Bitcoin & Money

Bitcoin in Practice

Holding it yourself: seeds, addresses, wallets, and keeping your coins safe.

  1. 1 Getting your first bitcoin Interactive Buy or earn, KYC vs no-KYC, DCA, and the golden rule: withdraw to your own custody.
  2. 2 Scams & red flags Doublers, seed-phrase phishing, fake support, pig-butchering — name the trick and it stops working.
  3. 3 Seed phrases Twelve words that are your entire wallet — guard them with your life.
  4. 4 Addresses Interactive What you share to get paid — and why to use a fresh one each time.
  5. 5 Wallet types Hot, cold, hardware and paper — the pocket and the vault.
  6. 6 Multisig Interactive Require several keys at once, so no single mishap is fatal.
  7. 7 Programmable money Interactive Coins that carry their own spending rules — timelocks, escrow, Lightning.
  8. 8 Run your own Bitcoin node Verify, don’t trust — install Bitcoin Core, with an annotated bitcoin.conf.
  9. 9 The Lightning Network Interactive Payment channels, routing and HTLCs — how Bitcoin scales to instant, near-free payments.
  10. 10 Using Lightning Custodial vs self-custodial, invoices vs Lightning addresses, liquidity, and what it’s for.
  11. 11 Run a Lightning node (Core Lightning) Instant payments on layer 2 — install Core Lightning, with an annotated config.
  12. 12 Privacy & fungibility The chain is public forever — address reuse, the KYC link, CoinJoin, and why fungibility matters.
  13. 13 Inheritance & estate planning What happens to your coins when you die — multisig, letters of instruction, and testing it.
  14. 14 Taxes & record-keeping Property not currency, cost basis, the DCA record trap — general principles (not tax advice).
  15. 15 Digital hygiene & security The human habits that keep self-custody safe — including the “$5 wrench attack”.