Joining Bitcoin in 2021 or a few Personal Tips to Friends, Family & Fools 😁

If you’ve seriously joined the Bitcoin Network since 2017 then you’ve probably become, by accident and without having made any particular request for it, your friends and family’s “SME” on such a complex yet fascinating world which is the one of Cryptocurrencies and Open Blockchains.

This time around, my in-laws, friends and family [and fools? just kidding] are very seriously thinking about investing. There is noise all over the place. And Bitcoin is at the epicenter of consumer, government and corporate news.

“Carlos, What do you think; Should or should I not buy Bitcoins or another crypto-currency? Are they overpriced? If I should buy which one do I buy? What wallet should I use? What other tips can you give me?”

As I was replying back to this request, I was getting similar questions from my parents, some of my best friends, my partner’s friends and the list goes on. I put some calories into an email response and realized it could actually turn out to be blogging material for Medium. So here we go. Welcome to Chapter1: Joining Bitcoin in 2021 — Education First

Feel free to share your thoughts on the comments section below. And, let’s also connect on twitter @lecharleslozano if you’d like.

There’s a lot of information out there. Difficult to separate the needles from the haze. Not easy to summarize a few years of learnings and experience in a single post. But if you need to start somewhere, here’s essentially a list of initial content, in my opinion, key for you to read, watch, consume, or experience in order to get your foot in the door. I hope it helps.

Education

First and foremost. The best investment will be devoting time on education. Here are a couple of workshops, in my opinion mandatory, to get started:

1. Introduction To Bitcoin (estimated time for completion: 60min)
2. Choose Your Wallet (estimated time for completion: 60min)

Intro to Bitcoin & Choose Your Crypto Wallet

You may want to follow and watch the following videos from these gentlemen below in order to grasp different points of view with regards to the Bitcoin community and the monetary-network ‘per se’:

Andreas M. Antonopoulos: technology and socio-political impact

• “Introduction to Bitcoin: what is bitcoin and why does it matter?” (37min)
• “Everything You Need to Know About Bitcoin in 2021 | Andreas Antonopoulos” (73min)

About Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Computer Scientist, and to my mind, Crypto Economist, he was one of the professors at the first university course I took in 2017, from the University of Nicosia.

He is one the most important figures in the ecosystem from my perspective, his motivation is transcendental. He is the technologist who easily manages to explain how immensely complex this exciting field of “cryptocurrencies or crypto-assets & open blockchains” is. If you can, I also recommend this video from Andreas educating the Canadian Senate in 2014 (112min): it is worth every minute of the content.

Michael Saylor: investment & corporate/business perspectives

• “Michael Saylor: Bitcoin’s Volatility Is Vitality, Why Your Money Will Die With Gold” (30min)
• “Bitcoin Macro Strategy: Investment grade, safe-haven treasury reserve asset […]” (59min)

About Michael Saylor: Aerospace Engineer & CEO at IT / Tech Consulting firm. He is the one who starts the party for business participation in both the Bitcoin community and monetary-network by investing (or exchanging) a 1B$ worth of treasury from his company into bitcoin. He is an experienced independent investor as well, who has known and been able to invest in Apple and Amazon (to name 2 fat ones) at key moments.

I think he holds a key vision for it which I identify myself with: long term. [Although for the short and medium term ‘viewers’, there is also a trading business potential, but that is another beast not covered on this paper.] He should be credited for being a pioneer in kicking off Bitcoin’s ‘corporate wave’ as well as Stripe, Paypal, and recently, for convincing other Tech Giants CEOs, such as Elon Musk, to diversify their balance sheet using bitcoin as an asset.

Congratulations on starting your education!

By now you’d have invested more than 400 MINUTES educating yourself on this endeavor. Congratulations! This was a crucial step. Feel free to dive deeper. Here’s how I dove back in 2017. I personally wanted to further understand both the technology and the economics. I recommend the following reading material. Don’t worry, both suggestions are updated to this day and age.

Further knowledge

• Mastering Bitcoin [A must read if you’re technical. I read it on its digital format to make annotations and follow and test examples online easier. Even if you don’t consider yourself techie it is worth taking a stab at it.]
• The Internet of Money [General audience. I remember getting the physical format of its Volume 2 as soon as it was out. I devoured it on the plane from France to Canada. An eye opening series.]

Next Steps

In this article we’ve introduced the minimum viable content to get started in the fascinating journey towards joining the Bitcoin Network and Community. What happens from here? It is time to start testing the waters, get an understanding as to how to manage your funds and if you are serious about it, perhaps you’ll find some of the experience I share as a bitcoin user useful for your particular case. See you in the next chapters!

• Chapter2: Testing The Waters & Managing Funds
• Chapter3: Serious Investment & A Personal View

Let’s meet on Twitter! @lecharleslozano. I’ll answer DMs faster than emails.

Thank You!