Spending your Bitcoin
*Bitcoin is peer-to-peer digital cash.
It's not a stock. It's not property (you can't build a house on it). Hell you can't even technically "own" it in a legal sense. As one can only ever demonstrate ability to spend, not actual ownership... But that's a bit in the weeds. Some people are fully content to save in bitcoin without ever spending it. To which I ask, why? What is bitcoin actually? Merely a savings vehicle? Sure it CAN be that. But if it's ONLY that, it would seem we've missed the point. Besides, if you're able to NEVER spend your bitcoin, then you have WAAAAY too much fiat. Anyone who is ALL in on Bitcoin is having to either directly spend their bitcoin, or swap it for fiat with a local friend or a peer on Bisq, Peach, RoboSats or Hodl Hodl.
Every year we celebrate Pizza Day.
A bitcoiner named Laszlo offered 10,000 bitcoins on a forum for someone to buy him 2 pizzas and send them to his address in Jacksonville, Florida. May 22, Jercos became the first person to be awarded bitcoins for providing economic value. Moral of the story? Be a Laszlo or a Jercos... USE YOUR BITCOINS!!! Because in doing so, you prove day-to-day the economic value that a bitcoin has. Before this day bitcoins were a collectible. An oddity. An idea. On May 22, they became money.
Avoiding the KYC trap
There are a few key components to one's interaction with Bitcoin. One of those is how one acquires it. When I first entered the space in 2017, I interacted with Bitcoin exclusively through a centralized exchange called *Coinbase, which required me to complete a thorough KYC and essentially gave me a numbered account with paper bitcoin. They were no different from a bank, except that banks actually have more safeguards for protecting one's assets in the case of misadventure or fraud. Exchanges like this prey on the ignorance of newcomers and make the cost to withdraw incredibly frictioned. They do this by using legacy type addresses rather than SegWit, and they (along with other exchanges like KuCoin and IndoDax) made me believe that a Bitcoin transaction actually cost $5-25, which, I found out much later, just isn't the case. A transaction MAY cost that much, but often is much cheaper.
Recap of Bitcoin basics from my recent blog posts
As a bitcoin spender, you need to have a few things in order. You need an onchain or lightning mobile wallet of course. You need a way of getting the bitcoin. Usually by buying it or earning it. Earn it by providing value for people such that they want to part with their bitcoin. If you DO buy it, you'll want to use a peer to peer method such as buying it in person for cash, or using an online escrow service such as Bisq or RoboSats... By this time, you've probably realized that being your own bank means you should be as secure as possible. So you may be tempted to increase your operational security (OpSec) with a better operating system than vanilla Android or iOS. If you don't have a Pixel phone you could opt for LineageOS which is very minimalistic and clean, or for the those wanting to use the most hardened OS, there is GrapheneOS, which is only for use with Pixel phones.
Today I want to focus on a few circular economy ways to spend your sats
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Here's a great episode to listen to along that vein by the Ungovernable Misfits Media Network. A registered member of PodConf.
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Here are a few people providing value so that they can earn your valuable sats. Consider giving them your business rather than getting these things at Walmart, Target or your local grocery store conglomerate.
This is the first in a series of posts I hope to do about spending bitcoin. Each post will be about a specific company that allows you to spend your bitcoin.
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A few notable examples are:
- Bitrefill - There are many more in this genre, but so far, I've had the most success with Bitrefill, as it's list of countries supported seems the most thorough. My Chinese coworker @bxu can even buy gas or top up his phone data using the bitcoin the Nostr and Stacker.News community donated to him.
- Proxysto.re - just like the name says, helps you purchase things more anonymously
- Silent.Link - Based company that DOES NOT ACCEPT FIAT. Have used them in many countries. Uses roaming data and COMPLETELY circumvents the Great Firewall of China sans VPN. Although I still run a VPN just for better obfuscation from the e-SIM operator/company who will view my traffic.
- Mullvad (and now Obscura which I haven't tested) - VPN company that doesn't require an email to sign up and gives a discount for using bitcoin. BTW, "Mullvad" is Swedish for "mole". It took me far to long to realize that... You're welcome.
* Note about usage of capitalization. I will use Bitcoin when referencing the protocol and bitcoin(s) or sats (Base unit of a bitcoin in the Bitcoin code. Always an integer. Smallest economic unit of Bitcoin and equal to 1/100,000,000th of a bitcoin) when referencing the underlying object being transmitted within the protocol.
** Note on the word coinbase. The "coinbase transaction" is the transaction inside a block that pays the miner his block reward.
Inside the coinbase transaction is a field that is called the "coinbase". It's the generation transaction's equivalent of a scriptsig. Since it doesn't claim any existing outputs, it needs no normal scriptsig. It's basically just a random value that the miner can use as an additional nonce. BIP 34 changes this a bit. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4571/what-is-the-coinbase