Bitcoin - money that can't be stopped or confiscated
There are a lot of articles on bitcoin and it could take a lifetime to read them all. I want to look at bitcoin from another perspective and that is how it can work as unstoppable money. Especially for all of you who often travel, live in multiple jurisdictions and how bitcoin can help you circumvent the pain of using the regular banking sector.
First of all, I want to mention that nothing below is illegal (people often think that privacy is a bad thing, but privacy is a basic right to have. It's the same as having curtains in your apartment would be illegal).
It's just about taking advantage of the opportunities that the digital world can offer. I also understand that there are many skeptics and that's fine. I'm not here to convince skeptics. I just want to state the facts. The whole article will be very simple in terms of technical complexity and I will not touch on any technical details that for many users might be boring and too complicated.
Bitcoin is unstoppable money (if done right)
Due to its revolutionary features, which allow peer-to-peer transactions without seeking permission, Bitcoin is hailed as an unstoppable form of money. Bitcoin gives freedom to conduct peer-to-peer transactions without the need for regulatory approval or intermediaries, unlike existing financial systems that often require such things. Because of its decentralized and digital nature, financial inclusion is now a possibility for everyone. Ownership of private keys, which gives you full control over your money without relying on third parties, is one of the essential features that make Bitcoin unstoppable. These cryptographic keys make you the sole owner of your assets, protecting them against censorship, seizure or unwanted access. Bitcoin empowers all people and provides financial sovereignty as an unstoppable form of money in today's world where financial independence is becoming priceless.
Summary: To be able to use bitcoin without any permission make sure you possess private keys for all UTXOs(unspent transaction output). The best approach to do that is to get your own hardware wallet like Trezor. Simply put, the hardware wallet holds all the keys so you don't have to remember them, plus it helps protect them. Never rely on third parties such as exchanges or custodians. Your goal is to become a fully sovereign individual.
Bitcoin is digital asset
Bitcoin is digital. That's one of the many great features. That is very useful when your life is not in one place, you want to have back up or you are unfortunate individual and unbanked. It can be very difficult to travel with gold bullion, cash, or impossible to move physical property (real estate) from one country to another.
I'm not saying you should have everything in bitcoin and I understand that this issue can be pretty much based on personal preference. Just keep in mind that any physical asset is much harder to move compared to a digital one. An example from the recent past can be war. Escaping the country to protect your family will depend on the liquidity you may have in another country. This totally changes the way of thinking. With bitcoin you have liquidity everywhere, you can trade peer to peer, or on exchanges and get local fiat currency in no time. It would be much harder to do this with most state currencies (maybe except EUR and USD) but even though these two currencies are liquid it is very complicated to get them physically in a short time (if not stored under the pillow) and complicated to cross borders with lots of cash. In this very unfortunate scenario of a war all real estate is out of the table. Even if you don't believe in bitcoin, think of it as insurance in case something goes really wrong and goes bad. This can be the difference between life and death.
I often hear that the probability of something like this happening is very low, limitedly close to zero, but this is a misperception. You should not look at it from the perspective of probability, but from the perspective of the impact it will have on your life. It is much wiser to look at things from the point of view of impact than from the point of view of probability. If the impact on your life is going to be high, it makes sense to be insured against it. If the impact is low, however likely it is, it may not make sense to insure against it, because you can't insure against everything in life. It is enough to select the situations that could drastically influence your life.
Bitcoin is working 24/7/365
No weekends or holidays. Bitcoin works 24/7 every day of the year. That means you can use it at any time of the day and pay your counterparty on Saturday at midnight on Christmas Eve and transfer billions of dollars in a matter of minutes for the cost of a couple of dollars (or even less) from Australia to Zimbabwe.
My personal experience woke me up. A couple of years ago I had to make a wire transfer from a European bank to a US bank. The situation is completely ridiculous. Besides taking forever to fill in all the necessary data, accounts, beneficial owners, bank address, etc., it took a week and the payment still hasn't arrived. After another couple of days and escalating the matter with the bank the payment came back because of the small (one letter) error in the address. But the bank didn't forget to charge me $25 transfer fee and I ended up on square one after more than a week.
Moral of the story: Use bitcoin (especially for bigger transactions), nobody asks you anything, you can execute the payment in seconds and it will arrive in minutes. Cheap, reliable and without intermediaries.
Due to the bitcoin blockchain (something like an accounting book) you can search for any transaction. We do not know to who it belongs to but we can see that this individual transfered $1 billion for 50cents.
Bitcoin is liquid money
Wherever you are in the world you can make bitcoin liquid in a matter of minutes. How to do it are these simple options:
Pay directly with bitcoin - yes, today many services/people already accept bitcoin. Of course, it's not popular everywhere, but the more you get to countries where they face problems with currency inflation, where a large part of the population is unbanked or people simply don't trust their governments, the more possibilities there are to use bitcoin for direct payment.
Trading bitcoins peer-to-peer: another great option. Find your counterparty and exchange bitcoin for the currency you need in the country you need. I have to admit it's good if you already have a bitcoin community created around you. Then it's like a breeze. If you don't have a community and don't know where to start, you have a couple of options. Visit meetups, create your own network of individuals. Or you can try an app like Vexl that connects your contacts and 2nd degree contacts to find exchange offers based on your friends and friends of friends.
Use of exchanges: in my opinion, this is not the perfect scenario, but it is probably the easiest for most people. You can sign up with an exchange and exchange your bitcoin for whatever currency you need. It is important to mention that there are some caveats like KYC (know your customer) that you will have to do with the exchange and receiving the currency on your bank account.
Summary: There are many ways to pay/exchange your bitcoin. It's up to you which one suits you. All of the above options work both ways - buying or selling. In case of paying with bitcoin, it is settled immediately (especially for the bitcoin lightning network, which is a second layer above the main layer of the chain). In the case of exchanges it can be ready in a matter of minutes. In the case of peer to peer exchanges you can be liquid in a matter of hours.
Bitcoin is peer to peer
As I mentioned above bitcoin is designed to be p2p (peer to peer). You don't need any third party to approve or process your payment. You are fully responsible for the payment and you can rest assured that it will be settled no matter what. This is an extreme advantage not only for you, but also for your counterparty. You don't have to wonder if the payment will reverse. Because it won't. Everything is settled in a matter of minutes (when the transaction is executed on the blockchain) or in a matter of seconds (when smaller payments are executed on the lightning network).
Some wallets that will help you to start your journey
bitcoin Lightning wallets (2nd layer, off-chain, fast, cheap)
Before I give you examples of wallets, let me briefly explain what the lightning network is. It is the second layer above the first layer of bitcoin on-chain. This lightning network allows you:
quick transaction - matter of seconds
cheap fees - literally cents
Great for smaller transactions approx. up to 2.500.000 sats which is approx. $700 (August 2023) when 1 bitcoin is around $30.000.
Note: 1 bitcoin = 100.000.000 sats
Beginners: Wallet of Satoshi - simple, custodial wallet, Bitlifi - simple, custodial wallet,possible to receive bitcoin on your phone number. Remember that these wallets are great but custodial, meaning a third party holds bitcoin for you. I suggest having just enough for daily spending, kind of like your daily physical wallet. On a flip side, it's so simple a 5 year old can do it.
Advanced: Phoenix - simple, non-custodial wallet, Breez - simple, non-custodial wallet. These wallets are non-custodial and you have private keys in your possession. Keep your private keys (seeds) well saved in offline format. This is the only way to restore access to the wallet funds in case you delete the application or your phone is stolen.
Pros: Own lightning node - solution for those who know how the bitcoin lightning network works. In this case you have full control of your funds, but in addition to that you need to understand how to manage liquidity in channels, opening and closing channels, rebalancing, adjusting routing fees, etc.. I would not suggest this option to anyone who did not understand a word from the previous sentence. If you are passionate about the subject, then running your own lightning node is a great way to learn and discover many new topics.
Remember: lightning wallets work great for quick and cheap transactions up to approx. $700
bitcoin on-chain wallets (1st layer, on-chain, slower and more expensive compared to lightning)
The 1st bitcoin layer allows you:
Ideal for large transactions: any transaction is possible. Whether it's hundreds or billions of dollars. And the fee does not depend on the amount you transfer. You can transfer $100 for the same fee as a billion dollars.
Immutable - when the transaction is mined by miners and added to the block you can be sure that the transaction is completed. After a couple of blocks it is impossible to manipulate the transaction in any way.
Slower transactions: a matter of minutes. Approx. 10-30minutes (but depends on the fee). Higher fee means faster confirmation on the blockchain. Many wallets can estimate the transaction fee for you according to your needs from slow to fast (slow can be an hour, fast can be around 10 minutes). Don’t worry, most of the wallets these days calculate and offer you fee options from fast/expensive to slow/cheap and you do not have to understand what specific fee to select.
More expensive compared to lightning - Instead of paying a fee in cents in the case of a lightning transaction, on-chain usually makes a payment for a fee of about a couple of dollars. Again, it depends mostly on how fast you need to make a transfer.
The safest practice is to have a physical harware wallet: an example can be Trezor T wallet. The physical wallet, no custody (you have your own keys in the form of a seed). As mentioned above, the seed is the access to your funds in case of loss or breakage of the physical device itself. Keep your seed offline and in a very safe place.
Is bitcoin the perfect solution for everything? No. It is a young protocol (14 years old) and it is developing and getting easier to use every day. I mentioned the lightning network in the article, but 5-6 years ago it was impossible to do that in such manner. Bitcoin is getting better every day and just looking 3,5,7 years back it is a totally different beast today.
Bitcoin is by far the best bet these days if you want full control of your funds, no middle man, no permission from anyone else. Where it excels is that you can leverage these features
in your daily international business payments,
all travelers or nomads living in multiple jurisdictions can make life easier,
as a backup plan in case something bad happens,
as medium of exchange across unbanked population anywhere in the world.
Remember, bitcoin is freedom
Note: I am not affiliated in any way with the above services/products and they are mentioned here only because of my own experience and I feel comfortable enough to recommend them.
Did it help or do you like it? You can send some sats to stallion@walletofsatoshi.com or to bitcoin lightning LNURL: lnurl1dp68gurn8ghj7ampd3kx2ar0veekzar0wd5xjtnrdakj7tnhv4kxctttdehhwm30d3h82unvwqhhxarpd3kxjmmwavy8ja
