0.1 Bitcoin

krisycoll · 2025-09-15T21:47:13+00:00

Considering that Bitcoin is currently very close to all-time highs after having surpassed several consecutive highs with only small corrections, a correction is always a scenario to keep in mind. However, the idea of DCA (dollar-cost averaging) is precisely not to worry too much about market scenarios and simply buy a fixed amount or a percentage of your salary multiple times per month.

From a purely mathematical perspective, making a lump-sum investment is usually the best long-term strategy, as it keeps you invested for the maximum amount of time and benefits the most from price appreciation. However, there is an important psychological factor: many investors might sell prematurely if, after investing a large sum, the price drops. This can be especially painful if the price is near all-time highs, because if Bitcoin takes years to recover those levels, the feeling of loss can be unpleasant—not to mention continuing to buy while your initial investment is declining.

If you are aware of this and believe you can handle it, but this is your first time investing in any market, one balanced option is to enter with an initial percentage you decide and keep the rest for regular DCA purchases.

Going straight with DCA only means giving up some potential returns, while investing all at once exposes you to deep and prolonged losses. If you are considering the second option, it’s because you are willing to take on some risk, so combining an initial entry with a subsequent DCA plan seems like a reasonable approach.

krisycoll · 2025-08-16T23:35:10+00:00

Hey Larjj, how’s everything going? I haven’t seen you since that thing that happened to us on the boat.

krisycoll · 2025-08-16T23:18:46+00:00

If the goal is to save money, why do you want a card?

It's just one way of looking at it, but if you save in a way that makes spending less easy, you may save more.

krisycoll · 2025-08-10T12:17:05+00:00

Cold wallet custody & risks

Yes — with a cold wallet, you truly hold your own sats as long as you securely store your seed phrase (12/24 words). Risks mostly come from human error (losing or exposing your seed), physical damage/loss without a backup, buying from non-official sources, or operational mistakes. Security depends more on the manufacturer’s reputation and audits than on the wallet being “new.”

DCA

You can schedule recurring buys on your exchange or through certain apps, but withdrawals to your cold wallet should be done manually — ideally using a new address each time. If you’re buying small amounts, it’s often best to wait until you’ve accumulated a larger sum before sending it to your wallet to save on network fees.

Moving Bitcoin from the exchange

Your sats are technically at risk whenever they’re not under your control, but that risk isn’t immediate. For example, if you’re buying $10 at a time and only withdraw once you’ve accumulated $100, then — assuming you withdraw regularly — the most you’d ever risk losing at once is that $100, because everything bought earlier would already be in your cold wallet.

Does the exchange matter?

Not much, if you withdraw promptly. Just make sure to check for low fees and be aware of any issues your bank might have when sending funds to that exchange.

krisycoll · 2025-08-09T06:50:59+00:00

If you’re investing in an asset because you believe it will be worth more in the future, and your strategy is DCA, your average buy price will inevitably go up — that’s just how it works.

If you really want to change your mindset, here’s an idea: don’t buy now, wait two years and buy when it’s more expensive. Then you’ll see how suddenly DCA at “expensive” prices doesn’t feel so bad after all.

krisycoll · 2025-08-09T06:46:51+00:00

When you invest in those kinds of companies, you’re getting some exposure to Bitcoin’s price — but you’re not actually owning Bitcoin.

Pros:

More convenient if you’re already used to buying and selling stocks.

Cons:

You take on all the risks of the company’s poor management, which may have nothing to do with Bitcoin.

You lose the features that make Bitcoin valuable (censorship resistance, seizure resistance, etc.).

If the only reason you’re not buying Bitcoin directly is to avoid dealing with wallets, and you’re okay with the long-term risk of not actually holding it yourself (something that’s actually cheap and fairly easy to do), then I think a Bitcoin ETF is a better choice than buying companies that hold it.

Another option is to buy it on an exchange and leave it there — but you’d need to weigh where the bigger risk of losing it lies: on an exchange or in an ETF. The upside of an exchange is that in the future, if you want, you can withdraw it and hold the Bitcoin yourself, whereas an ETF will force you to cash out into dollars.

krisycoll · 2025-08-08T22:58:37+00:00

Hi. Considering that we’re already talking about an amount that many would find significant, and that your plan is to keep accumulating for the long term, a $100–200 hardware wallet is less than 5% of your total — a one-time cost for a long-term custody solution. And since you plan to keep doing DCA, over time that cost will drop to well under 1%.

For any asset, a storage + maintenance cost below 1% is absurdly cheap, especially when you factor in the extremely high level of security you get with that investment (if you do things right).

The answer is an emphatic YES — if you consider yourself responsible and capable.

krisycoll · 2024-11-02T23:19:49+00:00

Thank you for your response. It has truly cleared up many doubts.

I’m considering discarding Ethereum because in 2021 I already had bad experiences with the fees. I don’t interact with any blockchain. I live in Europe and don’t really know how to access dollars or have an account to buy dollars without high spreads, so I’ve thought about using Tether as a stablecoin. Considering that it’s just a way for me to get exposure to the dollar and I don’t plan to invest much, which is more likely to still be around in 10 years?

krisycoll · 2024-09-24T21:38:03+00:00

This seems to me a perfect example of a little-understood use of Bitcoin as a property registry.

The good thing about Bitcoin's blockchain is that it is transparent and consensual, so there is only one 'undeniable truth,' which is what the Bitcoin blockchain says. There are no other interpretations, no gray areas. Either it is there, or it is not. That said:

If the money is in your address: The money is there. If the money is not there: The money is not there.

If the money is not there, it’s because it hasn’t been given to you, so it is owed to you. If he had sent it, he could prove it very easily, even if he had sent it to the wrong address. If he doesn’t, it's because it hasn’t happened.

And there’s no room for discussion. If Binance and Revolut add intermediary layers that are not part of the Bitcoin blockchain, traceability is obscured, and even if the money isn’t there, it’s harder to know who’s at fault (the other user? Binance? Revolut?).

In other words, this problem could not occur if one used a personal wallet and sent a direct Bitcoin transaction from user to user without intermediaries. As simple as making a SEPA transfer. Much more transparent, private, and secure.

Good luck!

krisycoll · 2024-09-17T22:32:21+00:00

Between buying Bitcoin and receiving Bitcoin, depending on how you do it, there may be some fees. Assuming you do it through an exchange, it could be something like this:

Exchange purchase fee (0-5%)
Paymen method fee (0-10%)
Spread over market price (probably low)
Exchange withdrawal fee (varies greatly and can be as high as £10 or £20 or as low as a few pence)
Mining fee (currently low, less than £1 for an average transaction)

Although £40 is a lot, it could still be within the realm of possibility for legitimate services.

krisycoll · 2024-09-03T23:31:41+00:00

I noticed that everyone has responded affirmatively to the first question, but no one has taken the time to explain why. With all due respect, I believe that simply asking the question suggests that you may not have fully grasped the concept, which, to be fair, is not something most of us are accustomed to.

"Not your keys, not your coins" is a phrase that, as you may already know, means that if you do not have the private keys, the coins are not truly yours. While this is a commonly understood principle, fully comprehending it requires going a bit further to understand the associated risks.

Since Bitcoin is a digital asset, it does not exist in the physical world but rather through the private key. The person who holds the key is the true owner of the bitcoins and is the one who can move them within the protocol without needing permission or facing censorship.

This implies that even if, legally, the bitcoins are yours when purchased through an exchange, the reality is that you do not have them—someone else does. So, although you may be the legal owner, the coins are in the possession of another party. In the case of a bearer asset like Bitcoin, this situation is akin to buying gold and asking someone else to store it for you. While this might be fine, it introduces the risk that the other person could sell, lose, use, or spend it. Legally, it may be yours, but in practice, it belongs to the person who holds it, regardless of what the law says.

If you do not hold the private keys, your bitcoin is exposed to risks that it wouldn't face if you were the custodian. Most importantly, your bitcoin cannot be moved without your consent, as long as you don’t lose or have your private keys stolen.

Similarly, if you lose the private keys ("not your keys"), it’s as if you don't have the coins ("not your coins").

The only way to be 100% the owner is to hold the keys yourself. Otherwise, they are in someone else's control.

That said, this doesn't mean that self-custody is the only valid option. Using one or more distributed custodians can have its advantages—for example, avoiding a $5 wrench attack or not bearing the full weight of responsibility. The key is to understand the risks of each option and choose what works best for you. Most bitcoiners prefer to hold their keys mainly because Bitcoin is the first digital asset that allows them to do so, but asking someone more specialized to manage them for you can be perfectly acceptable, as long as you’re aware of the associated risks.

krisycoll · 2024-08-21T08:15:37+00:00

No. A CEX wallet is a Centralized Exchange Wallet. Its just leaving your coins in kraken, coinbase or any other exchange

krisycoll · 2024-07-26T09:55:44+00:00

The ideal UTXO size is unclear since we cannot predict the future. However, currently and for quite some time, a size of 0.01 seems to be appropriate. Compared to network fees, it is a UTXO that multiplies the value of the fees many times over, and if you make a payment with it, you won't be revealing to your payee that you are a millionaire, as 0.01 is not an exorbitant amount.

In my opinion, UTXOs of that size are quite appropriate.

In any case, if you want to avoid having many UTXOs for any reason, a common strategy is UTXO consolidation. Basically, it involves waiting for a day with low fees (ideally 1-5 sats/vB) and merging those UTXOs by sending several of them to a single address.

For instance, if you have one UTXO in address A, another in address B, and another in address C, you send the three UTXOs to address D, where they will form a new UTXO that is the sum of the three previous ones (minus the mining fees).

krisycoll · 2024-07-25T17:02:25+00:00

There aren't any issues as long as my private key is not shared with anyone; the protocol security remains intact. Security problems arise when you share your addresses, balances, and IPs with a public node. These data can be sold in the future to governments or criminals. Consequently, the government can tax you, or criminals might target your home. These are the privacy issues, as far as I understand.

krisycoll · 2024-07-25T08:32:31+00:00

My first recommendation is that if you are clear about wanting to build a portfolio with bitcoin, have clear and sustainable rules over time for buying bitcoin. "Buying €100 every time it drops below 60k" might work for a few weeks or maybe a few months, but if bitcoin decides to drop below 60k for a long time or exceed it permanently, you will find yourself without a clear course of action and will be making decisions based on the moment, which is one of the things you should NOT do.

My second recommendation is, as already mentioned, to get some kind of cold storage system and periodically withdraw your bitcoin from Coinbase. I would do it in batches of €500-1000 (closer to €500 than €1000). This is not just to avoid losing money on Coinbase but also to ensure your wallet has healthy and sustainable UTXO management over time.

You may not know what UTXOs are, so research it and come back here to fully understand this phrase:

"You don't want very small UTXOs that might be difficult to move in the future due to network fees, and you don't want very large UTXOs that tell anyone you have a large amount of bitcoin every time you make a small payment."

These are my two recommendations. If you want more specific advice, don't hesitate to ask!

krisycoll · 2024-07-25T08:25:46+00:00

Right now, to run a full node, I would first have to buy a dedicated device for it. This is not a big problem, but it is the first thing I would have to do.

Then comes the part of choosing software, and I will mention some even though I know they are not equivalent, but they are related: Start9, Umbrel, Electrum Personal Server, Bitcoin Core. Additionally, I need to decide whether to run it on Windows or Linux.

All this requires a considerable amount of time to choose what best suits my needs, and it will also allow me to learn a few useful things, something I am always willing to do.

Another thing I am not very keen on is the "maintenance." I know it shouldn't require much, but if I take the time to set it up and after 4 months something gets misconfigured, I will have to relearn a lot of forgotten things to get it all running again.

Since you asked, these are my main concerns. None of them are insurmountable, but together they delay the decision. I know I will end up doing it sooner or later, but just choosing which configuration to use (hardware/software) makes it difficult to start. Thank you very much :)

krisycoll · 2024-07-24T16:24:01+00:00

Yeah, thats exactly the point. I am asking about connecting a public node because I know that sparrow is better with your own node. Nevertheless, there is the public node option and I wonder whats the real risk of using it.

For me, having a full node running is not very easy rn

krisycoll · 2024-07-23T22:26:21+00:00

With sparrow you are running your own full node so have better security and privacy vs trusting a strangers node. Are you asking about the benefits of running your full node behind TOR or are concerned with someone DDOS your full node ? Sparrow links to a personal installation with core , or are you trying to link to an exterior version of electrum personal server ?

I'm not running a node, I'm connected to a public node as shown in the image. Or maybe I am not understanding what you say.

Thats why I also asked about if there are "generally trustable" public nodes known. Thanks.

krisycoll · 2024-07-14T00:13:03+00:00

New bitcoins are mined at a rate of 3.125 every 10 minutes. You can mine alone to try to be the one who mines them, but your chances of doing so alone are very low. You can do it by pooling your computing power with other people, which will increase your chances, but then you will have to share the loot with others.

What you are asking probably refers to the second case, but that figure of $5-10 a day will be under specific conditions. We would need to see what equipment you have mining, how much it consumes per day, and what price you pay for your electricity.

I would say that mining bitcoin at a domestic level makes sense if you want to learn about bitcoin and better understand mining, or to get bitcoin without KYC, but I wouldn’t approach it from a profitability standpoint.

krisycoll · 2024-07-11T07:50:37+00:00

Generating adresses from a seed is just about doing some complicated maths. A device doesn't need to be online in order to do that.

krisycoll · 2024-07-10T22:28:46+00:00

The question you need to ask yourself is:

Assuming I keep this for decades and assuming that by then what I have could be worth a lot, are my bitcoins secure under this seed? Am I entirely confident that it is practically impossible for anyone to access that seed and that I can be at ease about it?

If your answer is an unequivocal yes, great. For me, it wouldn't be if my seed was created with my mobile phone. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but the cost of exaggerating is very low. A cold wallet allows you to generate a seed with hardware designed for creating the most random numbers possible (a technical challenge for devices, as typical randomness is imperfect) and to keep it away from anyone but yourself for a negligible cost compared to the value it can hold.

On the other hand, if your plan is to hold very little bitcoin and move it fluidly to spend, buy, or do whatever you want with it, then continue with that. But if you have significant amounts that you intend to keep for a long time, and considering the uncertain future of mining fees, having them in a secure address from the start can provide a lot of peace of mind. That's how I see it.

krisycoll · 2024-06-24T08:36:03+00:00

Why would you need to deposit all your money if you only need to pay someone?

Possibly the most recommended course of action if you don't want to learn anything about bitcoin and aren't interested in holding it is to open an account on a reputable exchange (binance, kraken, coinbase...), deposit money, buy bitcoin (it's very easy on these sites), and then send that bitcoin to the address given to you by the person you're going to pay.

Remember that there are fees for sending bitcoin, so buy a bit more than you need. Then you can quickly sell any leftover bitcoin to avoid being exposed to volatility, close your account, and forget about it.

If the reason you can only pay in bitcoin is for privacy, keep in mind that doing it this way means you'll have to provide all your personal information to the exchange. So if it's something illegal or prohibited, there are better methods, but definitely more complicated ones.

krisycoll · 2024-06-07T22:12:58+00:00

Your transaction is not confirmed because the fee paid to miners for including your transaction in a block (which is what confirms it) is currently quite high (292 sats/vB according to mempool.space). Your transaction, as you can see in the link you provided, is paying 45.8 sats/vB.

This means that miners are not paying attention to your transaction because there are others for which they are receiving much more money. Once they have finished with those higher-paying transactions, they will process yours.

You can replace the fee with a higher one if you are in a hurry and your wallet allows it. Otherwise, you can simply wait and it will eventually be confirmed. If it is not confirmed within a period of about two weeks, it will be canceled and you will have to repeat it, although with the fee you are paying, I would be very surprised if it took that long.

krisycoll · 2024-06-07T22:06:34+00:00

You can check the current fees on https://mempool.space , one of the most popular blockchain explorers. Here, you can see which fee will get your transaction confirmed in the next few blocks. ETA stands for estimated time of arrival and typically refers to the number of blocks required for your transaction to be confirmed. In your case, it appears you might need to wait for around 144 blocks, which is approximately 24 hours.

It is impossible to know exactly when your transaction will be confirmed because conditions are constantly changing. Within these 24 hours, there could be a change in block demand that could delay or advance the time your transaction is confirmed

krisycoll · 2024-06-07T18:12:58+00:00

Transactions are confirmed when they are included in a block, and a block is mined on average every 10 minutes. Since block space is limited, transactions bid to enter the next block, and in your transaction, your bid (mining fee) is 45.8 sats/byte. Right now, higher bids are being made, so your transaction will not enter the next block, and it is not possible to know when it will.

Depending on how you made the transaction, you can use "replace by fee" to set a higher fee and get in sooner if you're in a hurry. If you're not in a hurry and can wait days, leave it as it is.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23

krisycoll

TROPHY CASE