Ian R. Cohen

Coerce the Memorable Moments

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Date:

June 16, 2026

Author:

Ian R. Cohen

Principal

Block No. 08 - The Audacity

Everyone has an idea. Very few people have the nerve to do something about it. Why the idea is the cheap part, lawyers who hid AI instructions in a court filing, a Bitcoin case that pulled me into a courtroom I never planned to enter, and a 30-hour round trip to San Antonio that nearly fell apart on the tarmac in Houston.

Business - Ideas vs Execution

Everyone has ideas. But do you have what it takes to make them real.

Building a team, having a vision, fundraising, having a purpose, making others believe. And then carrying the weight of all of your decisions and the pressure you feel from taking money from investors.

It's enough to make you go insane. Maybe that's why so many founders seem crazy.

I know because I invested in one. A clothing technology company called CaaStle. The founder raised hundreds of millions of dollars while fabricating audits, forging board signatures, and showing investors bank screenshots with $200 million in cash when the company had less than $200,000. She pled guilty to securities fraud in March. The audacity.

I've sat across the table from hundreds of founders, almost all of them well intended. The ones who make it aren't the ones with the best ideas. They're the ones who refuse to stop building when the plan falls apart, when the lead investor disappears, when the co-founder quits. The idea gets you in the room. The execution keeps you there.

If you're sitting on something and waiting for the perfect moment, stop waiting. The perfect moment is a myth. The founders I respect the most started before they were ready and figured it out on the way down.

AI - Prompt Injection

New frontiers bring new battlefields. People are now actively trying to prevent your AI from reaching the right answer.

Prompt injection is when someone embeds hidden instructions inside content that an AI system processes, attempting to override or manipulate the AI's behavior. Think of it as slipping a note to the judge's clerk while the judge isn't looking.

Last week, a Brazilian court sanctioned a pair of attorneys for doing exactly that. They hid text in a court filing using white font on a white background, invisible to the human eye, designed to instruct any AI reviewing the brief to evaluate it poorly. The court found it. The court was not amused.

I've been evaluating the rules of professional conduct in the United States for lawyers. I can't find the specific rule this violates. It doesn't fit neatly into any existing ethical framework because the frameworks were written before AI was reading briefs. That gap won't last long.

You can't blindly use AI. You certainly can't blindly try to game it. The tools are new. The obligation to use them honestly is not.

Bitcoin - Noah Doe

An anonymous plaintiff is suing tens of thousands of anonymous defendants to obtain ownership of nearly 40,000 dormant bitcoin wallet addresses holding approximately 3.8 million bitcoin.

It's not supposed to be this way.

The plaintiffs are relying on an old-timey abandoned property law that was created for finding physical objects on the sidewalk. Not scanning the bitcoin blockchain and finding wallet addresses that have not sent any outputs in five or more years. The theory depends on classifying Bitcoin as a tangible personal property and valuing the wallet addresses at under $10 because without private keys the property has no realizable value. They are asking a court to transfer title to hundreds of billions of dollars based on a sub-$10 appraisal.

The plaintiffs were in court unopposed. Until I stepped in.

Two weeks ago I filed an amicus brief with the Court to stay the proceedings and admit me as an additional voice. I don't represent a party. No one asked me to do this. It just had to be done.

Last week the judge granted my motion. All proceedings in the case are halted pending a hearing on July 14. I'll be there defending Bitcoin.

I'm not a litigator and I don't generally do court appearances. But I'm committed to getting out of my comfort zone and continuing to grow. I've heard from many in the Bitcoin community who are supportive of what I'm doing. This is my way of protecting the protocol without having the technical chops to do it through code.

I'm now batting 1.000 in court motions in my career.

IRC - The Life and Times

I went to the NBA Finals. Game 1 in San Antonio vs the New York Knicks.

My brother lives in New Orleans and decided to road trip to the game. He sent me a picture of his ticket. That's when I decided to surprise him. So I booked a same-day flight to San Antonio. This was a business trip.

8:30am out of LaGuardia. Light traffic, empty security line, on-time departure. Short layover in Houston, connecting flight to San Antonio. I was scheduled to land four hours before tipoff. Got some work done in Houston then had time for a light bite.

Shared the airport menu with Claude. It recommended the steak tacos. I argued. The tacos won.

Checked my phone and the flight was delayed by a half hour. No big deal, I'd planned for that. Grabbed a seat by the gate and watched an epic thunderstorm pound the area. The flight was delayed another hour. Then another.

We finally boarded the flight and the energy from Knicks fans on the plane was palpable. We pushed away from the gate. And then the Pilot, who mentioned he was a Sixer fan at least three times, announced all flights were grounded due to weather. He said we would get an update in an hour. Five minutes later he announced we were going to head back to the gate and we could get off the plane if we want.

I had not accounted for this. I frantically listed my absurdly expensive ticket trying to salvage some of the value. I thought about texting my brother, but decided to let him enjoy the game without knowing I'd tried.

I deplaned and tried to figure out where to watch the game in Houston.

At the moment I stepped off, the gate agent got a call. Cleared for takeoff. Of course they had just let 20 people wander off the plane into the airport. How long was it going to take to find them?

6:40pm we were wheels up for San Antonio. It was a one hour flight that landed two-minutes before tipoff. I watched the national anthem from my seat on the plane. San Antonians were very nice. I apologized to all of them as me and several other Knicks fans barreled past them down the aisle violating every unwritten airplane rule.

I gleefully ran through the airport screaming "Go Knicks" while trying to find the Uber pickup. Found a couple of fellow Knicks fans who were on my flight who had already ordered a car. We rode to the arena together, dumped our bags into some outside lockers, and I made it into the arena with 24 seconds left in the 1st Quarter.

Quickly located my brother who still had no idea I'd be there. I pulled my hat down real low and held up three fingers over my face like the King of New York. I yelled "Let's go Knicks" at him before removing my hat and hand from my face! The surprise was a success.

We then watched an epic finals where Brunson hit the dagger for the win and New York took over the building. We then proceeded to take over San Antonio. We celebrated in a bar aptly named 'Howdy, Sore Loser' until about 2am. All of their TVs were showing MLB network. We'd have to wait to see the highlights.

My flight back to NY left at 5am the next morning. Business trip. It was an intense 30 hours, but worth it in every way. Sometimes you have to coerce the memorable moments into existence.

I might have to do it again. Knicks in 5.