WBD632 Audio Transcription
Beginners Guide Part 3/3 - How to Buy & Hold Bitcoin with Dan Held
Release date: Wednesday 15th March
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Dan Held. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
Dan Held is a Bitcoin educator and marketing advisor at Trust Machines. In this interview, we discuss how to get involved with Bitcoin: how to buy and store Bitcoin, how to spend Bitcoin, how to avoid scams, how to engage with the community, and the best Bitcoin-related books, podcasts and Twitter feeds to follow.
“With Bitcoin, we’re finally free. We’re finally free with our money to do whatever we’d like with it…so if a government becomes onerous, and they start to crack down on transactions or crack down on different types of races, religions, etc., you can take your money and you can leave. And that ability, that freedom, is truly what it means to be a human, it’s truly to be financially free.”
— Dan Held
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Dan, what is Bitcoin?
Dan Held: Bitcoin is a money that is not controlled by any government and it has censorship resistance, which means you can't mute or censor transactions; it means anyone anywhere can transact with anyone else; and it can't be seized very easily, which means it's a money where no one can take it from you. It's not like a bank where someone could go in and call the bank, the government could call the bank and freeze your account. With Bitcoin, you have a money that is extremely hard to seize. When you control your Bitcoin, it's like a Swiss Bank Account in your pocket.
Peter McCormack: When someone is thinking of buying Bitcoin for the first time, what are the kinds of things they should be thinking about?
Dan Held: Bitcoin is like any other investment you might think about. Use basic investing principles of, don't invest more than you can lose, invest it in an amount that you find appropriate risk-level-wise, for example if you're a pensioner or you're really old and you don't want to take a big risk with your money, you wouldn't want to put everything into Bitcoin. Similarly, when you're young, you might want to take a little bit more risk. You can ride the volatility. As we all know, Bitcoin has large fluctuations in price in bear markets, in bull markets.
So, when approaching it, use basic investing skills of (1) don't invest more than you can lose; (2) you're definitely going to want to think about timing-wise, so when you go invest, don't try to go time the market in terms of buying and selling on a daily basis; day trading. You're going to want to buy and hold, which means buy the asset and hold for five to ten years. You're not going to beat the market in the short term; you might, but it's very risky. In the longer term, you're going to want to buy and hold, and that's the strategy to employ.
Peter McCormack: Do you have any warnings for anyone who thinks they could become a trader?
Dan Held: Well statistically, it's unlikely that you're going to beat the market. There's a lot of really smart folks out there who have a lot more money than you do, they have a lot more information, and they're the ones you're trading against. It's like you're swimming in a pool with sharks. Now, when you buy and hold, you're not swimming in a pool any more, you're able to zoom out and have performance on a very long scale, so you don't have to compete with them. When you're day trading and trying to find alpha, you're competing with some of the biggest sharks in that pool.
Peter McCormack: If somebody is new to Bitcoin and they go out to buy some and they notice these altcoins, should they also be investing in those?
Dan Held: There's a lot of interesting things going on in the ecosystem, Bitcoin being the oldest project and what I think is the best project in the space; it has the best return on risk. So sure, your buddy might buy Shiba or Dogecoin and it might 10X or 100X, but that's very rare. In fact, most coins drop in value over a long period of time.
What you're going to want to do is buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin, as a risk-adjusted return, is your best return you're going to get. What do I mean by that? You could buy another coin and it could go up, but it's a pretty unlikely bet over a long period of time. Bitcoin is the original one, it's the one that is solving the problem of money, it is the largest one by number of holders and believers, and I believe it will be the most successful one in the space. So, based on that, I do think Bitcoin is your best risk-adjusted return versus buying an altcoin.
Peter McCormack: So, how do I buy Bitcoin?
Dan Held: Buying Bitcoin's quite easy, you can either do it online or in person. If you do it online, you can buy it through an exchange, there are a lot of exchanges out there. I used to work for one called Kraken, there's another popular one called Coinbase within the United States, so there's a lot of different exchanges you can go buy Bitcoin on.
An exchange, if you don't know what that means, an exchange is where you can buy and sell Bitcoin, where essentially you take your dollars in your bank account, or your euros or your yen, and you wire that or send that to this company called an exchange. The exchange then takes that fiat currency and allows you to buy crypto with it, specifically of course Bitcoin I think is the one that you should be buying. When you buy Bitcoin with that, you can then take your Bitcoin and you can move that outside of the exchange to your own wallet. The exchange is basically the way in and out of crypto from the fiat system.
In the fiat system, you've got dollars, euros, yen, that's the traditional banking system. The exchanges are sort of the portals or gateways.
Peter McCormack: Can you name me some of the most well-known and respected exchanges out there?
Dan Held: Yeah, so when you look at the exchanges all across the world, there are quite a few, it depends on which geography you're in. The US and European ones, Kraken and Coinbase I would say are the top two; you've also got Bitstamp as well. Internationally, you're looking more at Binance, Bitfinex, these are all great exchanges, they've all been around for a very long time.
When you select an exchange, you're going to want to look at the reputation of one, but make sure you do understand that when you interact with an exchange, that these are centralised businesses and they're not on the blockchain, or anything like that. So, if you send your money in there and they're not reputable, they could do something bad with it. So, you're going to want to do your research and really understand the good exchanges in your region.
Peter McCormack: What should I do after I've bought my first Bitcoin?
Dan Held: All right, great, so you've bought your Bitcoin for the first time and you're ready to move it to your own, non-custodial wallet. What does the word "non-custodial" mean? Non-custodial means a wallet that is only controlled by yourself, no one else. Now, with that, there comes a lot of responsibility and we'll go into that in a little bit. But when you take your Bitcoin off of an exchange, you're taking full possession over it, which means that now you hold it, now you own it; the equivalent being, imagine you store your gold bars in someone else's vault. You're taking those gold bars and putting them in your own vaults in your own home now. That's the equivalent of taking your money off an exchange and putting it into your own self-custodial wallet.
All right, so you're going to buy Bitcoin for the first time and you've moved some money, some dollars, euros, yens, pounds; you've moved those over to the exchange, you've wired it in, and you're about to make your first purchase. Just know that you don't have to buy an entire Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is the largest denomination of Bitcoin as a money. You can think about it being like a $1 million bill, or something like that. So, you can buy a very small amount of Bitcoin and those are called satoshis, but essentially most exchanges allow you to buy $1 worth of Bitcoin.
So, you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin, you don't have to buy a whole one. A lot of people get a little freaked out by that. So, yeah, you can own part of a Bitcoin, and you can move that part of a Bitcoin on the Bitcoin Network. So, it is equally as valuable as it is buying a whole Bitcoin. Buying a fraction of Bitcoin is just like having a quarter or $1 or a $10 bill; these are fractions, or smaller denominations.
Peter McCormack: What is a wallet?
Dan Held: A wallet is where you hold your Bitcoin. So, a wallet allows you to control and own your Bitcoin. You can think about it as a private bank vault in this file, which is really, really cool. And you can have this file on a dedicated hardware device, or you can have it on your phone; there's all sorts of risks and rewards and usability issues of having them on either. And so, when you look at a wallet, it's really this safe or this bank vault on your phone, or on a separate dedicated device.
Peter McCormack: Could I not just leave my Bitcoin on the exchange?
Dan Held: I wouldn't recommend leaving your Bitcoin on an exchange. That means you're trusting the exchange to behave properly, and you're trusting that they won't be hacked and that governments won't ask them for the Bitcoin. So, you'd want to eliminate that as a risk, and that's what's so amazing about Bitcoin as a technology; it allows you to hold your own Bitcoin in your own vaults, in your own wallet, where only you control it, and that's really powerful and that's one of the biggest reasons why Bitcoin is such an impactful technology.
Peter McCormack: If I make a mistake with my Bitcoin and I lose it, who do I phone to get help?
Dan Held: Well as they say, with great power comes great responsibility, and with Bitcoin you're your own support staff. You 100% control your Bitcoin by yourself, which means that if you forget the key to your vault, then you can't access your Bitcoin. So, you're going to want to take very careful steps not to lose the ability to access your wallet. There are a lot of safe, methodological ways to take your Bitcoin and store it properly. I definitely recommend you go check those out.
Don't move all of your coins off of the exchange into the wallet in one go; move a little bit, get comfortable with it. It's like anything else, it's like driving a car or handling a gun or doing your own taxes for the first time; there's a lot of finesse with it and you're going to make sure you understand it. But you've handled more complicated things in your life and you can definitely handle doing this. So, move a little bit over, get comfortable with it, and then move the rest over later.
Peter McCormack: What is the difference between a hardware wallet and a software wallet?
Dan Held: A software wallet is on hardware that is used for something else. An example of that would be your phone. Your phone doesn't have a dedicated hardware wallet built into it, your phone is a device made for making phone calls and having other applications.
Peter McCormack: What is a hardware wallet?
Dan Held: A hardware wallet is a dedicated device where you can store your Bitcoin, so for example, it looks like a little USB stick. Why is that valuable, or why would people want to store their Bitcoin there? A hardware wallet, and by the way a company that does this is called Ledger, a hardware wallet allows you to have Bitcoin that aren't connected to the internet. It means that these Bitcoin are held in a separate device and with this, since they don't access the internet, it reduces the amount of risk.
If your wallet is a hot wallet, or a wallet connected to the internet, that means that people can potentially hack it. Because this is a dedicated device that is standalone, it's much more secure and a much better way to transact and store your Bitcoin long term.
Peter McCormack: Can you name me some of the most popular hardware wallets that I should check out?
Dan Held: So, the most popular hardware wallet out there right now is Ledger. Ledger is a company based out of France. They do a phenomenal job of allowing you to hold Bitcoin and any other crypto asset in a way that's really seamless, really easy to use. The next one up would be Trezor. Trezor's really popular as well. They're more Bitcoin-only. Then finally, you have COLDCARD. COLDCARD is kind of your hardcore, advanced version that allows you to do much more advanced things. I could go into details, but you want to go do your research on all three and figure out which one is best for you.
Peter McCormack: What things should I be aware of when setting up a hardware wallet for my first time?
Dan Held: When you set your hardware wallet up for the first time, you're going to go through a series of steps in order to initiate the wallet, or create the wallet. There's a very important part when you create it where you create a PIN, and the PIN is a four- to six-digit code that allows you to access the device, and your backup. The backup is a series of 12 to 24 words. It's very important that you store these 12 to 24 words, the backup, in a place that is safe, secure and not accessible to anyone else. This backup allows you to restore the wallet if you forget your PIN number and can't get into the wallet.
So, there's two things that you need to remember when you set this up: one is your PIN, the second is your backup, the 12 to 24 words. Again, I cannot stress enough that you store these in a secure way, make sure that no one else has access to them, because if they have access to those 12 to 24 words, they could take your Bitcoin.
So, it's a very, very simple thing to store those two properly and you'll be okay, but again you have to store these in a place that's going to last a long time. I definitely recommend that you store your 12 to 24 words, the backup, you store that on titanium. There are a lot of providers out there. I personally use Cryptotag. You can hammer it into titanium plates that are crushproof, fireproof, waterproof. You don't want any sort of event to occur, say there's flooding in your region, and if you wrote it on paper, that would destroy it. So, definitely store it on titanium, that's the way to hodl Bitcoin long term.
Peter McCormack: What should I do when I want to send my first Bitcoin across to my hardware wallet?
Dan Held: Well, you're going to want to make sure that you've written your 12 to 24 words down properly, so that's your backup. You're going to want to make sure that you've done that in a smart way. So, when you move coins over, you're going to want to move $10 or $15 over. You move it to the hardware wallet address, and then you're going to want to practise as if the hardware device has a failure. So, you wipe the hardware device and then you have to restore it from those 12 to 24 words that you have stored very properly. When you do that correctly, you'll be able to resurrect the device and no money's been lost.
If you had forgotten the 12 to 24 words, or you wrote them down incorrectly, then you won't be able to recover it, but you've only lost $10 or $15 in order to test this. This gets you comfortable with the restore scenario, where you have to restore the wallet from the backup, and it makes you more confident in storing Bitcoin long term.
Peter McCormack: How do I actually send the Bitcoin?
Dan Held: Sending Bitcoin is quite easy. So, what you do is, depending on the wallet type you have, whether it be on your phone or be on a hardware device, you're going to want to log in or open up the interface, and then you take an address where you want to send the Bitcoin, you paste that address in to the interface, and then you press "send" and there's a fee associated with moving Bitcoin on-chain, and then you select how much you want to send, how much fee you want to pay, and the fee determines how fast it goes, and then you press "send". It's quite easy and on the Bitcoin blockchain, it moves pretty quickly. So, depending on what you're trying to buy, it could be a few minutes to a couple of minutes.
Peter McCormack: How do I spend Bitcoin?
Dan Held: You can spend Bitcoin in tens of thousands of online and in-person stores all across the world. So, online is pretty simple, you would take your dedicated hardware device, or your app on your phone or on your computer, and you copy/paste the address in. They will create an invoice for you, so you go through the typical card purchase, and you go put items in your cart and at the end it will be like, "Do you want to pay with Bitcoin?" Then you take that address, copy/paste it in and press send; super-simple.
In person, it's a very similar way to spend Bitcoin. In person, they'll give you a QR code. You scan that QR code and then you press "okay" in your wallet app, and you send it. You can do it in more complicated ways with your dedicated hardware device, but in-person transactions are usually best done with a phone. It's very similar to your existing payment experience with a credit card or Apple Pay.
Peter McCormack: What is the Lightning Network?
Dan Held: So, once you've bought some Bitcoin and you've moved it to your own wallet, there's something you can interact with on the Bitcoin protocol, called Lightning. Lightning allows you to move your Bitcoin in a cheaper and faster way than normal. So, you kind of think about it as two different types of railways; Bitcoin on layer 1 allows you to move Bitcoin directly in the Bitcoin Network; layer 2 is like another railway that operates a little bit differently, and that's what Lightning is.
With Lightning it allows you to make payments that are instantaneous and with much lower fees than on the other railway, the Bitcoin layer 1. This is important as you become a bitcoiner over time and you want to transact more often, it will save you money on fees and be much more seamless in person for in-person transactions.
Peter McCormack: What is a Bitcoin node?
Dan Held: So, I'm going to dive into some really technical topics here, I don't want to freak you out, but you're going to need to understand this. This is definitely a little bit more of the advanced mode, but something that a good bitcoiner should go do, because you're going to want to have full sovereignty over your money and your ability to connect to the Bitcoin Network.
A full node is basically software that you run that allows you to directly connect to the Bitcoin Network. So, when you have a wallet, that wallet can either go through another company's servers to send a transaction and then they sit that transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain; or, with a node, you connect directly. Connecting directly to the Bitcoin blockchain increases your privacy, increases your ability to access the Bitcoin Network.
While your coins are safe on a hardware device or in a wallet, they may not be able to access the network directly. With a full node, it allows you to access Bitcoin directly. It's pretty easy to set up. You can download it on your desktop computer, or on a dedicated hardware device. There are dedicated hardware nodes. It's a pretty big file size, so you probably don't want to store this on a mobile phone. But with that, you increase your privacy, you have the ability to directly connect to the Bitcoin Network, so it's the ultimate expression of being a bitcoiner, because you require no other third parties, no other trusted folks in order to connect to Bitcoin and send and receive it directly.
Peter McCormack: What are some of the most common scams and how do I avoid them?
Dan Held: That's a great question. The crypto industry is full of scams and there's a lot of ways you can lose money. First and foremost, use exchanges that are reputable. Don't use an exchange that if you google it, there's not a lot of information about it. You're going to want to use exchanges that everyone else uses. Simply put, if you wire your money there or you send your money there to go buy Bitcoin, you want them to control that fiat currency in a respectable, non-fraudulent way.
When you move your Bitcoin on-chain, you're going to want to make sure you don't send it to any sort of service or provider that isn't reputable. So for example, don't buy a hardware wallet that isn't well-known that could be an exploit or unknown flaw. Also, don't send your Bitcoin to investment schemes. If someone claims they can double your money in two days, they're not going to be able to do that, that's definitely a scam. If a famous person messages you and asks for Bitcoin, they're not your friend, that's an imposter account. There's a lot of these versions where, if you ever think that something might be suspicious, take a deep breath and think about it.
There's also, for example, SMS schemes where you might get an SMS message that says, "Your wallet account has been hacked, we need you to access it right now". Just know when you stored it in a hardware wallet, which is the safest place to store it, it is extremely safe and you do not need to worry about these things. So, when you receive these messages, they're trying to get you to access the device. When this happens, take a deep breath, calm and collected, call your more technical buddy or go research online before you do anything drastic. The worst thing you can do is behave with a lot of emotion, go out and make a rash decision.
Another thing is not entering your backup, your 12 to 24 words. Never enter those on any other computer or any other device unless it's a dedicated hardware device that is well-known. So for example, if you receive a text, or you receive an email that says, "You need to log in to your Ledger [or] Trezor [or] your wallet and you need to enter these words", that's a scam. They're trying to get you to use your backup and give them your backup, which will give them full access to your coins. So, do not put those 12 to 24 words in anywhere, unless it's on a dedicated hardware device, or it's in a very reputable application that is a very popular wallet.
Peter McCormack: Now I've got my Bitcoin, I'm a bitcoiner, what do I do now?
Dan Held: Well, congratulations, you've jumped through a lot of hoops to get here, you've read about Bitcoin, you've heard about it, you made the decision to buy it, you've put it into your own wallet, and now you're storing it. What's great is it's kind of like gold. You can store gold in your vault and there's not a lot of maintenance you have to do. So, either you can store it there and you just forget about it, which is awesome, you can do that; you can become more involved in the community, which means you can participate on Twitter and all the different social channels and Nostr and get more plugged in; you can go to meetups or conferences. I think these are really fun ways to better understand your investment and develop stronger conviction over time.
Then finally, if you want to spend it, if you want to work in the space, (1) you can go spend it in tens of thousands of merchants all across online and in person, that's great; or (2) if you want to work in the space, there are a lot of job boards where you can come join Bitcoin companies. People are looking for great talent across many different roles, from sales, recruiting, engineering, design. So, if you really, really care about this space and you really want to dive in deeper, there's a ton of roles out there for you, and I'd definitely welcome you to the industry.
Peter McCormack: Could you recommend some good books if I want to read more about Bitcoin?
Dan Held: Yeah, there's a lot of books out there, it just depends on what you're looking for. I think to start off with and a very simple one to read is The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, by Vijay Boyapati. I think it very succinctly lays out why Bitcoin's important and why you should believe in it. From there, there's a bunch of other ones: Layered Money, by Nik Bhatia, is awesome; you've also got the classic, The Bitcoin Standard, by Saifedean and other books too, but those are some of the top ones out there. Also, if you want to start your journey in to better understand Bitcoin's origin, I'd definitely recommend you read my series called Planting Bitcoin, Bitcoin's origin story.
Peter McCormack: Can you recommend some other podcasts that are worth listening to?
Dan Held: You've got Tales From the Crypt with Marty Bent and Matt Odell, it's a classic one, it's kind of more intense, hardcore Bitcoin; you've also got the Stephan Livera show, Stephan does a great job of exploring different Bitcoin topics; and then finally also Preston Pysh, The Investors Podcast. Preston does a great job of summarising the macro picture from an investor's perspective.
Peter McCormack: Can you recommend some great people to follow on Twitter regarding Bitcoin?
Dan Held: Twitter is where a lot of the great minds think and tweet out different thoughts on how Bitcoin works. I would definitely recommend you watch and listen to Lyn Alden. Lyn Alden is a great thought leader in the space. You've also got Nic Carter, I think he's really sharp as well. Also, following Alex Gladstein, he's with the Human Rights Foundation, he's a phenomenal follow, he talks about how Bitcoin is helping improve lives all across the world. And then Brandon Quittem. Brandon Quittem is a really great thought leader, he's got some great pieces on how Bitcoin resembles plants and other sort of easy-to-understand analogies.
By following these folks, you're going to understand who else to follow as well. They interact with a lot of other big accounts, so this is a great starting point on your journey of understanding more about Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: What does it take to be a good bitcoiner?
Dan Held: A good bitcoiner stores their Bitcoin properly in a way that they fully control, so that's a hardware wallet, that's a dedicated device where no one else can access it, so you've stored it in a way that gives you total freedom over your money. That's first and foremost the most important part of Bitcoin. Other good bitcoiners would probably run a full node. A full node allows you to access the Bitcoin Network directly without having to interact with anyone else, so you can connect your hardware wallet to a full node. Then, I think if you want to get fully down this rabbit hole, you want to be orange pilled.
Orange pilled is where someone really understands Bitcoin and gets it and it becomes part of their lifestyle. If you want to have this be part of your lifestyle and you want to tell more people about Bitcoin, become involved in the community, understand more intimately how Bitcoin works, and then go tell your family and friends about it.
Peter McCormack: Why's Bitcoin important to you, Dan?
Dan Held: Bitcoin's important to me because it allows people to be truly financially free. What do I mean by that? Financially free is having a money that isn't controlled by a government in terms of censorship, ownership, or them controlling the money supply. All three of those give you full freedom, so I don't have to trust these old bureaucrats in Washington or at the Fed who might change the monetary policy, or they might go print another trillion dollars, or they might bail out a bank, or they might go censor me because I believe in XYZ thing.
With Bitcoin, we're finally free, we're finally free with our money to do whatever we like with it, and I can take that money and I can go anywhere I like. So, if a government becomes onerous and they start to crack down on transactions, or crack down on different types of races, religions, etc, you can take your money and you can leave. And that ability, that freedom is truly what it means to be a human, it's truly to be financially free.
Peter McCormack: I'm scared of Bitcoin volatility, how do I deal with that?
Dan Held: So Bitcoin, like any new emerging technology or asset, has a lot of volatility. What does volatility mean? It means the price goes up and down in a more dramatic fashion than other types of assets. Bitcoin being adopted as a global money wasn't going to happen in a nice linear fashion, it was going to happen in ebbs and flows, and that's where we have bull and bear markets.
So, Bitcoin's volatility is really tricky, because when you buy Bitcoin and it drops, you get a sick feeling in your stomach where you're like, "Maybe I made a mistake". Or it goes up and you sell immediately because you've doubled your money. Bitcoin, like any other investment, you want to go in with an investment thesis, so make sure you understand why Bitcoin as an asset makes sense. Don't buy it because your buddy bought it and you just want to ride it; buy it because you understand its properties and buy it because you see it as an alternative to a global money and that this money gives you true freedom.
If you actually believe and you understand Bitcoin, then you won't be phased as much with the volatility. When the price goes up, in your heart you go, "Wait a second, I shouldn't sell right away, because I expect Bitcoin to become a global money in five or ten years, and right now the price is much lower than what that should be", and the same when it drops. When it drops, you don't panic immediately and want to go sell. So, have a strong conviction and build that conviction through education and that will help you ride out the volatility.
Peter McCormack: What's the toughest lesson you've had to learn as a bitcoiner?
Dan Held: Well, I wasn't a perfect hodler in the beginning! I day traded poorly, I went with my emotions, I bought high, sold low, I traded some other alts, I traded Litecoin. I'm not a good trader, so my number one lesson is, "Don't go day trader!" I'm very bad at it, and by the way I've been in the space ten years, I'm still not good at it. So for me, buying and hodling is the only way to truly ride out the cycles and reduce your amount of risk. You don't want to trade this asset, it's extremely volatile. This is something you want to enter in with conviction, buy and hold it for five or ten years.
Peter McCormack: What do you know now that you wish you knew when you first discovered Bitcoin?
Dan Held: I would have looked at Bitcoin's total market capitalisation; how much is Bitcoin worth if you take all the Bitcoin and multiply it by the price per Bitcoin. The price per Bitcoin is somewhat irrelevant. What matters is the total market capitalisation, or value of all the Bitcoin in the world. When you look at that, it's really easy to see the opportunity.
Bitcoin is smaller than Apple or Google, but is Bitcoin more impactful than both of those companies? Absolutely. When you zoom out and see the valuation and the market capitalisation of Bitcoin versus other assets, you see how big this opportunity is and it makes it much easier to ride out the waves. If you look at the price per Bitcoin, a Bitcoin can seem expensive, but I've seen Bitcoin at $100 and I thought that was expensive, and I saw it at $1,000 and I thought that was expensive. Now it's at $22,000.
So, if you zoom out and you look at the bigger picture, if I had looked at Bitcoin more from that perspective back in 2011, 2012, I would have easily seen how big and massive this opportunity was. Instead, I looked at the price per Bitcoin and that made me feel a little bit more bearish than I should have been.
Peter McCormack: Do you have any final parting comments for our new bitcoiners?
Dan Held: Well, it might seem a little overwhelming right now, you've heard a bunch of terms you don't understand. But Bitcoin, as John Oliver puts it is, "Everything you don't understand about money with everything you don't understand about computers". So, I get what you're feeling, I've been there before. The best first thing to do is take the first step of learning more and then buying a little bit and just understanding that experience.
Like with anything else in life, like learning how to ride a bike or drive a car, it takes practice and it takes understanding the device, understanding the technology, to really access it and get the full value from it. So, take the baby steps, I know it's scary, but we all take our first steps some day and this is your first time to take a first step with Bitcoin.
