Tools are important
Besides Youtube and twitter/x, I have several tools and techniques I use when I evaluate the marked almost of daily basis, especially in volatile periods and I have money to invest.
You need to buy bitcoin from an exchange, and there are many to choose from. The most popular is Coinbase , Binance, Kraken, OKX and Bybit. Since I’m living in Norway, I use Firi and barebitcoin as a supplement to the foreign ones. It is important to have several options when you are going to buy bitcoin because there can be very high volumes and many exchange tend to have outages.
When you are buying bitcoin, you can do this as a one-time order or set it up a recurring buy order (daily, weekly, monthly).
As you can see from the screenshots, I’m buying via PayPal here. Coinbase has excellent integration with PayPal, and it takes less than 12 hours to withdraw money from Coinbase to your bank account if you need to.
But there is a limit on $1000 per day with the PayPal option. But in this case, you buy some stable coins or do a bank transfer to you cash wallet, and set up the recurring buy from this, instead of PayPal.
When you are using an exchange, you can send bitcoin to other accounts (addresses) representing another exchange or hardware wallet. You can also receive coins from other addresses. Withdrawal is easy from Coinbase via PayPal.
The next step is how much you TRUST the exchanges. 2022-23 taught us a lesson with Terra Luna, FTX and so on. Therefore, I seldom keep much bitcoin on an exchange for a longer period. I keep a small emergence amount on the exchange in case I need fast cash overnight. But normally, I transfer most of the coins to my “long-term” hardware wallet. I also have a “short-term” hardware wallet that I use for travel and day-to-day usage.
The most popular hardware wallets are:
The most important aspect of bitcoin is to own you own keys. “Not your keys, not your coins” is a phrase that is the most important rule of bitcoin. This mean you need to back up the 12/24 word that is your password to the wallet. Anyone with these words can steel your coins. So, make sure nobody knows them. Store them in a safe, split them and save them in different locations. There is another method called multi-sig, but that another long blog post for another time.
Another tool that I might be using in the future is Casa. This is a 3rd party custody service with built-in inheritance features that seems very sound to secure larger bitcoin stacks. Keeping track of the bitcoin price is important and try to anticipate its next move. I’m using TradingView for this and have a paid subscription with more features and overlay indicators.
This view is on weekly zoom level to give an overview where we are in the cycle and the overall trend. We can also see that small dips don’t matter in the longer run.
I normally have the “4 hour” level to keep track of the current price development with “200 Day Moving Average” and the volumes indicators visible. When I’m buying (DCA every month), the “1 hour” level is chosen, especially if there are high volatility and lots of volume.
Another way of checking price on bitcoin or other coins, in addition to keep track of your portfolio, I use websites like coingecko and coinmarketcap. It varies which one I use.
Other useful sites:
- Bitcoin Power Law: Price prediction based historical price data.
- timechaincalendar.com: status of the bitcoin blockchain, like fees, block production, chain and network state.
- Bitcoin FIRE Calculator: how can I retire on my bitcoin and what will the budget look like?
