Take the Orange Pill

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the orange pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” – Bitcoin Morpheus

Get Started

Get a Bitcoin Wallet

A good suggestion : Blockstream Green

It's available for mobile and for desktop. Download it. Install it. Make a "wallet" in the app. Backup the list of words that Green will give you. That list of words is like cash. "Keep it secret, keep it safe."

Buy Bitcoin

if you ask around, you'll probably have at least one friend who already has some bitcoin and could get you started. Start small. Experiment. Otherwise, there are also Bitcoin ATMs just about everywhere so you can buy with cash. The good ones don't ask for any identifying information. If the ATM close to you isn't a good one, maybe a friend of yours lives near a better one.

Learn

In a nutshell : Bitcoin is about separating Money and State, the same way we've separated Church and State. Bitcoin is digital gold you can teleport anywhere on the planet in minutes, without asking for permission. Bitcoin is a worldwide open-source project.

To learn more :

News

"No Bullshit Bitcoin"

2024-08-01

These guys (nobsbitcoin.com) are doing an amazing job bringing us relevant news from the bitcoin world, daily. I highly recommend that website. They even have a RSS feed.


Microstrategy Doubling Down : 425 Millions (USD) in Bitcoin

2020-09-16

As of press time, MicroStrategy has converted $425 million into bitcoin. The stock has surged 30% since its first bitcoin buy on Aug. 11. It was up 9% on Tuesday.
“We just had the awful realization that we were sitting on top of a $500 million ice cube that’s melting,” Saylor said. MicroStrategy has settled on bitcoin as the treasury alternative.
“This is not a speculation, nor is it a hedge,” said Saylor. “This was a deliberate corporate strategy to adopt a bitcoin standard.”

Bitcoin in the World, Recently

2020-08-25


Two Great Tweets Today

2020-08-14

Marty Bent @MartyBent
The end game is leveraging Bitcoin to successfully wage asymmetric financial warfare against a tyrannical hydra made up of a global central banking and political system run amok. Or fail trying.
Andy Yee @ahkyee
Paul Tudor Jones removed career risk for hedge fund managers from investing in Bitcoin.

MicroStrategy removed career risk for CFOs from putting company treasury into Bitcoin.

MicroStrategy Buys more than 12,000 BTC; Makes Bitcoin its "Principal Holding in its Treasury Reserve Strategy"

2020-08-12

MicroStrategy, the publicly-traded business intelligence company bought 21,454 bitcoins for $250 million (usd). From BusinessWire

“Our investment in Bitcoin is part of our new capital allocation strategy, which seeks to maximize long-term value for our shareholders,” said Michael J. Saylor, CEO, MicroStrategy Incorporated. “This investment reflects our belief that Bitcoin, as the world’s most widely-adopted cryptocurrency, is a dependable store of value and an attractive investment asset with more long-term appreciation potential than holding cash. Since its inception over a decade ago, Bitcoin has emerged as a significant addition to the global financial system, with characteristics that are useful to both individuals and institutions. MicroStrategy has recognized Bitcoin as a legitimate investment asset that can be superior to cash and accordingly has made Bitcoin the principal holding in its treasury reserve strategy.”

Bitcoin Devs Grants Tracker

2020-08-10

Great resource to see who is giving grants to Bitcoin developers : Bitcoin Grants Tracker


In the US : No Need of a Warrant to Get Data from Exchanges

2020-08-07

Your personal information on bitcoin exchanges is not private, rules a Court in the US. In other words, "All your info are belong to us".

Judge Haynes, writing for the Fifth Circuit, decided the case under the well-established doctrine that "a person generally has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties." Courts have applied this "third-party doctrine" to customer financial records kept by banks. The Fifth Circuit reasoned that Bitcoin records kept by an exchange should be treated the same way.

"What It’s Really Like to Live on Bitcoin in the Middle East"

2020-08-06

Great article about living on bitcoin in the Middle East. This article also mentions Amir Taaki (a legend in the bitcoin community).

“I rely on providers abroad,” Mo said. “I’ve had to work several part-time jobs as a graphic designer and web developer to provide financial support for my family. … I’ve finished 10 online courses at Edx, four at Udemy and read more than 10 books about programming and bitcoin.”

He said learning about bitcoin dramatically changed his life over the past two years.

“It was a great feeling when I realized I could buy food and other stuff using bitcoin,” he added.

Bitcoin (easier) Scripting Language

2020-08-05

"Minsc" : a miniscript-based scripting language making it easier to create good quality, more easily reviewable Bitcoin contracts.


Ledger (the Bitcoin Hardware Wallet) : Vulnerability Could Cause Loss of Funds

2020-08-04

There's a new Ledger vulnerability : Ledger App Isolation Bypass. If you use a Ledger, please read this article carefully and then buy something else, please. The scariest thing about this vulnerability report is the "disclosure timeline" that shows Ledger being pretty negligent in responding to the disclosure. It's really worrying as to how serious they are about security. You can also read these reddit threads: Ledger App Isolation Bypass and Ledger response to BTC derivatives exploit..


c-lightning : Major New Release

2020-08-03

v0.9.0: code named "Rat Poison Squared on Steroids" in honor of Warren Buffet calling Bitcoin "rat poison" (him being "the biggest rat", in the words of the amazing Max Keiser). Amongst other benefits, this major release of c-lightning (bitcoin lightning implementation) includes : multi-part payments (sending and receiving) and also support for watchtower plugins that help protect the node's funds while the node is not currently connected to the network.


Ledger (the Bitcoin Hardware Wallet) : Customer Data Breach

2020-07-31

Some of Ledger's customers' personal info leaked around July 14th. Criminals might come to know the physical address of some people who decided they had enough bitcoin to buy a dedicated hardware wallet. That's not a very good thing. Ledger should have purging that information. Remember to buy hardware wallets with bitcoin, without giving your name, and have it delivered to another address than your personal address.


New Devs Donation Page

2020-07-30

Want to donate to bitcoin developers? There's a webpage for that : bitcoindevlist.com


US : Banks Will be Allowed to Custody Bitcoin

2020-07-23

Remember : not your keys, not your bitcoins. Don't entrust your bitcoins to anyone, least of all banks. However, that being said, here's the big news : (in the US) the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has concluded that national banks may provide cryptocurrency custody services on behalf of their customers.

Should you choose to go down that road, at least do it in Wyoming with the likes of what Caitlin Long is working on :

“I’m thrilled that the OCC yesterday followed Wyoming in allowing banks to provide custody for digital assets,” Long continued. “Wyoming has been developing its digital asset custody initiative for two years and already has a comprehensive framework and supervisory process in place, which does not exist elsewhere. The OCC and 49 other states do not yet have in place the comprehensive legal structure necessary for enabling digital asset custody without significant legal risk. They also do not have a roadmap for courts to adjudicate disputes involving digital assets and do not provide the certainty in bankruptcy that Wyoming provides for digital asset custodians. Its prudential standards make Wyoming the only jurisdiction in the U.S. where digital asset custody in a bank can truly be executed in a safe and sound manner.”

Bitcoin Development Grants

2020-07-16

Who's contributing to Bitcoin development? Here's a Bitcoin development grants tracker.


Privacy, Computer Security and more Digital Autonomy

2020-07-15

Privacytools.io has a PeerTube instance. You'll find free privacy and computer security videos from Techlore. Luke Smith has great videos about digital autonomy : running your own email server, running your own metasearch engine, using rss feeds, etc.


Africa : Sending Nigerian Precoiners Money through Bitcoin

2020-07-13

Sendcash allows nigerian users to get a bitcoin wallet address for their nigerian bank account. One more option to send money to Africa. It might help convert some nigerian precoiners to the value of Bitcoin.


Regulated Exchanges Get Hacked, Police Buy the Data; Who Needs Warrants?

2020-07-10

According to Motherboard, police are buying access to hacked website data :

Hackers break into websites, steal information, and then publish that data all the time, with other hackers or scammers then using it for their own ends. But breached data now has another customer: law enforcement. Some companies are selling government agencies access to data stolen from websites in the hope that it can generate investigative leads, with the data including passwords, email addresses, IP addresses, and more.


In the U.S. : The Newly Launched Strike App

2020-07-03

The Strike app has many possible uses among which : to buy Bitcoin (and custody it yourself), send remittances to family outside of the US, make micropayments for digital content, make purchases offline and online. Notably, this means Bitcoin-Only merchants all of a sudden have many more potential customers : all customers who have a debit card in the US (except a few States mentioned in the article). Great stepping stone to a circular Bitcoin economy.


"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks."

The Bitcoin Story Begins

The Bitcoin Genesis Block : The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

More Advanced

This section is for those who have already started (installed a wallet, bought some bitcoin, and read a bit more about Bitcoin) and now want to go further.

Get Yourself a "Full Node"

Become a first class Bitcoin citizen by running your own "full node". A full node gives you more privacy (amongst other advantages).
You can run Bitcoin Core. It's free, open source software. There's also the possibility of running BTCPayServer.

Get a Hardware Wallet

Any computer/device that touches the internet is subject to hacking. Even offline devices might be hacked but that's orders of magnitude more difficult and less common. A good "hardware wallet" allows you to hold your private keys "offline". Try Jade

More Coming Soon

Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole

Many things coming up : Full-node boxes (like raspiblitz), Coinjoins (like joinmarket), Bearer bitcoins (with opendime), the lightning network, the liquid network, merchant tools (with btcpayserver), tor (for example with the Tor Browser), linux (with Xubuntu), LiveDVDs, strong passphrases with diceware, software verification with pgp and sha256sum, VPNs, Juggernaut, Bitcoin satellites, etc. But for now, pat yourself on the back, sit back and watch the Fed printer go Brrrrrrrr.

Great Bitcoin Podcasts

Citadel Dispatch

Great podcast with Matt Odell : TFTC

Charts / Metrics / Explorer / Fees

Bitcoin Explorer

Great Bitcoin explorer from Blockstream. Also covers the Bitcoin Liquid network. Blockstream.info

Also available as an .onion website (through Tor). Just look at the bottom of the blockstream.info webpage, onion V2 and onion V3 services available.

Mempool : Current Usage and Transaction Fee Estimator

You can learn more about the current mempool (transactions waiting to be confirmed) with this website. There's even a kind of transaction fee estimator to give you a ballpark figure of how much it would cost you on average to get your transaction confirmed in a certain amount of time. To learn more about transaction fees and vbytes, you can look at this webspage : bitcoin.it

Memes (deep memes)

Music

Not This Time - Part 1
Not This Time - Part 2
Banksters' Paradise
When The Drops Come
Holding (Billy Joel)

Acquire More Bitcoin

There are many ways to acquire bitcoins. It's on a sprectrum of convenience and privacy.

  1. MINING : Bitcoin mining is the most private way to acquire bitcoins. However, Bitcoin mining is a full-fledged business. Very hard to do profitable mining (after all costs are taken into account). But if you're prepared to pay a premium for privacy, the most private way to acquire bitcoin is, by far, mining :
  2. EARNING : There's also the possibility of earning bitcoin by selling your products or services for bitcoin. You can accept bitcoin by simply downloading the Green wallet app and showing/sending your customer a QR code for payment. If you want a more complete solution, you can use btcpayserver which can be installed on your own hardware or you can use simple install options from hosting providers such as lunanode

  3. FRIENDS : If mining isn't for you and you don't want to, or can't, sell your services or products for bitcoin, your best bet is to rely on your personal network of friends and acquaintances.

  4. ATMs : If that's also not possible, privacy-preserving Bitcoin ATMs might help you.

  5. VOUCHERS : If the Bitcoin ATMs in your area (and of your friends') are not private, you might be able to use vouchers such as Azte.co, FlexEPin and LibertyX. Your mileage may vary.

  6. NO-KYC EXCHANGES : There are also a few privacy-preserving exchanges (called "no-kyc" exchanges). Here's a well-maintained list on medium. Notably, you'll read about bisq and hodlhodl.com. Here's an article about the dangers of submitting to "KYC" : noKYC Only

  7. SURVEILLANCE BITCOIN : And, finally, there's the full "drop your pants and send me a selfie"-level of no-privacy bitcoin : "full-kyc services". If you must go that route, please stick to the best services out there that have a good reputation and allow you to withdraw your bitcoins immediately (so you can "self-custody" your bitcoin) : getting bitcoin on bitcoin-only.com

Services / Products

VPN (private internet)
VPS (private servers)
Prepaid Cards
More Prepaid Cards
Bitcoin Hardware Wallet
Bitcoin Hardware Wallet
Full Node Box
Bitcoin Bearer Instrument
Bitcoin Satellite Receiver Kit
Domain Names
Email Services (with Custom Domains)