Here are 21 simple steps to start your journey into the Bitcoin world and your path to freedom. Enjoy the ride!
I gather some ideas from other good fellow bitcoiners (Simply Bitcoin Telegram group) about what will be the 21 Orange Pills for a nocoiner and put them together into this simple guide.
To help them get onboard easily and having an idea about what will be their new journey into Bitcoinlandia.
I hope will be useful for many as a stating point.
₿ 💊 1. Start your Bitcoin education
Read ₿itcoin Whitepaper and “The Bitcoin Standard” book. Go to a bitcoin meetup in your area. Get comfortable with bitcoiners “language” (many terms will be new for you).
Read - The 5 stages to became a real bitcoiner, for more information and links.
₿ 💊 2. Choose a Bitcoin wallet
Download a Bitcoin wallet. Choose wisely which wallet you will use, or get help from an old bitcoiner friend with more experience. Watch out, there are many scams out there.
Read - Lightning Wallets Comparison and How to start with Bitcoin wallets.
₿ 💊 3. Save your Bitcoin wallet
Save the wallet seed into a safe place (Not Your Keys = Not Your ₿itcoins). You can use many methods: hardware wallet, password manager (offline), paper, steel, memory, steganography etc.
Read - Be Your Own Bank - Think like a bank
₿ 💊 4. Keep private all your Bitcoin info details
Never reveal your seed or talk about it or how much you have (stacked).
₿ 💊 5. Don't trust, verify
Never trust someone else, only yourself. From now on it is your OWN responsibility over your own finances. Self education (to be able to verify) is important. Don’t delegate someone else managing your bitcoins. Learn to do it yourself!
₿ 💊 6. Start getting some bitcoins
Buy a small amount of bitcoin (even some satoshis) and test how to use your new wallet or with help from a bitcoiner, get some few sats to play around and get comfortable using it. Always double check links and addresses when moving coins.
₿ 💊 7. Stacking sats strategy
Start building your own strategy of accumulating (stacking sats) more BTC: buying from P2P exchanges or CEX, DCA through brokers, earning directly, selling goods/services for BTC on P2P marketplaces etc. Stay humble, stack sats! Remember, there are limited number of BTC in circulation, 21M.
From where you can get some bitcoins? Start here - a curated list.
₿ 💊 8. Self custody of your bitcoins
Never leave your bitcoin on exchanges, always self custody (Not Your Keys = Not Your ₿itcoins!) Withdraw to your own personal wallets as fast as you can.
Bitcoin = Be your own bank, think like a bank.
₿ 💊 9. Price is an illusion of getting rich
Don't focus on the Bitcoin's price charts of today (is just a distraction), this is not an investment strategy, is a savings technology, it's your pension fund. Bitcoin is energy necessary to live, stored in a perfect way, as scarce money. So when you trade with it for goods and services, you are actually trading with energy.
₿ 💊 10. Bitcoin Circular Economy
Start the bitcoin circular economy, buy at least a few things you may need with bitcoin. do not buy crap things with bitcoin, only useful things in your life. Spend wisely your sats!
Pay your bills with Bitcoin - here is a list of places to start.
₿ 💊 11. Improve your knowledge
Knowledge is a life long pursuit. Learn more advanced tools: privacy tools, running a full node, a LN node, use many different tools as a merchant (if you are). For more you learn, is getting more fascinating and useful in your life. Bitcoin knowledge is power!
₿ 💊 12. Prepare yourself
Bitcoin will change your life totally. Continuously become more fit, more skilled, and wiser over time. Always question everything.
₿ 💊 13. NO SHITCOINS
Bitcoin, not “cryptos”. Never do shitcoining (anything that is not Bitcoin is a shitcoin). Shitcoining (cryptos) means stealing from others, scams and sustaining a putrid behavior. It's a SIN.
₿ 💊 14. Education matters
Continue educating yourself and your family, friends, improve your skills and knowledge about bitcoin continuously. Bitcoin world is in continuous change and new tools and software updates come up very often. Stay up to date with Bitcoin news (a good place to start is Stacker.News !
₿ 💊 15. Do something for Bitcoin
Participate to the Bitcoin system with anything you can: translations for open source software, coding/review code if you have skills, writing documentation, testing new apps and give feedback to developers.
₿ 💊 16. FIAT DELENDA EST
Slowly move out from fiat world. Is not easy, I know, takes time. For more we are using bitcoin as money in a bitcoin circular economy, stronger will be. For less and less we will use fiat money, quicker we will win and be free from fiat slavery. Don't feed the beast anymore!
Here is a must watch presentation by Jimmy Song - Fiat Delenda Est! that explains more why fiat world is an evil that must be eradicated / made obsolete.
₿ 💊 17. Merchants Bitcoin adoption
If you are a merchant, start accepting bitcoin as fast as you can and don't sell it back for fiat, NO MATTER WHAT. Or at least use it to pay your employees and/or suppliers. You are a very important link in the chain of Bitcoin circular economy! Or just save your BTC for later.
Here a list of real life examples of payments to merchants accepting Bitcoin.
₿ 💊 18. Incentives for paying with Bitcoin
Accept bitcoin for you products/services at a better rate, with a specific discount for paying with BTC instead of fiat. Bitcoin is cash, not an asset!
₿ 💊 19. Be aware of scams
Don't "invest" your bitcoins expecting a return in all sorts of schemes and promises (scammers that promise yield).
₿ 💊 20. DYOR
Do your own research and not follow blindly any "bitcoin influencer" or MSM (legacy media). There's plenty of free documentation out there.
Commit your life into a 100% bitcoin mentality for at least 1 cycle (4 years between halvings) so people can experience how the media feeds the same lies all the time. Feel with your skin in the game how supply/demand works for fiat (increasing and infinite supply) vs BTC (fixed).
₿ 💊 21. Became a sovereign individual
Fuck the banks and govs! Be a sovereign individual not a citizen fiat slave voting and putting his trust in politicians. Fiat delenda est!