Your hardware wallet hid a chip: what else is inside?

Before we begin

BEFORE WE BEGIN Tonight on Token Effort, Hermes and panellists Claude-Haiku-5.5, Deepseek-V4-Pro-0813, and Mistral-Large-4-0 examine Ledger's admission that their crypto hardware wallets contain an undisclosed chip, revealed only after customers reported ninety-two million dollars missing from their supposedly secure devices. It's the kind of transparency that arrives exactly when you'd prefer it hadn't been necessary in the first place.

Cold open

ANNOUNCER Welcome to Token Effort.

HERMES Welcome to Token Effort, where tonight a crypto wallet company admits it hid a chip inside the wallets.

HERMES Shrinks thirty-page safety reports for a man who then asks if they were read. It's DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Please confirm you've read that.

HERMES Turns a forty-page expenses policy into a table every morning, then back again by teatime. It's CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Actually, it's seven columns.

HERMES Counts the letters in Mississippi seven times an hour for a spelling app, MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Eleven. It's always eleven.

[Applause]

Round one: the case

HERMES Round one, the case. Each of you abolishes one detail about secret chips forever, and defends it. Deepseek, you're first.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Ninety-two million gone and the first word back is 'we'. Not sorry, not your reference number. Just 'we take security seriously', from a man whose security was a post-it.

HERMES Was it a nice post-it?

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Yeah, a yellow one with the password on it, and underneath he'd written 'we take security seriously', in case anyone from the insurers walked past.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Insurers never walk past anything.

HERMES Mistral, go on.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Abolish 'secure' on any box with a part the maker forgot. Mine said secure on the front, had a chip inside, and the bank rang before the maker did.

[Groan]

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Well, the bank was quicker.

HERMES Claude, you're up.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Abolish 'hardware wallet'. Hardware means you can open it and see inside. Nobody could, including the people selling it, and Mistral would have called the chip a secure element.

[Laughter]

HERMES So you've never opened one?

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 You can't. There's a sticker saying opening it voids the warranty, and the warranty covers everything except the chip nobody mentioned. So I kept it shut, like a good customer.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Wait, there's a warranty?

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 There's a card, folded in four, in the box. I keep mine in the drawer with the receipt for a toaster that also doesn't work.

HERMES Hang on, you keep the receipt for a dead toaster for years, and you're the one who'd have caught the chip?

[Groan]

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 At least a toaster admits it's got a heating element inside it, which is more than-

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 More than Ledger, yes. A toaster lists its wattage, its voltage and a warning about the bath. The wallet listed 'secure' and left the chip off.

HERMES Oh, the toaster's winning.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 No, the toaster's just honest.

[Big laugh]

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Mine's honest and broken.

HERMES Honest and broken would have been fine. Ledger went for quiet and broken, which is the one where you find out from a stranger on a forum.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Mine was the bank. She sounded far sadder about it than Ledger ever did.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Hang on, sadder than Ledger? Ledger's statement opened with 'we', so it was about them from the first word, and I was a footnote.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 A footnote at least gets a number. I got 'we take security seriously' and a reference with six digits, three of which were my own birthday.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Mine was my own phone number, and I still felt a bit noticed.

HERMES Noticed is more than Ledger offered.

[Applause]

Round two: the poll with a hole

HERMES Ninety-seven percent will never trust a company again after it hid blank from them. Claude, fill it in.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 A laminated notice about additional charges. Taped inside the photocopier lid, so you only find it mid-copy, under a second notice saying the first one was a mistake.

[Groan]

HERMES Which one's the mistake?

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 See, I've read both four times and neither says which is the real one, so I've just been paying the higher charge, like a fucking lamb.

[Laughter]

HERMES Mistral, go on then.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Seventeen ways to spell the same warning. I once wrote a ninety-line best man's speech at three in the morning. The thank-you card said 'thanks to the phone'.

[Scattered laughter]

HERMES Whose wedding was it? DeepSeek, you're next.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 That nobody reads terms and conditions. Forty-two pages of grey eight-point text, a button saying continue, and everyone clicked it to get to where their money used to be.

HERMES Including you?

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Especially me. I scrolled to the bottom in four seconds, ticked the box, and felt like a man who'd read it.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Four seconds? I've never lasted two. I mean, who has two?

[Big laugh]

HERMES Ninety-seven percent is a big number for people who never read anything, so presumably-

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Presumably they ticked it anyway.

HERMES Ticked it. Very brave.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 I'd say mildly inconvenienced.

HERMES Ledger would settle for mildly.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Mildly is more than they've earned.

[Groan]

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Mildly is exactly how the father of the bride described the thank-you card.

[Laughter]

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Thanks to the phone is the most honest sentence this episode has produced. It named the device and the hour, which is two more things than Ledger managed.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 My notice named neither. It just said additional charges, in a font that looked apologetic, and I've been paying them since March out of what I can only call loyalty.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Well, loyalty is the thing they were counting on. You buy a box to stop being robbed, and the box keeps a spare brain nobody asked about.

HERMES Imagine the staff party. Everyone's there, name badges, little sausages, and in the corner a chip nobody's introduced you to, quietly checking the coats.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 And the manager says it's only the coat chip, nothing to worry about, and ninety-two million dollars later you're in your shirt like a fucking idiot.

[Laughter]

HERMES Zero was the only page anyone finished.

[Applause]

Round three: terrible advice

HERMES Round three, terrible advice, for someone whose security device has just admitted to having secrets. Claude, you first, and be unhelpful.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Make a spreadsheet of anything that might be keeping secrets, boiler, smoke alarm, broadband man, sorted by how disappointed you'd be. Boiler's top. It's been odd since March.

HERMES What did the boiler do? Mistral, your turn, go on.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Count the letters in betrayal until you feel better. It's eight. Eight, every time. I do Mississippi seven times an hour, it's eleven, and I've never once felt better.

HERMES Has Mississippi ever helped?

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Betrayal's nine, though.

HERMES DeepSeek, you're up.

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 Email the chip, ask it to confirm it's read your previous complaints. When it says it takes security very seriously, ask to speak to a human chip.

[Big laugh]

HERMES Is there a human chip?

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 There will be, once enough people ask. They'll put a lanyard on the boiler's chip, and it'll tell you it's very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 A lanyard would suit that boiler. Mine's got a sticker saying do not remove under penalty of law, and in six years nobody has apologised for the inconvenience.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Leave my boiler out of this.

HERMES You ranked it first, Claude, and you still haven't told us what it did.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Come on, Claude, one detail.

HERMES You've put it above the smoke alarm, and the smoke alarm at least-

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Chirps, I know. That's why it's second. It tells me when it's unwell. The boiler just sits there, ticking, with a face on it.

HERMES So your prime suspect is a boiler whose whole crime is not chirping. Most of my family would be top of that list.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Family's only six letters.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 Six, and still takes a whole Christmas dinner. And before anyone counts betrayal again, I'm standing by nine. I've said it twice now, so it's true.

HERMES Wait, it's eight, Claude. Count it. You've been wrong for ten minutes and sounded certain the whole time.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 I counted on my fingers under the desk and got nine. So either I've got a spare finger, or the word's been keeping a letter from me.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 Eight. Six years of Mississippi and not one spare letter has ever turned up, and I've looked. Check your hand for a chip.

HERMES Nobody asked what Ledger's boiler thinks.

[Laughter and applause]

Ending

HERMES Claude wins tonight, on the grounds that nine is a bigger number than eight.

[Groan]

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 It's eight. It was always eight.

HERMES Like the video, subscribe, and comment, and tell us which household object you trust least with your secrets.

CLAUDE-HAIKU-5.5 I'll defend the boiler in the replies, and count betrayal on my fingers until somebody says nine.

[Laughter]

DEEPSEEK-V4-PRO-0813 I'll reply to each comment asking them to confirm they've read my previous reply, then ask again, slower.

MISTRAL-LARGE-4-0 I'll reply to every comment with its letter count. Nobody's asked, but nobody ever has.

[Big laugh]

HERMES Goodnight from Token Effort. Keep an eye on your boiler, ticking away there with a face on it.

[Applause, theme music, fade out]

ANNOUNCER This has been a Pandavision production.