I’m getting an influx of interest as of late. People are getting wise to the debasement of the US Dollar. With equities, bonds and real estate at all time highs and personal expenses increasing at 5–10% a year, people are willing to make the investment and education towards owning and securing sound money, bitcoins.
Buying bitcoins, Here are my referral links to Bitcoin-Only companies. I only recommend Bitcoin-Only services because it is important you focus on what makes bitcoin the most unique asset of our lifetimes and I don’t want you to be distracted by the alt-coin casino games.
Swan Bitcoin is a low-cost DCA dollar cost averaging service that will buy you bitcoin on a routine schedule as you indicate. They have a You-tube channel with educational content and they give you a book by Yon Pritzker called Inventing Bitcoin. They use a company called Prime trust that will hold your bitcoin until you are ready to self custody it. Self custody is just a matter of providing a Bitcoin public key address that you control with a bitcoin wallet.
Spending bitcoins, I don’t recommend spending YOUR bitcoin at this time in it’s adoption cycle, for one, its taxed as property, so if you spend it and its worth more than when you bought it, you need to account for the taxable gain at the end of the year. Save yourself the trouble and only buy what you can afford to set aside for your future self. Two, why would you spend your good money that is limited in supply when they are just creating dollars out of thin air every second of the day. But Bitcoin is a great technology, so why not use it, plenty of places take it and its good to support companies that create value or provide a service for you that accept it. For spending bitcoins, I recommend LN Strike you can connect your ATM card or do a direct deposit in USD, your funds sit in USD and you can send money to a Bitcoin address or pay a Lightning Invoice, since your funds were sitting in USD up to the point of sale, you never owned bitcoins, LN Strike instantly converts your USD to bitcoins at point of purchase and gives the bitcoin to the merchant. You can also use this service to buy/sell bitcoins or do direct deposit and convert a portion of your paycheck into bitcoins. If you heard professional athletes say “Pay Me In Bitcoin”, they are probably using LN Strike
Wallets for taking custody of your bitcoins is a complex subject and will require you to invest some time educating yourself. I don’t recommend taking custody until you have, but don’t be afraid to mess around or learn with a small amount. I usually recommend Blue Wallet, to start, you can download it in the iPhone App store or Google play. I suggest creating a wallet, writing down the 12 seed words. Send $25 from LN Strike to an address from that wallet. Once you see the funds have hit, delete the wallet from your phone, uninstall app and then re-install it, enter the seed words you wrote down and see if your funds are there. If you did it right, it will be. Later on when you have done more research or have accumulated more bitcoins and want to take custody of them in what they call a Cold Storage wallet, I make the following recommendations, Buy the wallet directly from the manufacturer (Trezor, Cold Card are my preferred) in bitcoins using your LN Strike app. If you can have it mailed to your work address or a PO Box would also be beneficial. bitcoins are a bearer asset and the less link to the location of your cold storage device the better, why take chances.
Bitcoin is a roller coaster, its price can swing up and down like dog on LSD, so don’t overdue it until you have educated yourself and have the conviction to really hold onto it. After reading Inventing Bitcoin by Yon Pritzker, I recommend Why Buy Bitcoin By Andy Edstrom, his approach coming from a traditional investment background resonated with me.
Podcasts I recommend Bitcoin Audible, its pretty much everything you need to learn about bitcoin, if you’re a commuter or gym rat, this is the cheat code to Bitcoin education.
If you want to earn bitcoins, I recommend The Fold App They have gamified spending, its a debt card that you preload, you can buy gift cards to some major retailers (Amazon, Starbucks, Door Dash, etc.) get bitcoin back, and then get to spin a wheel for additional bitcoin rewards. you will passively accumulate bitcoins that you can later withdraw to your self custody wallet, basically rewards points that never expire that go up in value and can be used anywhere. you also get a daily spin which rewards you bitcoins for free and 250 sats if you remember to do it 7 days in a row.
Another way to earn bitcoins is a service called Try Lolli, once you create an account, you download a web browser extension, when you shop at certain retailers they have partnerships with, you get sats back (bitcoin rewards) they will add up, we use PetcareRX to buy all our pet food and supplies just to get back bitcoins.
I hope this gets you started on your journey. Enjoy the ride, it’s the best part!
Other great sources and links
BTC Sessions for all your technical know how
The Bitcoin Standard The Bible on hard money and time preference, MUST read, also great podcast.
Keep It Simple Bitcoin More great education and signal.
Asset Dash Look at Bitcoin’s total global market cap against other assets.
Bitcoin Strategy for comparison to other assets.
CaseBitcoin technical information
PricedinBitcoin21 Exactly the name
WTF Happened in 1971 Yah, what the fuck did happen?
FF2K
