, including real-time coverage of the block size wars. Based in the Netherlands, van Wirdum studied journalism and the historical influence of technology on social structures at Utrecht University. He left X/Twitter and is now active on Nostr. Nostr: https://primal.net/AaronvanWBook: https://thegenesisbook.com KEY QUOTES “The market decides what is Bitcoin. That is ultimately what it comes down to.” — Aaron van Wirdum “The big concern is sort of the emailification of Bitcoin—where the protocol is still out there, but no one's actually interacting with it directly because everything is happening through [custodial solutions and regulated entities.]” — Aaron van Wirdum “Bitcoin is the best form of money ever invented, if it all keeps working as intended.” — Aaron van Wirdum KEY TAKEAWAYS Bitcoin is an evolutionary step, not a lucky accident: Satoshi synthesized decades of failed attempts—Hashcash's proof of work, DigiCash's privacy, Bit Gold's decentralized registry—into a system where the pieces finally fit together. The difficulty adjustment algorithm and using proof of work for consensus (rather than as currency) were the crucial breakthroughs.The block size wars proved Bitcoin's immune system works: When 50 companies representing 80% of economic activity tried to change the rules in 2017, fork futures markets revealed the market valued the conservative version. The users—not the miners or corporations—ultimately decide what Bitcoin is.Individual miners refusing transactions is annoying, not existential: F2Pool censoring OFAC-sanctioned transactions means slightly longer confirmation times. The real threat is miners refusing to build on blocks that include those transactions—that's when censorship becomes enforced.Regulatory suffocation is the most plausible failure mode: Not a protocol attack, but incremental KYC/AML rules that make self-custody harder, privacy tools illegal, and Bitcoin's actual use as digital cash impossible while ETFs and “institutional allocators” hold a version that's no different from any other financial asset. TIMESTAMPS [00:01] Introduction and the cypherpunk vision of building money outside government control[03:44] Tim May's radical vision: the internet as a new frontier for institutions[11:26] David Chaum and DigiCash: how the first working digital cash almost became a banking standard[17:15] Nick Szabo's Bit Gold: inching toward Bitcoin and why it couldn't quite work[21:07] Bitcoin's known weakness: the 51% attack and mining centralization today[25:27] The block size wars: how close Bitcoin came to capture or destruction in 2017[33:58] Transaction censorship: when it matters and when it doesn't[38:25] The OP_RETURN debate: harm reduction versus fighting spam[47:54] Why Aaron's still here after 13 years: “What is more important than money?”[54:46] The dimming torch: privacy as Bitcoin's underemphasized origin story[56:15] The most plausible failure mode: incremental regulation and the emailification of Bitcoin[60:54] Practical advice: get a wallet, get some Bitcoin, just try it RESOURCES & LINKS Mentioned in Episode: Bitcoin Magazine - Aaron van Wirdum's articles - His coverage of Bitcoin over the past decadeNew York ...
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    1 hr and 5 mins
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