Peter McCormack (5:01)

How you doing, Matt?

Matt O'Dell (5:03)

How's it going, Pete?

Peter McCormack (5:04)

Doing very well, thank you. Thank you for agreeing to do this show. As you know, I'm doing a beginner's guide to bitcoin, a bunch of shows that people can give to their friends to help them learn about bitcoin. And I've covered some of the kind of setup topics, why bitcoin's important, why we need to care about it, talked about money. But now we're going to get into the bit where if somebody's been listening to this and they've never bought bitcoin and they've been sold on it and they want to get involved, we're going to get into the basics of becoming an active user of bitcoin. So are you ready for this?

Matt O'Dell (5:37)

I'm ready to go. I love the idea of the beginner's guide series, so cheers to that.

Peter McCormack (5:42)

Thank you. Thank you. Right, so I'm going to cover some more advanced topics later on once the whole series done. I'm definitely going to be getting into operating a node, security and privacy at a quite deep level. But I do want to cover as part of this. But we'll try and keep it top level, we'll keep it super simple. But I think a really good starting point before we kind of tell people how they can start buying or earning or using their bitcoin is actually let's talk about some of the reasons that, that people might want to own bitcoin. Some of the reasons that, you know, maybe you or I or other people and what we need to do with that is just Respect that geographically or even politically, people are going to have different reasons. But let's get into some of the.

Matt O'Dell (6:24)

Reasons why people would want to own Bitcoin.

Matt O'Dell (6:27)

Well, I mean, it depends, it depends where you live and like, what your personal situation is. For a lot of people it can act as like the way I look at it is, I personally look at it like it's almost like an insurance policy. And I, I think that the way you, you store wealth in this world now is it's just everything relies on all these different trusted third parties where you have other people basically holding your money for you. And Bitcoin is separate from all of that. So in like a worst case scenario, maybe Bitcoin keeps its value or goes up. And then the other reason I'm in Bitcoin is because of speculative reasons, like I think the number is going to go up, I think the price will increase. It's a scarce asset. It's more scarce than anything else we've ever seen. And I think as more people realize that, like the price should naturally go up. But in other places, I mean, we're, we're both from western countries, we can accept payments and use the traditional financial system if we want. But for a lot of people in the world, they don't have bank accounts, they can't access global marketplaces. With Bitcoin, you're able to accept money through the Internet. Doesn't matter where you're located, you just need the Internet, like to, for a lot of people, you can't open a bank account. With Bitcoin, it's as simple as just downloading an app and then pasting this code into WhatsApp and you can receive money like that's pretty powerful. And then for a whole other subset of people, and of course there's overlap here you have political turmoil and unrest, which goes back to my first point. And because Bitcoin is independent of any company or government, it's particularly well suited for a political turmoil type situation where you can't trust there's nowhere to put your money. So if you have no other option, you still have Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack (8:20)

So let's go with that first couple of points. I think it's really interesting. And as you said, we're from western countries. You know, you're from the U.S. i'm from the U.K. and I think a lot of people think that their money in their bank accounts is fine. But you know, we know from the financial crisis and at different points, you know, governments have seized money from bank accounts. We know The Greek government seized money from the bank accounts. We also know in Cyprus, the Cypriot government was back in 2013, they were confiscated money from bank accounts to deal with their debt levels. And also, I know, for example, in the uk, you know, we suffered under the banking crisis. We nearly had two banks collapse. Lloyds and I think it was the bank of Scotland, Royal bank of Scotland, and they had to be saved by the government. But your bank account deposits in the UK are only insured up to £85,000. So you make a really good point that, you know, and even in Western countries, it is an insurance and protection of some of your wealth.

Matt O'Dell (9:14)

Yeah. I mean, in America, we're up to 250k per account, but still it's like, what is that security is there? You know, if there's a systemic issue, do they just print a bunch of money to. To cover that, that amount? Like, does that actually, does that insurance actually help you in the end? It helps if there's like one or two small banks go down or something like that. But yeah, and, and that money, like everyone who's interacted with the bank knows what that relationship is. Like, where you have withdrawal limits and they're asking you questions about every single little thing you do and there's tons of paperwork. But with Bitcoin, it's just independent, all of that. It's just, it's just like. It feels. It's pretty crazy. It feels more real, like it's imaginary Internet money. It feels more real to me than like any other stocks or like my bank account or stuff like that. Like, it feels more real than that to me.

Peter McCormack (10:13)

Because, you know, you control it.

Matt O'Dell (10:15)

Yeah, exactly. Like I can. It's mine.

Peter McCormack (10:19)

But people tend to think the money in their bank account is theirs, but really it's not. It is yours. But you're trusting somebody. Somebody has to release that to you. And so what you're really talking about is a hedge against any of those situations. And further to that, you've also talked about it being a hedge, but the other thing is a hedge against. Is inflation and collapse of local currency.

Matt O'Dell (10:40)

Right, Exactly. These, these money systems that we have nowadays, these fiat systems are. They're completely reliant on the government. It's just a full trust in the government. And you see in countries like Venezuela and Argentina, where this trust erodes and there's gross mismanagement and the currencies become worthless, and that can basically happen anywhere. Like, this is a very new experiment, this whole fiat idea, it's like 50 years old. That's pretty crazy when you think about everyone just says to themselves, like, oh, that's the way it's always been. So like, why be so cocky about that? The way I look at it from like a Western perspective, like when I pitch it to my peers and stuff is I say this is a, an insurance policy that may go up in value significantly. And you know, so you out, you just put a little bit, you don't put everything into bitcoin. You just, you know, put in an amount that's, that's a high risk investment.

Peter McCormack (11:40)

So somebody coming in new also, one of the first things they're going to do is they're going to read the white paper and they're going to understand that you can also use Bitcoin for payments. But it doesn't tend to be the primary reason that people want to get Bitcoin. Funny enough, it was for me the first time because I had to go and buy something off the dark web as like a treatment for my mother. But payments are relevant, but almost a secondary to these. Yeah, where we see like hedging and investing, speculating as a primary use. But payments are still a use that we have to consider.

Matt O'Dell (12:12)

No, I mean, absolutely. Any good money can be spent and saved at will without any permission. And that's what Bitcoin is. If you want to spend it, you can spend it. No one can stop you. And if you want to save it, you can save it. And it's very hard to stop you. And that's the beauty of Bitcoin. And it's because you don't have these trusted third parties, because it's not centralized. And when you have these trusted third parties, those are the gatekeepers. Those are the people that tell you whether you can do something or whether you can't do something. Now this comes back down to perspectives again, right? Like if you're using Bitcoin to reach a global marketplace that you wouldn't otherwise be able to, it's hard to accept international credit card payments. But you could be anywhere in the world and you can sell goods to Americans using Bitcoin, then obviously you're going to use it right now. But if you're in a western country and you can send fiat through these banking systems like relatively instantly, very low cost, like why would you spend Bitcoin when it's harder to get Bitcoin and you think it's going to go up in value? So it just depends on where you live and what your current situation is. And I think these more people will spend bitcoin when more people own bitcoin.

Peter McCormack (13:24)

So what we're really saying is the reason people want bitcoin generally is it's either an opt out or, or a hedge against the distrust of the banking system, the governments, how fiat money may operate. So it's just a general, you know, like you say, it's a distrust but also an opportunity to opt out and do things your own way. And if you bought into that then maybe bitcoins for you.

Matt O'Dell (13:44)

Yeah, or, or if you just need to accept money on the Internet and you can't do it otherwise, I think like bitcoin, when there's no other option, there's bitcoin.

Peter McCormack (13:53)

All right, cool. All right, listen, before we get started, what we really need to just lay the ground for people is that it's very important if they, if it's going to be the first time they're going to go on bitcoin. They need to just keep the levels quite low to begin with for two reasons. Firstly, they've got to get their head around using it. They don't want to buy a load and then make some mistake and lose that bitcoin. But secondly, they shouldn't invest in any more than they can afford to lose because they also need to condition themselves to some of the volatility. So I think what we're saying is if you're just about to dive in, this is your first time, should keep those levels low.

Matt O'Dell (14:25)

Yeah, I mean I like, my thing is I like stacking sats, right. So I like dollar cost averaging. I think that people. Bitcoin is a very scarce asset and it's as close to a free market as we've ever had. So you have These marketplaces running 24,7 around the world trading this super scarce asset that is not very liquid. There's not that many bitcoin being traded around and that means the price is going to move up and down tremendously in the short term. Up and down. We'll take, you know, we had huge hits what last, last year it hit 14k and 3500 in the same fucking year. So this thing will move up and down a lot and no one has any idea where it's going in the short term. But long term the prediction is that the price will go up long term. So if you dollar cost average and you put a little bit in every week then you're able to not freak out. And at the, at what the price is in any given, on any given day you can just say, okay, this is just a long Term investment, I'm just averaging in, you know, maybe quit cigarettes or something like that, and put that $10 a day into bitcoin money that you, you know, probably would have just thrown away anyway.

Peter McCormack (15:37)

Yeah. My advice to most people when they come to me now is that you have to have a long, like long time horizon on this. So if you're going to be buying bitcoin for your first time, you really need to be thinking about price in four year cycles.

Matt O'Dell (15:49)

Yeah. If not longer.

Peter McCormack (15:51)

Yeah. All right, so before we dive in and actually explain how to get their first bitcoin, let's just go through a few of the things they really need to kind of understand and get their head around. And just for transparency, I actually took this list from Bitcoin.org, which I would recommend anyone listen to, to go to. It's a very good website with very good information, very balanced, very fair. The first thing we've covered was price volatility. But the next thing people need to understand is that if they start using Bitco, that payments are irreversible.

Matt O'Dell (16:20)

Yes. And there's no customer support line to call either. So if you send this, your money to a bitcoin address and that's the wrong address, like you're never getting that back. So always double check your addresses. That's always a good, always double check.

Peter McCormack (16:34)

Your addresses and be very aware that if you make a mistake, it's down to you. Okay. So the next thing is that, and this is something people often get wrong, but people think bitcoin is anonymous and it isn't anonymous and they need to be aware of that.

Matt O'Dell (16:47)

It's not anonymous at all. You got to be very careful with bitcoin because anyone you pay can track your payments. Anyone who sends you money can then track your payments from there. The actual addresses aren't necessarily tied to your name by default, but if people can tie them to your name, that's when they can end up tracking you. So yeah, don't, there's, there's no privacy.

Peter McCormack (17:12)

And there are even companies out there who are operating in a space where they want to track every transaction of time to people find out who you are.

Matt O'Dell (17:19)

Yes, that's their business. They work with exchanges. They're these chain analysis companies and they track this. So the chain is this. The bitcoin blockchain is a ledger that shows every transaction publicly. And it's going to last forever. Like it'll always be there. People can always look back. So even if someone's not trying to track your Transactions now they could in five years time, six years time. You never know if it'll, if it'll happen. So you have to assume like that you're just that all your, all your transactions, anyone who pays you can track your transactions or anyone who links your, your address. So if you like post your address on Twitter or something like that, then they can link it to you and take it from there and try and make judgment calls based on your, your addresses. If you go to btcprivacy.org you can, there's a bunch of reading material there if you want to try and use Bitcoin privately. But it is complicated. So this is a beginner's guide. So just keep that in mind.

Peter McCormack (18:18)

All right. And the last thing that people should be aware of, and I covered this in a previous show with the guys from Coin center, is you should be aware of local laws and taxes and how they relate to you before you dive in.

Matt O'Dell (18:28)

Yes. Pay your taxes. And it's very different depending on where you live. And it's confusing. You have to do that research.

Peter McCormack (18:35)

Yes. All right, so listen, we've got some people here. They're listening, Matt. They're like, all right, I get it, Matt, I want to buy some Bitcoin. I'm ready to jump in. Before they go and buy, there's a few other things they need to bear of when they're about to dive into the world of actually buying. So the first thing is their keys and their private keys. Security, backing up and storing their private keys. This is almost like the single most important thing that everyone talks about, right?

Matt O'Dell (18:57)

Yes, it is the most. Bitcoin is all about personal responsibility. There's no customer support line. You have to take matters into your own hands and make sure that your Bitcoin is, is safe and secure. We've had multiple exchanges get hacked. Mount Gox is the big one that everyone knows about. Quadriga just happened recently. We have a saying in Bitcoin. Not your keys, not your coin. So basically there's two different trust, there's two different ways to use Bitcoin. You can use Bitcoin in a way that someone else is holding your Bitcoin for you, which was the case with Mount Gox and everyone lost their money who was holding it with Mount Gox. Or there's a case where you hold your Bitcoin yourself and then you could lose it because you forgot your password, or you could get hacked, but at least you're not trusting someone else with your Bitcoin. And that's become a lot easier lately. So lucky for you beginners, you get to come in on that note.

Peter McCormack (19:52)

So we're talking about two different scenarios where you can lose your bitcoin and lose the value that you saved up. The first one is if you held it on an exchange, if the exchange gets hacked, that exchange gets into any kind of difficulty. You know, if it goes under and they lose all their bitcoin and you're holding it on that exchange in one of their wallets, then you've lost it. Secondly, we're talking about the scenario where you're managing your bitcoin yourself and you lose the private keys or you lose the wallet and you don't have a backup and you have no way of restoring it. They're the two scenarios we're talking about, right?

Matt O'Dell (20:21)

Yeah. And there's a third scenario where there's a couple scenarios where you lose your money if you're trusting an exchange to hold it. Right? Because the exchange owner could steal your money or the government could shut down that exchange and take the money. So you have. The exchange gets hacked, the exchange steals the money, the exchange gets shut down by the government. All three of those risks with if you hold your keys yourself, you have loss or hack or your two risks. So I would say that, you know, people, they'll come in on and I think we'll go into like buying options and earning options and stuff like that. But they'll come in on like a custodial. Someone else is holding your keys for you. That's probably where you earn them or you buy them. So it'll be like on a cash app or a lolly or a fold, and then you'll graduate to holding your own keys. And I think like a mobile wallet is a very good stepping stone there. Blockstream Green Wallet is a very good beginner's wallet in terms of I don't want to buy a hardware wallet yet. And then after that you can buy a hardware wallet, which is this little USB stick that holds your bitcoin for you.

Peter McCormack (21:28)

So what we're really advising people to do is even before you take that step of buying or earning any bitcoin is set yourself up with a wallet that suits you.

Matt O'Dell (21:36)

Yeah, I really like. The first wallet I suggest to most people is Blockstream Green Wallet, because you hold your own keys and you can. You get to keep a backup of it offline. They're going to give you these 12 words. You write down the 12 words, and if you have those 12 words, you can recover your funds and it's on your phone and phones are relatively secure. They're not near the most secure thing. But if you don't have a large amount of money on it, it's free and you can download it today just like from the app Store.

Peter McCormack (22:06)

Right. So first, first job is to go and find a wallet that you like. You obviously recommend Blockstream Green, I recommend Drop Bit who are a sponsor for full transparency. They're both non custodial wallets for bitcoin. They both give the opportunity to back up your seed. So let's talk through this because somebody might be listening this going, what the hell are you talking about, Matt? Pete, you're talking about a wallet and a seed. Let's talk them through the logical steps of what that actually means, the downloading of the wallet, you know, and the process they're actually going to go through.

Matt O'Dell (22:35)

Right. So you're going to download the wallet like any other app on your phone and once you download it, they're going to give you 12 words to back up. And so these words derive your keys for you. So that's all you need. If you have those 12 words, you can put the words in and you have access to your bitcoin. So you have to be careful. That also means that if anyone gets those seed words, they can spend your bitcoin as well. They can take your bitcoin. So you have to keep those, those, that 12 word phrase safe, however you deem fit. Don't like put them on a post it note next to your computer.

Peter McCormack (23:10)

Yeah, so what we're really talking about is you download the wallet, you click the button for backup only. All wallets do it differently and it gives you those words. And over time I think what people will learn is that they're going to find different ways for backing up their seed words, which suits them to begin with. They might just get a pad and write it down on a piece of paper in two places and hide it. But then eventually you might end up buying something like a billfuddle, which is like a steel lump of metal where you can store the private keys in it. But we don't want people to be scared off from doing this because it sounds too complicated. You know, if you go through the process of just downloading a wallet, you know, writing down those words and then deleting the wallet and restoring it, you'll see how easy it actually is.

Matt O'Dell (23:51)

Yeah, that's what you should do. I always, that's what I always recommend people do. And even if you maybe put like $10 worth of Bitcoin on it and then restore it. So you see that the $10 of Bitcoin is still there. It gives you a lot of peace of mind and you also learn through the process. Everyone should do that. The other thing to keep in mind here is don't put those seed words on any Internet connected device. Like don't put it in like Apple Notepad or whatever. You know, don't put it on, in your Gmail drafts folder on Evernote or anything like that. Like that's. It's because if someone. The beauty of having it offline is someone has to physically get it wherever it is. If you have it on an Internet connected device, you have to rely on the security of that device as well.

Peter McCormack (24:31)

This is the beauty of Bitcoin. Over time you develop your own practices. I'm sure you've got a security practice, I've got a security practice. They're probably overlap in some ways, but also probably entirely different. I don't know what yours is, you don't know what mine is. But I know there's multiple scenarios where things can happen and I can still restore my Bitcoin.

Matt O'Dell (24:51)

Yeah, it's all about personal responsibility. So you're going to have to figure out a situation that works best for you and you have to iterate on it and improve on it over time. Phones are a nice stepping stone, but really ultimately where you want to be is you want your Bitcoin to never touch an online device. And that's why you have these hardware wallets. The three best hardware wallets are Coldcard, Ledger and Trezor. Ledger and Trezor are easier to use, I guess if you want a user friendly one, probably the Ledger X which is the newest Ledger because you can use it with a phone app as well. It's a little USB stick. And then if you want the better one that's more advanced, you get the cold card is like basically my recommendation now. But this is like a little USB drive that holds that secret for you on it. And it's got a pin. So someone needs to get that device and the PIN to be able to take your Bitcoin. And then you also still have that word phrase, that seed phrase, those 12 words where you can back it up if for some reason the device gets lost or stolen or broken.

Peter McCormack (25:56)

And the great thing about those hardware wallets, they have that interface for being able to send and receive Bitcoin from. And once you see it, you realize actually a lot of this is really easy. It's all abstracted away from you. If I had a ledger and I opened up and I wanted to send you some bitcoin mat all I have to do is put your address in, put the amount, click send and it sends to you. All the work with the private keys is actually done in the background.

Matt O'Dell (26:17)

Yeah, exactly. I think the easiest way to learn is to get a little bit of bitcoin and just start like sending it around to yourself, deleting the wallet, putting it back in, putting your words in, restoring it, sending it, receiving it. That's the way, that's the way you learn. And that's why I really like the satsback stuff for beginners. I think we should jump into that. I think that's like the best way for someone to get in with minimal risk, at least if you're in the United States.

Peter McCormack (26:49)

Okay, well we'll come back to that. But just to iterate your point then. And I also think you can do this all in within an hour or two of first getting involved. You know, you can go and get yourself a wallet on your mobile. You could write down the seed words. You could go and buy $10 of Bitcoin. You could send it to that wallet, see it appear. You could then delete that wallet, load it back on your phone, restore it with a private key. And in doing those steps, you've learned so much about how bitcoin works.

Matt O'Dell (27:15)

Yeah, you could do it. I mean the hardest part is buying the $10 of the Bitcoin. That's why I got into my tangent.

Peter McCormack (27:22)

But we should, we can get into that. So there's, there's a couple of ways, you know, you could go down a full extreme exchange route, you know, Kraken or a Coinbase and go on and buy. You could use an app, something like cash app, which is bit. I would say it's a bit different from an exchange, you know, it's more just of a, like a. I guess it's just like a buying service. Right. And then you've got the options of peer to peer exchanges like local bitcoin, which was my first place or Hodl. Hodl. Or you can earn, earn some bitcoin. Let's go with the exchanges first though, because I do think a lot of people will just go onto Google and search, buy bitcoin and they're going to end up at one of these sites or apps.

Matt O'Dell (27:57)

Yeah, I mean it's very local based. Right. So we have Kraken is your sponsor there Global. They're pretty good exchange. You say they're the best they're very good. They have never. There's been no. Never been any issues with Kraken Cash app, who's the sponsor of my podcast is in America only Bull. Bitcoin is great in Canada. You mentioned Hodl. Hodl. They're great. Bisque is more advanced so most people that will not be their way they get their first bitcoin. But it's nice because it's more decentralized, it's. It's more distributed. It's not a centralized company so it's harder to crack down on. You have get bitter in Europe which is like a very simple brokerage interface. So you have like a lot of options. I think the best for most people, you know, they should have. Hopefully they have like a bitcoin friend or two. I don't think a lot of people are coming in that are completely, you know, they don't have any friends who have been pushing them into bitcoin for the last couple of years. So if you do have a friend, ask their advice because you're locally based. Because a lot of this stuff depends on like how your banks interact with the individual things like depending on where you are and whatnot. But they all relatively give you the same ability. You're able to buy bitcoin and you're able to withdraw it and you have to beware. There's a couple sites in America, there's Circle and Robinhood and you can't withdraw your bitcoin when you buy them there. So you have to make sure it's a site or an app that lets you buy bitcoin and then pull the bitcoin off and actually own the. Even if you don't want to do that right away, there's no rush to do that, especially if you don't have a lot of money on, on the exchange and it's a relatively well known exchange. You still need to be able to do that if it's a red flag, if you can't, if you can't pull your bitcoin off when you want to.

Peter McCormack (29:50)

But also that first time you buy, it's kind of, it's kind of an exciting thing to do that first send. When you send it from the exchange to your wallet and you have the wallet open and you see the transaction appear almost instantly. Yes. In an unconfirmed status and it will confirm within hopefully an hour. But it's just quite exciting to see that first payment come through.

Matt O'Dell (30:08)

That's when it's real, you know, that's when you really feel that you know this is real money. This is my money.

Matt O'Dell (30:17)

Next up I talk to Matt more about buying, spending and earning Bitcoin. But before that I have a message from my amazing sponsors. So first up it's the mighty Krake. The best place to buy, sell and trade Bitcoin. Consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange and whatever level of your experience. Kraken has designed and built a streamlined Bitcoin exchange for newcomers and experts alike. Their platform provides world class financial stability by maintaining full reserves, healthy banking relationships and the highest standards of legal compliance. They pair their global 247365 live chat with an extensive support center to help ensure your questions are answered and your needs are met around the clock no matter who or where you are. And with Kraken Pro, a beautiful mobile first app, you can trade Bitcoin wherever you want. There is no better place to trade bitcoin. Find out more@kraken.com or download the app which is available for the iPhone and Android. Just search for Kraken Pro which is K R A K E N P R O I also want to thank the amazing blockfi the future of Bitcoin and financial services and and with their announcement of their Bitcoin rewards card coming later this year, 2020 is going to be huge for BlockFi and this is on top of their already market leading crypto backed loans and their interest accounts for your Bitcoin Ether or gsd. And with another month over, I've just received my interest payment. I'm a customer of BlockFi and I love receiving my interest every month. If you are interested in finding out more about their interest accounts, I do recommend you do your own research. And if you're new to Bitcoin it's important that you understand the trade offs with using a service like BlockFi. I covered this in an interview with their CEO Zach Prince that's available on my SoundCloud page. But 2020 is going to be a massive year for Blockfi and I'm looking forward to getting my rewards credit card. So if you're interested in checking out Blockfi, as I said, do your own research and then head over to blockfi.com which is b l o c k f I dot com.

Peter McCormack (32:13)

So when somebody is first choosing to buy, whether they use Kraken or Cash App or you know, any of these services, what are the things they just need to be aware of before they start buying?

Matt O'Dell (32:24)

Well, I mean there's only a few exchanges in the world, there's only A few ways in the world to buy Bitcoin without providing a bunch of ID information. So whichever service you choose, you have to be ready that you're going to have to give them. The exceptions are hodl, HODL and Bisque and they both have their own UX issues. It's, it's, it's hard to use for a beginner. You should definitely check them out, especially as you go down, further down the rabbit hole. But any of these more user friendly ways to buy bitcoin are going to require you to give ID information. In America, give Social Security information. We call this kyc. It's know your customer anti money laundering laws. So they like are going to make you give tons and tons of personal information. And then you have to remember, and they're obviously in most situations they're going to take your bank account information. Sometimes it's a debit card, but they're going to have your bank account information. And then, so you have to, you have to remember that you're trusting whatever this company you choose. You have to choose a reputable one. Don't do it just based on whoever is the cheapest because you're trusting them with all this information. And then they're going to be able to, as we said in the privacy part earlier, they're going to be able to connect that information with your addresses. So you're really, you're trusting them with that information.

Peter McCormack (33:44)

All right, so we've got them on board. They've downloaded a wallet, they've backed it up, they've bought their first bitcoin, they've sent it to the address, they've seen it pop up and appear. We've then got them to delete their app and they've removed it and then they've restored it again with their private key. What else do they need to know? Are they fully done at that point? Are they a full bitcoiner?

Matt O'Dell (34:06)

It's impossible to ever be done. You're just gonna, then the rabbit hole begins and you're just gonna have to keep on learning and keep on iterating, keep on improving your setup.

Peter McCormack (34:19)

I think what we're saying here is the funny thing about bitcoin is being decentralized. It has so many different ways into it, so many different ways of using, expending it and securing it. As I said, you buy it from a different place that I buy it from. You secure it in a different way that I do. You manage your private keys in a different way. But the only way you're going to learn is just by diving in and start trying.

Matt O'Dell (34:39)

Yeah. And you just want to try and minimize risk as much as possible while you're doing that.

Peter McCormack (34:43)

All right, cool. So over time, Matt, say I've become a bitcoiner. I've been regularly buying my bitcoin. I've built up a nice stack, you know, and I decide, okay, I want to start spending this and using this bitcoin. You know, where can I spend it? How can I use it?

Matt O'Dell (34:57)

So that also, you know, is a very local. It's a very local thing. I think ideally we have more merchants accept bitcoin every day. We're not really there yet. Not that many do. I think more will naturally as time goes on. So it does very much depend locally. We do have services like bit refill that kind of try and bridge the gap and fold, which I think is America only, But both of them, the idea is that you buy gift cards with bitcoin and then you can spend the gift cards places. So, you know, there's. There's probably in most places, there's like one or few, one or one or two merchants where you can get a bunch of stuff online. And you just have to do the research and figure it out. But the best thing you can do in this regard, though, is one of the great ways of earning bitcoin, one of the great ways of getting your first bitcoin is to be the merchant that's accepting bitcoin. So if you're listening to this podcast and you have a. If you have a small business or a store or something like that, consider. Consider accepting bitcoin. You can still accept credit cards and cash. You absolutely should. But you might as well also accept bitcoin.

Peter McCormack (36:05)

What are the. What are the key differences for accepting bitcoin as a means of payment rather than, say, PayPal or a credit card?

Matt O'Dell (36:12)

Well, with a credit card, you have to pay. And PayPal, you have to pay fees to them. In bitcoin, the sender pays the fee. With both of them, you have to deal with them having all of your transaction information. You compromise your privacy to them with credit cards and PayPal. With Bitcoin, there's ways to mitigate privacy concerns, but at least you're not giving everything to a centralized company. You're controlling a lot of that yourself. And then last but definitely not least is we see tons of payment restrictions happen to people where they get cut off from these platforms, they get banned from PayPal. Credit card processing isn't allowed to happen in America. We see that with the marijuana Business. We see that with sex, work, stuff like that. Where, where you have what it's called operation Choke point where they like take out their banking services. We see it with political speech. And then around the world there's just a lot of situations where you can't accept credit card payments from certain countries. But you can accept Bitcoin. It's just code. Especially now that we have BTC pay server. You can just run this code and you can start accepting payments from anyone in the, in the world.

Peter McCormack (37:21)

Okay. So in terms of accepting bitcoin as a payment, you know, are there any services out there that make it easy to plug it into my website?

Matt O'Dell (37:30)

Yeah, Opennode is extremely easy and BTCPay is more advanced. But BTCPay doesn't rely on a centralized company. So you can start with Open Node if you think BTC pay is too complicated. It's getting easier every day. But OpenNote is extremely fucking easy and you will have to give them KYC information. They will ask for some from. They will want to know your identity with BTCPay. They won't. But I think Opennode supports lots and lots of countries.

Peter McCormack (37:57)

All right, cool. So when I interviewed Andreas, he said the best way of getting bitcoin is earning bitcoin. I know you like the concept of earning bitcoin. I certainly do. I've got ways I earn bitcoin now, whether I accept payment from sponsors or whether I use something like Lolli or Fold. But I know this is you really interested in and it's a great way for somebody new coming in to think. I don't want to spend too much money, but I want to get some bitcoin. So let's talk about the different ways you can do it. Let's start with the things like Lollion, Fold, talk about what they are and how they work.

Matt O'Dell (38:28)

So Lolly and Fold are part of this satsback phenomenon. So basically instead of getting reward points back, you get paid back. Sats, which are. There's 100 million sats in a Bitcoin. So sats are like micro cents to the dollar. Sats are to Bitcoin. So this is awesome because you get real money in return that you can actually hold and save or spend wherever you want. It's not locked into any particular provider. And in each of their cases they're basically. I mean, Fold uses a gift card system where you buy a gift card and then you get the sats back instantly. And Lolli uses like a referral based system where they wait for the order to go through, see if you don't return it and then you get the SATs. But in both cases they're basically the middleman taking a cut for bringing the customer to the merchant and they're giving you a portion. And that's nice because you know, like Fold supports Amazon. People spend a shit ton of money on Amazon every year already. You know, if you get 1 1/2% back on your purchases and with Fold is cool because you can actually spend with bitcoin if you want to and you get more sats back or you can spend with Fiat, which is how I use it. And I just. All my Amazon purchases now, they just go through Fold and I get one and a half percent back in bitcoin and it's like I'm dollar cost averaging without ever actually dollar cost averaging. It's kind of fantastic and lollies really.

Peter McCormack (40:05)

Interesting as well because you know they have an app that you can download to your browser and if you're using a website that offers sats back, it gives you an alert. So for example, like if you're on hotels.com and you're booking a hotel room, you can get three and a half percent of what you spend back in SATs and you can withdraw that to that wallet that we've talked about.

Matt O'Dell (40:22)

Yeah. And lolli has like 500 stores. I think like fold is like 12. But they have Amazon, which is key. And if you think about it from, if you think about it from like a bitcoin investment point of view, it's creating a lot of buy pressure for bitcoin. So as we were talking about earlier, bitcoin is scarce. If you have people that are just spending thousands of dollars in our consumerist society already and they're, you know, and they're getting sats every time they're buying, they're intentionally buying sats every time, basically indirectly buying sats every time. Like that's going to. I think that should create a lot of long term holders and push the.

Peter McCormack (40:59)

Price up and you can get a double bubble on this one soon. Because I'm aware of a couple of companies are about to release credit cards where you get your cash back in bitcoin sats as well.

Matt O'Dell (41:09)

There you go. You make it even easier. It's the whole UX thing that's beautiful.

Peter McCormack (41:13)

All right, so we talked about SATs back. Another way of earning bitcoin is mining. Now as a warning. It's complicated and difficult and you have to be careful about how much you're paying for electricity. But you can earn bitcoin by mining. It's.

Matt O'Dell (41:26)

Yeah, I mean, the beauty of mining is you don't have to submit any of that KYC information. So mining is the most private way you can get Bitcoin because even if you do a cash transaction with bitcoin, you're paying someone cash. It's way more private than if you buy on an exchange with your bank account. But mining is the ultimate in terms of that. But as a result, you're going to probably end up paying a premium of like 30 to 40% because it's all about the electricity cost. So these big miners, they're like situated next to dams and stuff and they're getting bottom, bottom rate, you know, $0.02 kilowatt hour to, to run their mining rigs. When if you're like, live in New York city, it's like 20 cents instead of 2 cents. So like you can't compete with that. So you end up paying 40, 50% premium over if you bought it on one of these exchanges. It's just something to keep in mind. If you need more privacy, it could be an option if you have really cheap electricity, if your landlord's an idiot and gives you free electricity, could be, could be a good option. In countries where it's cracked down on mining is a, is a, could be a. Worth the premium, you know.

Peter McCormack (42:36)

All right then. So look, we've taught people how to buy bitcoin, where to buy bitcoin, how to earn Bitcoin, and some of the practices they should use for securing their private keys and, and such. Let's just touch on a couple of more advanced top, just so they're aware. So the first one is like, in terms of privacy, what are the more advanced things people can do if they really are concerned about their privacy? You know, maybe they're in a country or making some kind of payment, they want to, you know, they don't want anyone to know what they're spending. What are the things they can start looking at?

Matt O'Dell (43:05)

I just. Everyone, anyone who is, is seeking to use bitcoin privately has to realize early on that it is a transparent system. It's very difficult to use privately. It depends on who you're trying to hide it from. Like, if you're trying to hide your bitcoin usage from Pete, it's actually relatively easy to do. But if you're trying to hide it from your government, it's a lot more difficult. So don't just like, be conservative about it. Don't run out there thinking you can use bitcoin privately. I mentioned it earlier. BTCPrivacy.org is run by, at 6102 Bitcoin. And that's just a really good place to start. There's a lot of reading there. Basically, there's these different techniques that you can use to help gain back some privacy. There's some privacy techniques you can use. One of them is called Coinjoin, where you basically mix your funds with other people's funds and someone who's looking at the ledger, it's harder for them to tell where it's going. You have to worry about just general Internet privacy things. If you're sending a Bitcoin address and that message gets compromised somehow, like whoever you're worried about knowing about the transaction sees it. If your government can read your text messages, then they can see that Bitcoin address and they can track you accordingly. So you have to tread extremely carefully and just take it slow and be conservative.

Peter McCormack (44:28)

And another thing that you and I have gone back and forth on, if somebody hasn't listened to our previous show for the Christmas show, the New Year show, sorry, they'll hear us. You and I talk about a node and why these are important. So talk about what a node is, why they're important, and. And why that may be something they want to look at a little bit down the line.

Matt O'Dell (44:47)

So if you want to use Bitcoin privately, and if you want to use Bitcoin with the least amount of trust possible, you have to run your own node. And your node basically connects to the distributed Bitcoin network and is constantly verifying the rules to make sure that all the rules are being followed the way everyone expects them to. The big one being that they'll only ever be 21 million Bitcoin, and that the Bitcoin you have are real Bitcoin. And the only way you can do that without trusting someone is if you run your own node. And also the only way you can even dream of having privacy with Bitcoin is if you run your own node. Because otherwise, we were talking about the ledger earlier, that hardware wallet and, and both the mobile wallets that we were talking about, pretty much all the mobile wallets they send, they use the node of the company. So you're trusting the company not with your funds, but you're trusting them with your privacy because they can see your transactions and they, you know, so you have. There's an element of trust there. If you don't want the trust, then you have to run your own node.

Peter McCormack (45:50)

Okay, well, as I would Say the node's a little bit more advanced. For now, let's stick to the basics and let's go with some final cautions for people. So just as a reminder, look, a lot of this might sound complicated. You might be like, what the hell? How do I deal with all this? The only way, as we said, is to jump in and, you know, step one is to go and get yourself a wallet. Whether that is the green wallet, as Matt suggested, drop it as I suggested, or you might find another one you'd like. And once you've downloaded it, you need to back up that private key. You need to get that written down and stored somewhere safe, but not on your computer, somewhere offline or something that's never been or will never be connected to the Internet. Then once you've done that, go and earn yourself some bitcoin, Go and buy some bitcoin, send it to that wallet, delete the wallet, restore it, and have a play. And going through all those steps, that will take you a long way in understanding how bitcoin works.

Matt O'Dell (46:38)

Yeah, I would just add that. Don't just open the app store and search Bitcoin Wallet. Just use Drop it or Green Wallet. Don't use any of the other ones. There's a lot of shitty wallets out there. You don't want to use a shitty wallet.

Peter McCormack (46:51)

All right, let's, let's go through some final cautions. Let's remind people about volatility and not to worry too much.

Matt O'Dell (46:58)

Yeah. I mean, bitcoin is a volatile beast. You just have to expect that the price is going to go crazy both ways in the short term and just have, you know, you have no idea where it's going to go. No one knows. But long term price should rise as more people use it, as more people own some. So you have to think on a long term horizon. You have to, you know, I'm thinking like a decade here. You said earlier four years, but like four years to a decade, that seems like a decent time period. Somewhere around there is like, where you should be reevaluating whether or not you made the right decision.

Peter McCormack (47:31)

Yeah. And you could easily be sucked into watching the price move up and down. It could suddenly shoot up and you think, oh, no, I want to sell it. And then you can see it suddenly drop and you think, oh, no, I better sell it and save my losses. I think at that point, if you're worrying too much, you've probably invested more than you can afford to lose. But you should just set a longer term horizon, you know, I've got in the habit map. I don't actually check the price anymore. I actually keep away from the price. The only time I'm aware is when people start going on about it on Twitter.

Matt O'Dell (47:56)

Exactly. Me too. I don't actually check the price. I just blindly. Dollar cost average once, once a week. And I, and I use sats, I use, I use fold on Amazon and I get my, my sats back. And the only reason I know about the price is exactly like you said. Like people either freak out one way or the other on Twitter and I'm like, oh, I should probably let me check the price.

Peter McCormack (48:15)

What about in terms of trading? Because some people get into this, they might actually start to think, oh, now I can become a pro trader. I can start trading this up and down and making a bunch of money, you know. What's your advice to new people who haven't traded before and are about this?

Matt O'Dell (48:28)

I think 99% of people will be better off dollar cost averaging than trading. Most people suck at trading. I suck at trading. You're just going to get your ass kicked out there if you want, if you don't want to believe us, try with a little bit. Get your ass kicked, don't double down. Be like, okay, I was, I'm not a good trader. And just dollar cost average from there because you know, it's, it's hard out there. Any, anyone I know who trades, even the few successful people I know are just, it drives them crazy. There's just no way to live. You don't want to live that way. Long term, it lowers the risk. If you think long term and you don't think on these short term trading, it just lowers the risk substantially for still a substantial potential reward and it's just not worth it.

Peter McCormack (49:16)

All right. The next thing is like some people might have gone to Google or listened to something we've said and they found an exchange. They've gone on to buy some bitcoin and they've seen some other things. They may be seeing something called bitcoin, Bitcoin cash or Ethereum. And they may be tempted to go down the rabbit hole of creating a basket of assets. I just made a show with Nick Carter talking about the history of altcoins and it is a history of failure. What kind of warning would you give to people who are tempted by these other altcoins and some of the things they might have read about them?

Matt O'Dell (49:45)

I think it's the same thing as trading bitcoin. And when we talk about trading bitcoin, most People end up trading it with leverage and stuff too, which just makes the leverage, which makes the volatility even worse. These altcoins are super volatile. I think they're going to all trend to zero and bitcoin terms long term. So they're not good long term investments. And you might be able to make some money short term trading them. But most people are going to lose fucking all their money trading them. And they'd be better off just dollar cost averaging bitcoin and just not paying attention. That's all noise and it's just not worth it. But if you want to burn yourself like you want to touch the stove, touch the stove a little bit. And when you get burned, don't double down good dollar cost average bitcoin instead.

Peter McCormack (50:31)

And one of the things you can do is you can go to CoinMarketCap. You can click on any of the coins and look at their charts, look at the long term charts and see the trend. That gives you an idea of what you're trading with. And you might get yourself in on Twitter you might hear about something called alt season. You might see other people talking about the future prospects for alts, et cetera, et cetera and try and tempt you into this. But really what we're saying to people here is that this is a long term play. The only people who 10 to have done consistently well with bitcoin of those who've been investing, you know, maybe dollar cost averaging or just buying and holding for a long period of time and being very patient, like multi year patient.

Matt O'Dell (51:07)

Yeah I and make sure when you look up the altcoin prices, every altcoin is listed two ways. They're listed in USD terms and they're listed in bitcoin terms. Make sure you look at the bitcoin when priced in bitcoin because you might think your altcoins going up but bitcoin's going up even more. And it's just being carried, it's just being carried by bitcoin. So as I said before, like you can short term maybe there's been plenty of people that have made money on altcoin short term to make more bitcoin. But most people are just going to get their ass kicked and it's just not worth it. Like it's, it's just at the end of the day you have to. I mean the way I look at it is I'm just trying to accumulate as much bitcoin as possible. And I think that altcoins and trading bitcoin are just a distraction from that goal and will inevitably you'll end up losing more bitcoin than gaining.

Peter McCormack (52:02)

Yeah. You know, I can speak from experience. When I first got in, I was somebody who bought bitcoin. Then I was trading altcoins. You know, I had some relative success. A bit like somebody walks into a casino and, you know, wins on the first spin or the first game of roulette. And I kept carrying on and eventually I lost and I realized I didn't know what I was doing. And, you know, I'm with you now. You know, my best strategy with bitcoin is I accumulate over time through a number of ways. You know, I earn it, you know, I buy a bit, I get paid in bitcoin as well. And what happens is over time, you know, I know every single month my bitcoin stack is going up slightly. I stop checking the price and I have these long term time horizons. And I just think that's a much more healthy way, you know, emotionally, psychologically, it's a much better way to handle bitcoin. So, yeah. Before we close out, Matt, is there any final things you want to add? Any final warnings or cautions you want to give people?

Matt O'Dell (52:51)

I mean, I've, I've struggled with, I've really enjoyed recording this episode with you, Pete. I've struggled with this episode because it is hard. In the beginning, it seems very overwhelming. Trying to distill it down to the most basic level is very difficult task. But when you actually get your hands on it and you actually use it, you'll see that it's a lot easier than you think it is. And I just. People shouldn't be overwhelmed. They should just play with it with very little bit amount of money and just get to get to get to know it. Because hands on is the best way and it's way easier than you think it is in practice.

Peter McCormack (53:27)

Yeah, it's funny you should say that. Of all the shows I've made of this beginner's guide, this has been the hardest one to prepare for. Because the reality is what we're trying to say to people is just go ahead and give it a go. I mean, we could, we could have made this whole episode just say, just go and buy some and move it around and learn. Because that's exactly how you're going to learn at this point. All the theory, you know, of money and you know, why we need bitcoin and you know, any of the macro things that people need to know about the global economy, that's a really easy thing to Discuss. It's very hard to explain how to bitcoin on a show. You can give people some pointers and put them in the right direction, but really it's just one of those things you've got to go out, you've got to do and you're going to learn. And what's going to happen is the way you buy, secure and protect your bitcoin in the first month is going to be very different a year later and almost entirely different five years after that because you're going to learn new things. What we're really saying is just dive in. Now if you've bought into what we've said on the previous shows, if you understand that bitcoin is important, really the next step is all about you and what you go and do.

Matt O'Dell (54:25)

Absolutely. And I'd also just add there's another great site, Bitcoin-Intro.com which does like a pretty good job. That's also 6102 Bitcoin. It does a pretty good job of guiding you through that intro process. Start from the basics and moving on. So that's a good resource to check as well.

Peter McCormack (54:44)

I agree. Definitely check that out. You should also go and check out my previous show with Matt where we talk about a few things. Talk about the whole year that was released just before the new year. I think it was the last show of 2019. Great show. It's a long one worth hearing. Matt, if people are listening to this for the first time, they've just been sent to the Beginner's guide and they think, okay, Matt O'Dell seems like a badass. I want to follow him. Where do they follow you, mate?

Matt O'Dell (55:06)

I'm Matt under dash odell on Twitter and my podcast is Tales from the Crypt podcast. So you just search that in a podcast app and my DMs are open on Twitter. So if you have any questions or anything, feel free to send me a DM and I will answer. Sometimes it takes a couple days, but I will answer.

Peter McCormack (55:24)

All right, my DM's open too. Anyway. Thanks Matt. Hopefully I'm going to see you soon and we'll have a catch up. But appreciate you doing this.

Matt O'Dell (55:30)

Looking forward to it and enjoy South America.

Peter McCormack (55:36)

All right. How was that?

Matt O'Dell (55:37)

What did you think of that one? I think it is really useful for anyone coming into the space to start learning these best practices straight away. It's also important to understand the trade offs between the different services and just how important it is to control your private keys. Especially when you look at the history of exchange hacks. And as I said in the intro, the best way to learn is just to dive in. It's to go and choose a wallet. It's to back up those private keys, it's to buy and move around a little bit of bitcoin. And then once you're comfortable, you can venture down the rabbit hole and find the wallets, exchanges and security practices that best work for you. So listen, a big thanks to Matt. He did a really great job of breaking this all down. And if you have any questions or feedback, do feel free to hit me up. My email address is hellohatbitcoindid.com also a big thanks to everyone who supports the show, everyone who supported this whole beginner's guide.

Peter McCormack (56:26)

But previous to that.

Matt O'Dell (56:27)

And listen, if you enjoy what I do, if you want to support the show, there are so many things you can do. It's all up on my website. Just go to what bitcoindid.com click on the support section. Whether you leave me a review on.

Peter McCormack (56:37)

Itunes or you just share this out.

Matt O'Dell (56:39)

With your friends and family, it all helps with the show. Anyway, if you've got any questions, as I said, you can reach out to me. My email address is hellohatbitcoindid.com and I do pretty much reply to everyone.