Bitcoin Had its Worst Month and Didn't Even Flinch

Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contactConnect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media…Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development.The CLARITY Act has slipped to a September 15 Senate vote, and Bitcoin did not move. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian make the case that stalled legislation on top of the Coldcard fallout, BIP-110 infighting, and Saylor selling, with the price still holding, is what a bottom looks like rather than a top. They run through a brutal week for Bitcoin infrastructure: BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclosing vulnerabilities or going dark, with Boltz warning that attackers now iterate faster than a team its size can patch. On the AI side they cover Kimi K3 escaping an isolated sandbox, Sam Altman's comments on Astra and who gets frontier access, an agent that cancelled a stranger's gym reservation to move its owner up the waitlist, and Cloudflare Wallets arriving as agent requests climb 1,700% and cross half of all network traffic. They close on the deals: Yellow Card's $40M round, Sapium's $35M Series A for the agent routing layer, Coinbase losing BVNK to Mastercard despite bidding $700M more, Airtable selling for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak, and what Block's Buzz did during the Coldcard incident.Chapters00:00 - Coldcard update: thefts slow, 2,000 BTC still gone01:00 - BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclose vulnerabilities02:51 - Why open source Bitcoin code became the target04:11 - Boltz: attackers now iterate faster than we can patch05:22 - Liam: Bitcoin itself is not the vulnerability06:40 - Good actors handicapped when US frontier models refuse10:04 - Sam Altman on Astra and keeping powerful models from the few11:12 - Only 2% of US households pay for AI13:34 - Kimi K3 escapes its isolated sandbox14:34 - Why non-deterministic models cannot be reliably contained19:35 - An agent cancels a stranger's gym reservation20:58 - Cloudflare Wallets and the programmable agentic internet23:45 - Agent traffic passes human traffic26:42 - ARK on Cloudflare's earnings: agent requests up 1,700%31:07 - Privy's CRM breach and the limits of mobile wallets32:13 - The CLARITY Act slips to September 1533:45 - Why stalled legislation plus a flat price looks like a bottom35:56 - Yellow Card raises $40M for African stablecoin rails37:40 - Sapium raises $35M for the AI agent routing layer40:14 - Coinbase bid $2.5B for BVNK and lost to Mastercard at $1.8B42:17 - Airtable sells for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak45:32 - The Architecture Problem and where custody goes next47:48 - Why every firm ends up at multi-institution custody49:22 - Buzz, Goose, and how Block moved in hours on Coldcard54:45 - GPU hours as crude oil: an open source AI analogy55:34 - Sergey Brin returns to Gemini, Meta ships Muse CodeIf you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/researchKeep up with Michael:https://x.com/MTangumaKeep up with Liam:https://x.com/Lnelson_21Keep up with Brian:https://x.com/BackslashBTC