persimmons97

bitcoin_beginners

Stacking Report #12 (June 27, 2024)

I’m just keeping track of my thoughts each time I buy

I made it to a whole coin for this series! But I think this is also the first time in the series where the overall USD performance is down. So far I’m disappointed in how the bull run was supposedly going to go, but let’s see what happens over the next few months. I also wasn’t expecting the narrative of Germany and Mt. Gox both dumping billions of dollars of BTC into the market.

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Current BTC price: $61,346

New BTC buy: $2000 => 0.03234608 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 1.00820422 BTC

Total invested: $65,000

USD performance: -4.8% (since Jan 29, 2024)

This will be another short issue as I don’t have any new thoughts to add. I’m just waiting to see whether BTC will really start to move up again with the election ramping up, liquidity supposedly increasing starting from the next few months, and the cycle starting to reach its bull run zone.

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Current BTC price: $66,781

New BTC buy: $4000 => 0.05942778

The Stacking Report stack: 0.97585814

Total invested: $63,000

USD performance: +3.4% (since Jan 29, 2024)

Stacking Report #11 (June 13, 2024)

It’s been about a month since my last update. Although I had a paycheck in between, I used it mostly in my vacation trip to China so I didn’t buy any bitcoin then. However while I’ve been on vacation, my first year of RSUs finally vested towards the end of May and so I was able to smash buy a lot this time, possibly the most amount of bitcoin I’ll ever be able to buy at once ever again.

As usual my interest in consuming bitcoin news and content for some reason comes and goes with price volatility. During periods of high volatility upwards, I watch and read more content for fun. When the price is dropping fast, I do the same thing but for adding to my conviction. The past couple months have been quiet so I haven’t really been keeping up with bitcoin and crypto, aside from seeing the ETH ETF get approved (I don’t own any ETH).

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Current BTC price: $67,894

New BTC buy: $25,000 => 0.36533118 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.91643036 BTC

Total invested: $59,000

USD performance: +5.5% (since Jan 29, 2024)

Stacking Report #10 (June 1, 2024)

Just continuing to put a portion of my pay check into BTC. The halving has already happened so hopefully we will see the bull cycle continue in the coming months. For now, it’s been feeling pretty uneventful as the price hovers between 60k and 70k, which itself is pretty remarkable.

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Current BTC price: $63,171

New BTC buy: $2000 => 0.03141147 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.55109918 BTC

Total invested: $34,000

USD performance: +2.4% (since Jan 29, 2024)

Stacking Report #9 (April 27, 2024)

It’s been a sleepy couple weeks for bitcoin. Maybe I’ve just been more occupied with life, but on the surface it seems price action has taken a breather along with ETF flows. I’ve finally stopped watching the price so much since it’s been taking a break from its crazy run from 30k to 70k. A part of me is hoping for another huge run up in price, but there’s also another part of me that wants the price to wait for my big payday at the end of May so I can accumulate more sats.

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Current BTC price: $71,248

New BTC buy: $2000 => 0.02785087 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.51968771 BTC

Total invested: $32,000

USD Performance: +15.7% (since Jan 29, 2024)


Stacking Report #8 (April 11, 2024)

Bitcoin has finally taken a breather in the past couple weeks and has been ranging between 60k and 70k. Two weeks ago I bought a lump sum amount at the local top which definitely still feels painful but is nothing new to me after going through my first bear market in the past couple years. At this point my hope is that the price doesn’t go on another rip until after the end of May, when my full year of stocks finally vest. Depending on the price of bitcoin in May and my company’s stock performance, I might be able to buy a full coin. Until then, I’m back to smaller accumulations with my bi-monthly paycheck.

Overall I’m excited about the rest of this year and for 2025. These were the years I was looking forward to back in 2022 and 2023. As someone who is not deeply involved in the financial markets and in macroeconomics, I still have some uncertainty about whether the bitcoin thesis is correct. For that reason my personal net worth is around 80% in bitcoin, instead of 100% or >100%. Even if it’s true that fiat monetary debasement is 100% certain, the future seems to be becoming harder and harder to predict with the advent of AGI and the building global chaos from monetary debasement. These next two years will be the most defining years for me, and possibly for human history as well. We’ll see whether the pace of innovation in AI can continue into creating something more intelligent than humans, or whether it was just a step-function kind of advancement that was overhyped. We’ll probably also see the bitcoin macro thesis fully play out — whether we’ve really reached a point of no return in global debt and the end result is exponentially increasing money printing. And if so, whether we’ll see the nation-state and corporate adoption of bitcoin beyond just Michael Saylor and El Salvador. Ironically, as the price of bitcoin increases, the more I want to buy because it’s a signal of the overall thesis playing out correctly.

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Current BTC price: $69,901

New BTC buy: $2000 => 0.02838752 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.49183684 BTC

Total invested: $30,000

USD performance: +14.6% (since Jan 29, 2024)



Stacking Report #7 (March 26, 2024)

bitcoin

Not really much to say this week except I didn’t expect BTC to reach all time highs so quickly. However, the price is still only $0.07M. I’m not sure who is giving up their bitcoin to BlackRock during these times, but definitely not me and not anytime soon.

This week, in addition to my paycheck, I also have some leftover cash from my ESPP shares being sold. I was waiting for bill payments to pass through my checking account before deploying the remaining cash.

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Current BTC price: $72,447

New BTC buy: $9000 => 0.12325489 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.46344932 BTC = $33,575

USD performance: +19.9% (since Jan 29, 2024)

Stacking Report #6 (March 13, 2024)

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on X ragging on Coinbase for crashing while bitcoin price is breaking out. Even if it’s intentional, I don’t see what’s wrong with this for retail? I’m not a Coinbase user, but doesn’t this just mean the price stays suppressed for longer so people can have more time to accumulate sats? 

What’s wrong with Coinbase crashing?

Stacking Report #5 (March 6, 2024)

I remember seeing a post about how we haven’t gone this long without a 25% drop since 2011. I hope that doesn’t happen anytime soon 🤣

I was planning to make my next buy when my ESPP selling gets settled and lands in my bank, but I did my taxes today and am getting a refund this year so I don’t need the extra padding I thought I needed for paying taxes. So just earlier I aped in $5k while bitcoin is still under all time highs. I’m a little sad about missing yesterday’s red god candle (10k dip), but the FOMO has been kicking in too strong for me to wait any longer for further dips.

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Current BTC price: $66,284

New BTC buy: $5000 => 0.07484139 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.34019443 BTC = $22,549

USD performance: +18.7% since Jan 29, 2024

What Is the Song Of This Bull Run?

thebitcoinbugle

https://youtu.be/bAojxWZRVKk?si=byXQVy7-NlFWrwjV

Whatever song is playing in the background to this, lost the Reddit link to when this was posted when we hit 13k in 2020

Stacking Report #4 (February 29, 2024)

Thanks! I’ve actually been buying since late 2020, but just recently started to fully commit to dollar cost averaging my paychecks and wanted to share the journey

As soon as my paycheck landed in my bank account 2 days ago, I deposited $4k into my favorite bitcoin buying app (Strike). Not that I’m getting paid over $4k on each paycheck, I was just accounting for my company’s ESPP shares being purchased today and me selling the shares immediately to provide that extra cash. It’s strange how even after going through a full bitcoin bull/bear market cycle, I still fall victim to biases like FOMO. If only I had this sense of urgency back when bitcoin was at $20k, I would have reached my stacking goal by now.

Every time I’m buying bitcoin it’s at a higher price. This purchase came in at $58.5k, just before it went on yet another massive rip and almost reached the ATH. I could have bought more but tax season is coming up, so it’s best if I have the extra padding in my bank account. Although I’ll probably change my mind once my ESPP shares are sold and the cash is sitting in my bank. Even though now I’m devoted to buying however much I can when I get paid, there’s still a part of myself that feels hesitation when buying after huge price increases like these. It might be PTSD from the 2022/2023 bear market, since I have yet to complete my first bitcoin 4-year cycle. I have to remind myself that the ETFs don’t care about price, they’re just looking to get exposure with their massive amount of capital.

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Current BTC price: $58,516 (Feb 27)

New BTC buy: $4000 => 0.06782150 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.26535304 BTC = $15,527

USD performance: 10.9%

As bitcoin is continuing to rip, I’m feeling more of an obligation to try convincing my close friends to DCA into bitcoin. I didn’t really try in the bear market because nobody really believes you. Please share your favorite <30min orange pill video. Mine is Michael Saylor’s presentation at BTCPrague, but wondering if there’s any better ones.

Video link: https://youtu.be/8Mhu6dxj7qk?si=6m0-vNNK-i47wayU

Best orange pill video?

The final 2 weeks of this month are big pay days for me and will allow me to make huge strides towards my overall stacking goal. However much I accumulate in these Stacking Reports is supplementary to my personal goal. Since I’ve been buying since 2020, I already have a good amount saved up and I write these posts only to record my journey and to keep me disciplined in not making any degenerate speculative buys while trying and failing to time a local bitcoin bottom. Anyway, these paychecks are coming in 3 chunks: quarterly cash bonus, my usual salary, and company ESPP vesting all coinciding at the end of February. The quarterly bonus I received today and I used a large chunk of it to smash buy more corn.

During times like these I am reminded to be grateful for my privilege. It was not easy for me to land a good job as a tech worker but now that I’m here I recognize that the money flows into tech much easier than it does in other industries and professions. I wonder how much of my compensation is attributed to being a beneficiary of the Cantillon Effect vs. providing real value. I don’t doubt that I provide value as an engineer, probably a lot more than the TikTok tech worker influencers, but I’m also curious how far removed my job is from the money printer. All I know is it’s farther away from the printer than the investment banks and closer to it than blue collar industries.

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Current BTC price: $51,311

New BTC buy: $8000 => 0.15468850 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.19753154 BTC = $10,135

USD performance: +1.4%

Stacking Report #3 (February 22, 2024)

On the What Bitcoin Did podcast I was listening to Quoth the Raven talk about how it took him a long time to come around on bitcoin. He talked about how there should be an easy answer you can have for a child when asking something like “what exactly am I buying?” But I think it’s hard to answer because of how intangible bitcoin is. Even Peter was fumbling around with trying to come up with a simple answer to that question. From an outsider perspective it makes sense how with $50000 to spend, there should be a simple answer to this question because there’s a whole lot of other things you can buy with $50000. And of course anyone can buy any amount of bitcoin, but unit bias is still very real.

At first my thought for a simple answer is it’s just a currency conversion. It’s like asking “what am I buying when I spend my money on US dollars?” which is clearly a weird question to ask. From there you can unpack the question further, with the acknowledgement that truly answering the question of “what are you buying” is not supposed to have an easy answer. And then you can go into the differences between fiat currencies and bitcoin, what properties of bitcoin make it so valuable, etc.

However this answer only applies if you view bitcoin as a currency. Not a lot of people do, even people who buy bitcoin. Even Michael Saylor does not advocate bitcoin as a currency, instead he frames it as digital property. I think of it as digital property too, but I wonder what’s the ELI5 answer to “what are you buying”, if there is one?

What exactly are you buying with $50000?

There’s been some positive price action since the last post, up 14% in the last couple weeks! It seems like ETF inflows are driving the price upward despite global liquidity trending down since the start of the year. I like Lyn Alden’s take on global liquidity being highly correlated with bitcoin price action. Regardless, I’m thinking in a few years it won’t matter whether I stacked at $40k or at $50k.

Last week I was in the office and overheard a conversation happening right next to me (my desk is right next to an aisle). From the details I picked up these were more senior executives for the company, or at least higher level employees. They were greeting each other but then ended up chatting about cryptocurrency. “I’m so glad the company doesn’t get involved with it”, “I mean, people actually have to use it to for it to be a currency right??” Even with the Bitcoin ETFs receiving billions of inflows, hearing these executives in a fintech company laugh about “crypto” like it’s the butt of a joke makes me think we are still incredibly early. Maybe I’m biased from following this space since 2020, but I’m surprised by how little some people know about bitcoin in 2024.

In my opinion it’s a huge missed opportunity for the company to avoid R&D efforts into the bitcoin ecosystem, but I’m just a lowly engineer building out the projects on my team’s roadmap quarter by quarter. In the future I’m sure the company will come around and start integrating with the bitcoin network. Or maybe not. Either way I’m happy to receive my paycheck and smash buy BTC.

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Current BTC price: $49,501

New BTC buy: $1000 => 0.02004308 BTC

The Stacking Report stack: 0.04284304 BTC = $2120.77

USD performance: +6%

Stacking Report #2 (February 13, 2024)

Stacking Report #1 (Jan 29, 2024)

I've recently been seeing some blogs about stacking bitcoin and was inspired to create my own! I'm also hoping this will help me maintain more discipline with DCA bitcoin buys (I've been making the mistake of thinking I'll know when to time my buys)

My growing list of ways to earn/spend bitcoin

NetWt1oz

Paying my credit card statements with Bitrefill + Strike has been amazing, basically 4% cashback. That plus my 2% cash back on my credit card makes it like 6% cashback on all purchases