Welcome to Crypto Strategy Office – the home for those wanting to start saving in bitcoin, creating yield with stablecoins, and developing crypto investment strategies.
Getting started in crypto isn’t hard, committing to a long term strategy is. Before we get into that, ask yourself; Do you trust banks or yourself? If you trust banks more, invest up to 10% of your portfolio into a bitcoin ETF. For those of you that believe in yourself, keep reading. Following the simple steps below will help you understand how to use a crypto wallet, get started with bitcoin, and include decentralized finance in your investment strategies.
What Is A Crypto Wallet?
A crypto wallet is how you self custody crypto. This is how you take control of your crypto by holding it yourself not leaving your bitcoin in someone else’s hands. This means you hold the keys to your personal finance. This also means, you are the biggest risk factor.
Before we get into risk factors, we need to get into security. Lets start with a hardware wallet. A cold wallet for you to keep your bitcoin secure and offline. The most popular hardware wallets are Ledger and Trezor. Both are highly recommended.
These wallets allow you to keep your bitcoin safe with 12 or 24 words as your seed phrase (aka your private keys). Highly recommended to write the words down and put them in a safe. To be extra secure, engrave the words into some metal and put them in a safe.
Now back to you being the biggest risk factor to your bitcoin. If someone came to your house and said give me the keys to your safe. Would you give them the keys? No right. If someone ask for complete access to your bank account would you give it to them? No right. If someone ask you to give them the seed phrase to your bitcoin would you give it to them? No right.
Common sense says the answer is no to all 3 of those questions. However, in the real world. People have given away access to their bank accounts. People have given away their seed phrase to their bitcoin. Because its never a simple, can I have access. Scammers will try to trick you into giving them access. This is why I asked earlier, do you trust the banks or yourself?
If you trust the banks, buy a bitcoin ETF. If you trust yourself. Let’s keep going down this rabbit hole and move onto hot wallets.
A hot wallet can be downloaded onto your phone or browser and you can transact quick in crypto. Recommended for small transactions to get use to using crypto or if you’re actively trading. Otherwise, keep your crypto in your cold wallet. Either way, when you make your wallet, remember to write down your seed phrase. The most important thing to remember about having crypto in your hot wallet. If someone gets access to your phone or pc where you have your hot wallet installed. They have access to your hot wallet but not your cold wallet.
Personally, I only use a hardware wallet connected to the browser wallet to transact in defi. I highly recommend downloading Rabby if you plan on doing anything in decentralized finance.
How To Get Started With Bitcoin
The best way to start with bitcoin is treat bitcoin as a savings account. Not your emergency fund but your true savings. However, the average person first getting started with bitcoin isn’t comfortable to do that. So I have written 2 ways to slowly get into bitcoin without making major changes in your life.
Cashback Card That Pays In Bitcoin
The easiest way to get started is switching your daily use debit or credit card to a card that gives you cashback in bitcoin. This way you begin saving in bitcoin without thinking about it or making any real changes in your everyday life. If you don’t have a bitcoin cashback card, sign up for coinbase to get started.
Dollar Cost Average Into Bitcoin
The second easiest way to get started adding bitcoin to your personal finances is making bitcoin a part of your saving or investment strategy. The proven method is dollar cost averaging into bitcoin. The strategy is simple and easy to follow. Decide the amount of money to invest into bitcoin each month, the same time every month. The price of bitcoin doesn’t matter when you have a set plan.
For example, Bob decides he’s going to invest $100 into bitcoin every month on the 1st. After 4 years, the value of his bitcoin holdings will be more than the $4,800 he put into bitcoin. Giving year over year returns above the stock market after those 4 years.
How To Get Started In DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
Easy step to take to get into defi is signup for a Coinbase account, buy $1 worth of Ethereum (ETH), withdraw the ETH and some USDC (the USD stablecoin by Circle) onto Base (its a layer 2 for ethereum) to your wallet address, and deposit the USDC into Aave. Now you understand the steps it take to go from having dollars in your coinbase account to having dollars onchain earning yield for you.
Why do this and on base? These are simple steps anyone can follow while keeping the cost to around $0.01 to $0.10 depending on how active the network is. Doing this helps you get over the feeling of being overwhelmed and let’s you know “Hey I can do this” to something new to you.
DeFi Strategies For Beginners
I have written the basic strategies for beginners. Check out each asset page for the defi strategies; Bitcoin, Ethereum, Gold, Stablecoins.