I wanted to provide some resources to support you in your Bitcoin journey. This is an attempt to create a centralized page with a variety of resources to help learn and understand what Bitcoin really is without all the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). None of the below should be considered financial advice. You should always do your own research and consult professionals when you feel it is necessary.
Featured Reading
Bitcoin Whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? No one really knows if Satoshi is a male or female, one or more people. Either case, the elusive creator of Bitcoin has handed over a gift of truly hard, finite, unconfiscatable money. To understand Bitcoin’s block chain and high level technicals, you must read where it all started. The Bitcoin Whitepaper written by the creator, whoever they may be.
Thank God for Bitcoin: The Creation, Corruption and Redemption of Money by Bitcoin and Bible Group
The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous
The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age by James Dale Davidson
Buying Bitcoin
One of the best ways to save is to convert your extra cash (money after paying debts, bills, expenses and savings) into a hard asset that will grow over time. Some people buy precious metals, real estate or stocks. I choose to buy Bitcoin as a savings/investment and a hedge against inflation.
Since Bitcoin is fairly high in price since it’s crossed the $30,000 mark, you don’t usually buy a whole bitcoin, but rather pieces of a Bitcoin. Each Bitcoin (BTC) is broken down into 1,000,000 pieces known as Satoshis. So 1 BTC = 1,000,000 Sats. After you’ve paid your debts and built a savings while paying your bills. your extra cash can be used to buy an asset like Bitcoin or pieces of a Bitcoin.
There are two strategies to buying into an asset: Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) or Buying the Dip. Both strategies can work together or as singular strategies for investing.
Dollar Cost Averaging is when you buy daily, weekly, monthly, etc. with a set amount every time you buy. The idea is that since the price changes on assets due to volatility in the market, you’re buying at highs and lows. When you average out the amount of purchases with the amount invested, it ends up equaling the similar strategy of Buying the Dip. Dollar Cost Averaging is a more “Passive” investment strategy, unlike Buying the Dip.
Buying the Dip, is when you wait for the price of an asset to drop severely in price to a floor that you have set your target price on. For example, you had $30,000 and you wanted to buy Bitcoin, but you set a target of at least $4000. So when the price in Bitcoin dropped to $3000 in March of 2020, you would have used your extra $30,000 to buy 7.5 BTC at the target price of $4000. Today, this would be worth over $240,000. But, as you can tell, in order to employ this method you must watch and time the market extremely well. Buying the Dip is more of an “Active” investment strategy.
You can combine both of these strategies and buy small amounts daily, while watching the price and set target price drops to buy larger amounts. Combining these strategies is only wise if you have the funds to lose, otherwise you should remain conservative with your extra money.
As for resources on where to buy Bitcoin, there are several sources and each has a different fee structure, that you should read up on, before trusting. Some exchanges are US based and require KYC (Know Your Customer) data like name, address, phone number, even social security number. Other exchanges may be foreign and do not need all of that information to sell you Bitcoin. You can always meet in person and buy peer to peer. Some resources listed below may be affiliate links that help support FRC.
Swan Bitcoin
Simply the best for Daily or Weekly Dollar Cost Averaging and fairly priced for spot buying. Their fees are the lowest I have found and when you do move your BTC to your wallet, the transfer fees have been fairly low as well.
CoinBitsApp
Very low fees of $1 per transaction and great for weekly Dollar Cost Averaging as well as spot buying. The current issue is you cannot custody your own Bitcoin. The best part of this method is you can do Round Up buys. If you link your accounts, cards and/or spending accounts to the app, they will round up each of your purchases to the nearest dollar and take that amount of change and buy Bitcoin. This app shows promise to grow with additional features, but the only two things I’d add is the ability to custody your own BTC and I’d speed up the hold times on buying even if you may need to up the fees another 50 cents.
Wallets
The three most common hardware wallet companies are Trezor, Ledger and Cobo. All three are user friendly, depending on skill you have using apps and electronics. We do not advocate one over the other as you should research each one and make up your decision.
Please note, there are other brands we did not mention, but these three we are familiar with.
Earn Bitcoin
Fold App and Card
It’s an ingenious concept, spend dollars and instead of cash back, you earn Satoshis back on each purchase. You get a chance to spin a wheel for rewards up to and including 1 whole Bitcoin. With the App, you get daily spins and you can buy gift cards to various places, earning a set amount back of Sats. With the debit card, you get all of the previous, plus each purchase gives you the chance to spin and win 1 BTC or at least a lot of Satoshis back on each purchase. The waitlist is a bit long, so feel free to use our referral link above to get started. The catch is, you must have 50,000 Satoshis in order to transfer to your wallet. There are two cards, the introduction card is less than $30 and acts as a reloadable debit card. The Premium card is $129 annually, but the rewards are larger per purchase as well as other additional perks.
This list is growing and will probably keep growing over time with contributions from our listeners.