- What's going on you guys? Welcome back to the channel. So in this video today,
we're gonna be covering The Ultimate Guide on
Bitcoin for Beginners. I'm gonna teach you everything
you've probably ever wanted to know about Bitcoin, as
well as the different ways you can purchase it, how
you can earn interest on your cryptocurrency,
and also if you're looking to store it offline in cold storage, I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that. We'll be showing you, basically a beginner
presentation on Bitcoin. And then I'm gonna show
you step-by-step tutorials on how to purchase Bitcoin,
how to earn interest on it, and then how to store it in
offline, a cold hardware wallet. So a lot to unpack here guys,
I would recommend grabbing a pad of paper and a pen,
eliminate those distractions around you if possible. But that being said guys, let's jump right into the presentation. Alrighty guys so let's jump right into the presentation here and talk about Bitcoin for Beginners. We're gonna be covering The Ultimate Guide on Buying
and Storing Bitcoin Safely. Now, the first thing I
want to talk about here is more towards my older
audience who have been watching my videos for many, many
years because pretty famously back in 2017, I made a video talking about why I would never put a
single penny into Bitcoin back when it was $3,000 per coin. And I can tell you now guys
that I have 1,000% changed my stance and opinion on
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And I basically went from saying, Hey, this is an asset I would
never consider touching. Fast forward to 2021, and just recently, I actually sold off the majority
of my Bitcoin investment and used it to purchase
a second home in Florida. So I went from basically
rejecting this to making so much money from it that I
was able to buy a house so I can share maybe
more details with that in another video with you guys. But I have a lot of cryptocurrency, I've traded hundreds of 1000s
of dollars of it in the last couple of years and I've
made a lot of money from it. And I've also lost some money
on other cryptocurrencies. And basically I'm gonna share all of that in this video here with you guys. My firsthand experience
and everything I've learned in the cryptocurrency space
over the last four years. Now real quick guys, I
do have a few disclaimers to make here, I am not
a financial advisor. And this is not any kind
of financial advice. And you should always do your
own due diligence and research above and beyond this video. And this video here is for
entertainment purposes only. Also, I am going to be
including links down below which are affiliate links. So if you decide to use
them, I may earn a commission in the process at no
additional cost to you. And lastly, this video
is sponsored by BlockFi. Now the very first thing
I want to address here is the number of scam
comments that are very likely to show up on this video. Unfortunately, there are
so many people out there looking to scam others in
the cryptocurrency space. So there will be scammers in
the comment section below. I pay somebody who basically
deletes them every single day, but it's impossible to keep
up with them at this point. So what I'm gonna tell you guys to do, look for the gray outline
around my name as well as that white checkmark and the
number of subscribers I have. That's how you verify it's
actually me commenting, nine times out of 10 it's
going to be a scammer. I will never ever give
you my phone number, a WhatsApp number, Telegram, any of that, if you're seeing any comments
like that it is 100% a scam. And I encourage you to report
those or just comment scam that way other people
know that this is a scam so they don't end up losing money. And I'm gonna do my best
to delete those comments on my end, as quickly as possible. So starting off from the
complete beginning here, what exactly is Bitcoin? Well, Bitcoin is a digital
currency that was created in 2009 and it follows the
ideas of Satoshi Nakamoto. This is the first
decentralized digital currency. And essentially what this means
is that there's no governing body controlling Bitcoin,
because up until this point, all of the currencies in
the world other than things like gold, which isn't really a currency, that's more of a store of
value, are based on a underlying government and this is
referred to as a fiat currency. Bitcoin is a faster and
cheaper way to move money more freely, and all
transactions live forever on the blockchain, and we're
gonna unpack what exactly that means as we go. So first of all, what
exactly is the blockchain? So the blockchain is a public
ledger that everyone has access to. And everybody can see this. And this shows all Bitcoin
transactions in entirety. And this can be viewed by
simply going to blockchain.com. Essentially, with the
blockchain technology, you have these miners that are essentially loaning their computing
the power in order to verify transactions and ensure
that all records match up. So the blockchain is basically
the most perfect record keeping system that we
have ever really had. And in exchange for loaning
out that computing power, these miners are rewarded with Bitcoin. However, one of the major criticisms surrounding Bitcoin
right now, and the reason for the recent sell off is
related to the amount of energy involved with crypto mining and
specifically Bitcoin mining. So recently, Tesla said, "Hey, you know, "we're not going to allow people
to purchase Tesla's anymore "with Bitcoin for that reason." And so that triggered the recent sell off that we've been seeing here with Bitcoin. So getting into a bit more
detail here, looking more into the blockchain, let's talk about blocks. So each block contains a
list of Bitcoin transaction, and then each block references
back to the previous block. Essentially, this presents the blockchain from being tampered and it's
impossible to counterfeit the Bitcoin cryptocurrency
or do any type of fraudulent transactions, since it is
a publicly viewable ledger. So what exactly is the purpose of Bitcoin? Well, this is something
that is widely argued, even to this day, some people
say this is purposeless, and it really should not
have any value at all. Some people say this is digital
gold, and it will one day have a similar market
cap to the value of gold. And there's a lot of people
that think the purpose falls somewhere in between. But let's cover some of
the common ideas around the purpose of blockchain
as well as Bitcoin. Well, Bitcoin, the whole
purpose behind this is to democratize the financial system and create a currency run by the people. Especially right now, with
the record amount of money printing going on with world economies in response to this global pandemic. A lot of people are
concerned with inflation and devaluing of fiat currencies. So they favor one that is universally
acceptable and transactable. And especially with Bitcoin,
one of the things we're gonna talk about is the controlled supply, and the fact that there's
only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoins period,
not to mention, many of them have been lost forever
due to the miss handling. That is why it is so
important to do your research and watch videos like this
to understand how to be safe with any type of cryptocurrency
investment that you have. So beyond that others look at
Bitcoin as a store of value that hedges against
inflation, and that is due to that fixed supply, seeing as
we can't make more Bitcoin, whereas with fiat currencies,
the government's can make as much of that as they want. And in the future, could it be
a currency to purchase goods? We're clearly not there yet
with the ongoing volatility, but that is a use case or
purpose that some people argue, however, in my opinion,
I don't think Bitcoin will ever really be used in that manner, I think it's going to be
more of a store of value, similar to the way that
we don't go out there and use gold for purchasing. So that being said, How
exactly does Bitcoin work? Well, it's a fully digital
currency that anyone in the world can use, assuming you're
not in a country where, Bitcoin exchanges have been blocked. Miners verify transactions and in return, they earn Bitcoin as a reward
for mining that Bitcoin. However, that amount that
they earn as a reward deteriorates or diminishes
by 50%, basically, every four years, and we
just had a blockchain reward halving back in May,
which even constricted the new supply of Bitcoin
to the market even more. So these blockchains keep
records of transactions and ownership, and it
is a trustless system, which is also a decentralized system with no single point of attack or failure. It's a system that nobody could,
target one specific server and take the entire thing down. And this protects against
fraud as well as attacks on the system and all
kinds of things like that. Investors in Bitcoin
primarily buy and HODL which stands for hold on for dear life. Because of the volatility
that Bitcoin experiences and the only way right
now to get paid in Bitcoin by owning the currency itself
is by having a go up in value. However, there are ways you can actually loan out your Bitcoin
to earn interest on it. And we'll be discussing that later on. But in and of itself, Bitcoin
does not pay dividends or anything like that. So owners of the cryptocurrency
are purchasing it because they believe it's
going to have a higher value at some point in the future. So why exactly is Bitcoin
valuable in the first place? Well, currencies are valuable because we can use them for purchasing. Currencies have scarcity,
divisibility, utility, transportability, durability
and counterfeitability. So those are a lot of the components of our typical fiat currencies. The US dollar has value because it is deemed a legal
tender and so basically, because the US government says this is what we will use for purchasing. That is why it has value. Bitcoin is not legal tender,
but it still has value because it can be used
as a unit of exchange, and it certainly can be
used as a store of value. Now if you look at the
different things we have used over the year, as currencies, we go all the way back to gold. And I like this chart
here from Investopedia that looks at the different
traits of the money. So going all the way back to gold, it has a high fungibility,
it is non consumable, moderate portability, it is large, probably not the easiest
thing to move around. It is highly durable, it is
moderately divisible, because you would actually have to
physically separate it out. It is moderately secure,
because it is difficult to counterfeit gold and
you can prove that it is a counterfeit based on
testing the gold itself. Ease of transactability very
low, it's difficult to buy and sell gold because it's a
physical currency or commodity. Moving on there, the scarcity is moderate, as far as the sovereignty is low, decentralized low and smart, low. It's a lump of metal, it's not very smart. Moving on to fiat currencies,
there were definitely some improvements in
transactability for example, also the sovereignty
being government issues. That was a basically a
greater degree of trust factor that people had in that currency based on it being government issued. When you look at cryptocurrency
and Bitcoin specifically, other than not being government issued, which a lot of people view as a positive, it knocks everything else
out and out of the park. Highly divisible, easily transactable, it is a scarce predictable,
controlled supply, decentralized, smart and programmable. And so that is why a lot of people think, cryptocurrency really makes
sense for this digital era. So now let's compare Bitcoin
to other currencies out there and other things people invest in. So starting off, let's look
at Bitcoin versus money. So Bitcoin physically
does not get worn out because it is a non physical currency, it does not physically exist. It is infinitely divisible, so
you don't have to worry about 20s, 10s, fives, ones and different denominations of currency. Bitcoin 100% cannot be counterfeited based on the public blockchain. And Bitcoin has no centralized authority, because it is not a fiat currency. Money, on the other hand, has no inherent scarcity whatsoever, and they can just keep on printing, much like we've been seeing here with the multiple stimulus
packages in the United States. Not to mention money can be
mismanaged and manipulated, it can also be destroyed or damaged. And there's no scarcity whatsoever, just again, bringing that point up again, that is the main concern
people have with money. And we have seen
hyperinflation in the past, based on governments printing
unbelievable supply of money, that ends up being a problem because then, there's too much money out
there becomes almost valueless. And you have to bring a
wheelbarrow full of money to buy yourself a loaf of bread. So specifically talking
about the scarcity. This is why Bitcoin is what we call a hedge against inflation, potentially. With the volatility that we have seen, it's definitely not quite
a store of value yet, but it will be interesting
to see how this keeps pace with inflation going forward. So taking a look at this chart right here, this shows you the total amount of Bitcoin that will ever exist,
and the last Bitcoins are going to be mined
all the way over here. I believe it's past the year 2100. This is where we are right here. We just had another reward
halving, we're gonna have them basically every four years and
so the new supply of Bitcoin hitting the market is
going to be reduced by 50%. essentially every four years. Only 21 million will ever exist, a lot of them are already out and many of them have been lost forever. So that is why the Bitcoin
scarcity is quite interesting. And we certainly do not have
this with fiat currencies. Now looking at Bitcoin versus gold, let's talk about the
similarities and differences because a lot of people call
Bitcoin, the digital gold, viewing it as a store of value. So Bitcoin is very easy to move because it is a non-physical. It is infinitely divisible so
you can send as little of it as you want, or as much of it as you want, without physically dividing
up a piece of metal, it's inexpensive to store and
in, I would argue it can be more secure with proper cold storage than having gold locked up. It is also practical to transact with, some would argue against
that based on fees, but more practical than gold. Gold, on the other hand,
is not practical to move or transact with, it's difficult to divide
into smaller parts. And much of it is controlled by governments in the Federal Reserve. So that is some of the
differences there between Bitcoin and gold, as well
as those similarities. Also, clearly with gold, we
can't make any more of it. There's a controlled supply on this earth. And so that controlled supply
is also what makes this similar to Bitcoin. So now let's consider
Bitcoin versus stocks. Well, first of all, Bitcoin
has greater potential for larger price swings,
and we have found it to be way more volatile than the stock market. However, one of the pros of Bitcoin is global accessibility to purchase. And it's essentially a global market that anybody can
participate in, as long as their country has exchanges available. Also, markets are open 24/7,
which is really interesting and pretty exciting on the weekends, if you wanna keep an eye on crypto prices, or trade or whatever. And Bitcoin has potential
to be used as a currency. On the other hand, with stocks, they're easier to value
with various metrics, they also have a much longer
history of being something that you put your money into,
that tends to make your money, we're talking hundreds of years versus about 10 years here with Bitcoin. That's the longer track record, giving it more predictability
and support levels. Also the ability to diversify risk across a number of different companies. You don't have that with
Bitcoin, but if you do get into the world of Altcoins, and you do your own due diligence, I do own other cryptocurrencies
outside of Bitcoin and you may choose to do the same. So that being said, the
obvious question here, is Bitcoin a good investment? And, guys, this is a question you're gonna have to answer for yourself. I'm gonna teach you a
lot more about Bitcoin and why it has gotten to the
point where we are today. And then later on in this
video for educational purposes, I'm gonna show you how you
would physically go through the process of buying,
transferring it to earn interest or into cold safe storage. But it's ultimately up to
you if this is something that you want to get behind,
and that you see value in. I'll tell you this right
now, if you're simply buying Bitcoin, because
you think you can make a ton of money with it and
you don't really care about the underlying technology or any of this, it's probably not something
that you should invest in because you're gonna end
up having paper hands. And as soon as that volatility hits, you're probably gonna lose a lot of money. However, one benefit to
locking up your crypto in cold storage is it's
not that easy to access. So that can help to eliminate some of that desire for panic selling. So basically, many people
wonder if it is too late to invest in Bitcoin, and
basically time will tell whether Bitcoin holds the crypto throne. Right now it is the most
valuable cryptocurrency. However, many other cryptocurrencies
have had much better performance in 2021 compared with Bitcoin. Basically putting your entire
life savings into Bitcoin, definitely not a good idea. Depending on your risk
tolerance, it might make sense to allocate a portion of your
Portfolio to cryptocurrency. Most experts are saying
anywhere from 0.5% to 2%. I personally have
cryptocurrency representing 3% of my total portfolio right now. So as far as owning Bitcoin itself, as I had mentioned earlier,
the only real way to make money with the currency is by
buying low and selling high, also referred to as asset appreciation. So let's say for example, you
bought Bitcoin at $30,000. And then a week later
you sold it for $40,000. And you had let's say, $200 worth. Well, you basically made
money by purchasing at $30,000 and selling for a higher price at $40,000 because while you owned it,
the demand for the coin went up and people were willing
to pay a higher price. So far crypto has outpaced
the stock market in 2021. However, we're seeing a lot
of volatility right now. So it's gonna be interesting
to see how things shake up for the rest of 2021. However, I also mentioned
there are ways to earn interest by loaning out your Bitcoin. I do this through BlockFi,
and I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that
later on in the video. Beyond that, if you wanna
participate in the actual blockchain, you could mine
Bitcoin from your computer. However, there is currently
a massive shortage on graphics cards, and PC gamers are furious
with Bitcoin miners. So just be careful with that one. Bitcoin miners are involved with verifying Bitcoin transactions
for a blockchain reward. This requires very powerful computers with numerous graphics cards,
most of those mining rigs are gonna cost many 1000s of dollars, it's still powerful to mine Altcoins from your computer as well. So some people are
actually mining Altcoins, which is most likely a
more profitable venture than trying to mined Bitcoin just because that's what most people
are focused on doing. So let's talk more about BlockFi now, and the BlockFi Interest Account. And this is where all of my
cryptocurrency currently lives. So I reached out to BlockFi after I had been a user of their platform. And I asked them if they
wanted to sponsor this video. And they said, "Yes," so
that was super exciting guys, thank you to BlockFi. I'm a huge fan of their platform. And like I said, I have all of my money that is in cryptocurrency over on BlockFi, except for a couple of Altcoins that are not yet supported over there. So basically, with BlockFi,
you can deposit your Bitcoin and a couple of other
supported cryptocurrencies and receive interest
on that cryptocurrency similar to a savings account for Bitcoin. The interest rates are
currently 6% for Bitcoin, which is significantly higher than what you would
earn at a bank account. However, there are a
few caveats to discuss, you can benefit from the
appreciation, owning the currency, if you believe it's
going to go up in value from where you purchased, and earn interest payments on top of that, which actually go back
into the issued currency. So it's a cool way to earn
like compound interest on cryptocurrency. other cryptos pay all the way up to 8.6%. Depending on them, however, that rate is subject
to change at any time. That being said guys, BlockFi has no type of
government insurance. Since cryptocurrency is not recognized as like a federal asset, there's no insurance in place on it. So that is, the risk that you
run here is that when you are giving out your cryptocurrency
to a company like BlockFi, they've never lost anyone's money to date, they're a massive company
backed by multi-billion errs, who have invested in this company. So they're very legit, I
have all my money over there. But it is something that
you should be aware of is, even though those rates are
much higher part of that reason is because by getting those
much more attractive rates, you're giving up that
safety net of FDIC insurance by having your money in your bank account, and that's a toss off or trade
off, you're gonna have to figure out yourself of which
one is more valuable to you. Like I said, I personally
have 3% of my Portfolio in cryptocurrency, and almost all of it is
in my BlockFi account. That way I can earn interest, I don't have my life savings
in there, and most experts would probably recommend you
follow a similar strategy. So I wanna talk more about
how powerful this all is. And I always like to look forward out into the future and make some predictions. So here is the future of finance based on where we are heading
with cryptocurrencies. So instead of using traditional banks, many have switched to crypto
based financial services, often referred to as DeFi
or decentralized finance. The perks are more freedom
and less headaches involved. BlockFi also has a borrowing
arm where you can borrow cash using your crypto as collateral
without a credit check. And I actually have done this myself, I borrowed $10,000 against
my Ethereum balance, just to test it out, but
also because I have to put some money into some repairs
on my property at my new house. So I figured I would take
advantage of that lower interest borrowing and test out BlockFi Borrow. So this service obviously
appeals to the 31% of unbanked adults across the
world, or people who may have a lot of cryptocurrency
but they don't necessarily have good credit so they don't
have any access to borrowing. BlockFi gives people in that situation, the ability to potentially
borrow through their platform by putting up their crypto as collateral. And so honestly guys
this ability to borrow against cryptocurrency,
I think it's just the tip of the iceberg and it's only
gonna continue from here, and we're gonna begin
seeing mass adoption of more financial services in the crypto
space related to mortgages, insurance, credit cards,
alternative investments, and more. And I'm honestly super excited for it. I'm really excited about BlockFi as well. And I plan on taking full
advantage of that borrow feature, which could be an absolute game changer if you know how to smartly
use borrowed money. Now, if we look back at the
history of Bitcoin guys, it's been a pretty wild ride. So I started talking
about it on my channel, way back here in 2017, back
when it was $3,000 per coin, and I was out there saying,
hey, this thing is a joke, I'm never gonna buy it. Obviously changed my opinion,
didn't really buy any during the first run up whatsoever. I earned some referral cryptocurrency from some of my videos,
but not much to speak of. I began buying Bitcoin around
anywhere from five to $10,000. That's when I started
dollar cost averaging. But I've been buying at
different points all throughout 2018, 2019 and 2020. I did some lump sum investing
around the pandemic, when we had that sort of
flash crash right here. And that is how I acquired my crypto. But obviously, compared
to the 2018 run up, we're seeing a much bigger
move in crypto this time, and hopefully one that is
sustainable for the long-term. Now I'd like to cover a very
brief history of Bitcoin here because it's interesting to
note where we started from. So the idea for Bitcoin was first outlined in an eight page paper by
Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Nobody knows who this person actually is, and he's never come
forward or been identified. The first block ever was
mined on January 3rd of 2009. And the first recorded use
of Bitcoin was May 22 2010, someone used 10,000 Bitcoin
to buy two pizzas worth $25. the crazy part is, that
would be worth around $500 million now, if that
person had held on to that Bitcoin, for the
better part of 11 years. So then in 2011, Bitcoin got a
bad name through a connection with the black market site
called "The Silk Road." Bitcoin was the currency
for purchasing illegal goods due to the anonymity of the currency. This negative connotation still
lives on throughout today. And a lot of people are still
using that to try to say, "Hey, this is not a valuable currency, "it's a criminal currency,
and you shouldn't buy it." So in 2017, the price of
Bitcoin went from around $900 to nearly $20,000, before
there was a massive crash. And today, it's believed
strongly that that was mostly due to big players manipulating
the price of Bitcoin to profit from those moves. By the end of 2018, the price for Bitcoin
was back down to $3,000. And since then, it has peaked
at over $64,000 per Bitcoin. So talk about some wild price swings and volatility over the years. So looking at the future of Bitcoin here, companies like Tesla are
accepting Bitcoin payments. However, Tesla then came back and said, "No, we're not doing that anymore." In my opinion, I think that
that has something to do with how that news would impact
the price of Bitcoin, and potentially being able to get in at a lower price to buy back in. That's merely speculation,
but a lot of people have thrown that out there. It's unlikely that the
price will stabilize enough in the near future to make
transactions practical, because it just wouldn't
make sense to keep your money in Bitcoin with the amount
of volatility that it has, 'cause you just wouldn't want
to have that for purchasing. And you wouldn't want to be
accepting Bitcoin for goods because you'll be impossible to set prices based on the fluctuation of
the value of the currency. Just recently, it's gone down
to like $30,000 per coin, all the way down from $64,000. So you can't set prices when the value could drop 50% in no time at all. Now as a store of value many
people are comparing it to gold and saying it could reach
the heights of gold. Right now Bitcoin's, roughly
$1 trillion market cap is around 10% of the
total market cap of gold, and so the price of Bitcoin
would need to reach over 400,000 in order to match the market cap of gold. Is that possible? Time will
tell but some Bitcoin diehards predict this by 2030. For example, this individual here tweeted, "Bitcoin's market cap will surpass Gold's market cap by December 31 2029." That is certainly a bold prediction and hopefully that is the case. Now looking at Bitcoin
versus other cryptocurrencies out there, there are over
10,000 different cryptos on the market today. Now half of the entire crypto
market is made up of Bitcoin in terms of the market value, just showing how dominant
Bitcoin is in this space. That would be like if in the stock market, one particular stock made
up half of the entire world or global stock market,
which is just not the case. Other cryptocurrencies
like Ethereum and Litecoin, for example, have different
purposes, instead of just being a store of value, they
actually have utility value. Bitcoin has always dominated the space, but there are some strong rivals emerging, and this could change in the future. Now, when it comes down to
actually buying Bitcoin, it's not like anything else
you have likely done before. It's not like buying a stock. It's not like buying groceries. It's a very complicated process. And it's very important
that you understand how the whole concept works, because there's no customer
service number for Bitcoin. So if you lose your Bitcoin,
if you lose your password, you are screwed. There's no way to
retrieve this information. So pay attention guys, and make sure you understand everything. So with Bitcoin, you
need a Bitcoin address and a Bitcoin wallet to
actually purchase Bitcoin. And this is similar to an
email address and a password for anything that you do online. These are long strings of
encrypted letters and numbers. A Bitcoin address is
also called a public key, a.k.a email address, whereas a
Bitcoin wallet is also called a private key, more like your password. So you can share your Bitcoin
address with other people, just like you would
share your email address, but you don't share your Bitcoin wallet or private key with other people, because that is your password. So if you want to receive
payments from friends or other people, you would
share your Bitcoin address, a.k.a email address,
which is that long string of letters and numbers, which
is where you would receive that cryptocurrency. Bitcoin uses cryptography
to maintain a secure system. So basically, someone sends
Bitcoin to your public address, it goes through this entire
cryptography process, and then you need your private
key to receive the Bitcoin, maintaining that anonymity. So let's talk more now about
that all important public key. So this is the address your
Bitcoin will be sent to. And as mentioned earlier, just
like with your email address, anyone can know your public
key without risk to you. When you send a Bitcoin,
miners will verify that your address holds enough
Bitcoin for the transaction to go through and then signing
up for a crypto exchange will generate both a public
and private key for you to use. If you lose your public key,
you can use your private key to recover your public key. So basically, in layman's terms, if you lost your email address,
you could use your password to recover that email address. However, the process 1,000% does not work in the reverse direction. If you lose your private
key, you cannot use anything to recover that because
there is no backup. That is the importance of
basically saving your password. And we're gonna talk about
really good solutions later on, including titanium wallets
and hardware wallets, different things like that, that I have utilized to
maintain my private key. So when you own Bitcoin,
what you really own in your possession is a private key. And this unlocks the right for you to spend or transact
or move those Bitcoin. This is essentially
your digital signature, verifying your identity. You should never under any circumstances give anyone your private
key, just the same as you would never give
anyone your password. This would allow someone to instantly drain the entire wallet
of anything in there in a matter of seconds and
it would be irreversible. Private keys should be stored
offline in a secure location. Not to mention, a lot of
people store these on paper. So if you ever had any fire damage, you would lose your private key. That is where the titanium
wallet comes into play. This system ensures that
it is virtually impossible to forge a Bitcoin transaction and this is the only
way to make this happen. Now, as mentioned, when you sign up for a cryptocurrency exchange,
they're gonna generate both of these keys for you. However, which exchange
should you utilize? Well, I'm gonna just tell you
exactly the process I follow. And the later on in the video,
we're gonna do a step-by-step tutorial on how to set it all up, how to purchase some Bitcoin,
and then how to move it over to cold storage, as well
as figuring out how to and then also how to move
it over to cold storage, in addition to moving it over to BlockFi to actually earn interest. So once you have your
public and private keys, you can buy and sell
Bitcoin on an exchange. Buyers and sellers exchange, USD, Bitcoin, and many other cryptos, and
one of the things I like about BlockFi is you can swap
assets right within the app. So if you had Bitcoin,
and you wanted to swap it for Chainlink, for example,
you can just do a swap in the app rather than
selling the Bitcoin into cash and then buying the new asset with cash. Now, that being said, not all
exchanges are created equally, and you should do your due diligence before deciding on an exchange. That being said, the two
most popular ones out there are Coinbase and Gemini. I personally use Coinbase
for my purchasing, and then I use BlockFi to earn interest or to do swaps on my cryptos. However, I've also heard a lot
of good things about Gemini, so you may want to do additional
research on them as well. However, as we proceed here,
we're gonna be using Coinbase and BlockFi as our examples
because that's what I use. That's what I'm familiar with. And we're gonna be using
the Ledger hardware wallet when I show you how to
complete cold storage. So when you're actually
choosing your cryptocurrency exchange, here are the
main factors to consider. Number one, above all else, safety. There have been crypto
exchange breaches and hacks in the past, and people have
lost millions of dollars. With Coinbase and Gemini,
these are massive companies, people have not lost
cryptocurrency with them to date. So hopefully that is not the case here. And a lot of the crypto on these exchanges is held in cold storage. That being said, if safety
is your absolute priority, then you just put it in a hardware wallet that you have control
over and you're 100% safe if you keep all of that
information private. So as far as safety goes, all exchanges have the
potential to be hacked. However, learn about what
safety protocols are in place to prevent this from happening, then look into customer service. Is it easy to get a hold of this group in the case of an emergency? After that, consider the cost. What are the fees you're gonna
be paying for your trades? And look at the overall
interface, is it easy to get up and running and actually
utilize the platform? So Coinbase is the most well-known crypto exchange in the United States. The withdrawal fees are higher than many other platforms out there. However, if you're doing
a lot of transactions, you may decide to pay for a
service called Coinbase Pro, which may actually be less expensive. Currently, they support
51 different cryptos on the platform. And Coinbase was one of the first movers in the crypto exchange
space, but it does lack some of those newer features. Gemini is a safety focused crypto exchange based in the United States,
they have yet to experience a significant hack ever to date. They have a similar interface
and ease of use to Coinbase. And they also allow you to make
purchases using Gemini Pay. Less cryptos are supported,
only 33 on that platform and their fee structure is
very similar to Coinbase. BlockFi is not a crypto exchange. However, you can buy
crypto on the platform, but that's not really
the intended use case. And there's not a wide
variety of cryptos supported. The primary offering
is an interest account for your cryptocurrency giving
you two means of making money you can earn from asset appreciation, hopefully your cryptos go up
in value while you own them. But you can also earn interest on them. If you're comfortable
with that cryptocurrency being loaned out to
institutional crypto investors, allowing you to earn interest. And that is up to you
whether or not you wanna have your crypto safely in a
hardware wallet offline, or if you're comfortable working
with a company like BlockFi for that additional kick in
earning interest on your crypto. So you can buy your
crypto right on BlockFi and then deposit it for interest but I personally purchased
my crypto on Coinbase because I like buying other Altcoins that are not supported on BlockFi. And then I simply send
any cryptocurrencies that are supported on BlockFi over to the interest bearing account, that way I can earn interest
and then, potentially, borrow against those
cryptocurrencies if needed. Now, there are a few other ways that you can purchase
Bitcoin, but some of these are probably not very much recommended. You can buy Bitcoin directly
from local investors. So let's say for example,
your buddy owned some Bitcoin and you gave him cash, and
he sent it over to you. I've actually done that in the past with purchasing some Ethereum
from a friend of mine. So that is possible. And that's what's kind of cool
about cryptocurrency is that transactability in the fact
that you could literally just sell it to your friend
if they gave you cash, and then you sent that over to them. There's also LocalCryptos,
and LocalCoinSwap, which are two of the largest
peer-to-peer exchanges that you can choose dozens
of different payment methods, and you have full
control over your Bitcoin with no middleman whatsoever. So you may have the ability
to execute at better prices. You're also able to use escrow to ensure the transaction is legit. It's generally slower, however, and less efficient than
just buying online. So my thoughts on this, most
investors will be better off just sticking to a large
exchange like Coinbase or Gemini, you can also purchase on BlockFi, you may end up paying a
little bit more in fees, and it may not be the
best pricing possible based on the spread but
I think that's a cost that is worth it for the
convenience personally. However, if you wanna execute
at the best possible prices and cut that middleman out,
you may want to delve further into these peer-to-peer exchanges. And then we have like the worst
possible way to buy Bitcoin. I've done it for a TikTok video and that is utilizing a Bitcoin ATM. So investors are also
able to purchase Bitcoin from physical Bitcoin ATMs. And I'll actually have my
editor throw up a video of that TikTok right now, just so you
guys can see that process. Here's the current price of
Bitcoin I'm about to buy, then you just have to go ahead and scan your wallet down below. So I put $10 in after the 10% fee, I'll be getting $9 of
Bitcoin to my wallet. So this is one of the few ways to purchase Bitcoin with cash, the Bitcoin is deposited directly
into your existing wallet. However, typically
there are very high fees about 10% when using a Bitcoin
ATM, which is astronomical. Don't really use this unless it's your only possible
way of purchasing Bitcoin. The fees are ridiculous, and I don't even understand how
it's legal to charge someone that much in fees for purchasing. Now, that being said, there
are some crypto buying limitations that you
should be familiar with. Online exchanges frequently
have limits in place to protect themselves and their users. And some of the most
common are trading limits, purchase limits and withdrawal limits. Now a lot of that is based
on the level of verification that you have completed. For example, you can simply
open up an account on Coinbase without verifying your ID
and begin purchasing crypto. But if you decide you want to send it, then you have to verify with
photo ID and this is obviously for you know money laundering
reasons and just being able to track potential cost
basis and things like that if the IRS pulls records. And typically speaking, if
you verify more information, they're going to increase trading limits, purchase limits, withdrawal
limits, et cetera. BlockFi has a trading limit of
1.2 million per transaction, most of us will be
nowhere near that figure. Coinbase has a purchase
limit of $25,000 per day. However, that limit drops
to 750 per week when using a debit or credit card
but don't be a moron, do not buy Bitcoin or
cryptocurrency on a credit card. And as I mentioned earlier, the
more information you provide to the exchange, the
fewer limits you will have on your account and the
greatest amount of flexibility. So I always recommend as soon
as you open up the exchange, get everything verified that way you'll have
full use of the platform. Also there are some important
laws to be familiar with surrounding cryptocurrency transactions. First of all, all financial
institutions are required to follow a few important
customer protection laws. First one KYC, know your
customer, requires institutions to verify your identity
through multiple means. This is why you need to provide
your social security number and legal documents when signing up. Also, we have AML, the
anti-money laundering laws. This is a broader set
of regulations requiring that all suspicious activity
is documented and reported. Essentially, any financial
institution will need your personal information like your social and a photo of your ID if
you're gonna be buying or moving large amounts of any cryptocurrency, and you should 100% assume
that this is being reported to the IRS, you should
operate above the table and pay taxes on
cryptocurrency capital gains. And it's very important to
maintain records of cost basis and different things like that in a spreadsheet or similar document. Now as far as the methods
for actually purchasing cryptocurrency on an exchange, there's three primary options. Number one is the ACH transfer. Number two is credit/debit card. And number three is wire transfer. Each method has different pros and cons. Depending on the exchange you use, you may want to have more options. So I actually like linking
multiple payment options, just so you have other options available. The fees for each option will also depend based on the exchange and
some options will let you buy Bitcoin instantly, while
others can take multiple days for your funds to settle. For example, with Coinbase,
I use ACH transfers, and there's instant money
available up to a certain dollar amount when you deposit,
assuming you're verified, which means you're able
to invest your money before it clears, allowing
you to transact immediately. As mentioned earlier, you're
typically going to see the highest fees and
lowest purchase limits through credit/debit cards. And I've personally
never used wire transfer. So I pretty much exclusively
use ACH transfer. But I also have my debit
card linked as a backup. So with the credit and debit card, it's typically the most expensive
option in terms of fees. Also, buying crypto with a
credit card is never a good idea because returns are not
guaranteed and paying interest is, so simply put don't do it. The advantage is that it is
faster processing typically allows instantaneous purchasing
but with lower limits. So if you are in a pinch, you
could use this as an option. However I prefer ACH personally. The ACH transfer is by far
the most common way to buy. Many exchanges do not
charge any fees for ACH. However, it typically takes
longer for your funds to settle unless you use a exchange like
Coinbase, which essentially loans you the money on
a good faith agreement. Gemini may do the same
thing, but I am just not sure because I've never used that platform. Generally this is a safer
process than using a card because you can securely
link your bank account to the exchange, typically via Plaid. There are higher purchase limits than a debit and credit card. But for some even that 15 to
25k daily limit is too low. And I am envious of you guys because that is a lot of
money flooding into a crypto. But if you're one of those people, the next option may be for you. So if you're looking
to buy tons of Bitcoin, like more than $10,000 or $25,000 per day, you may look into a wire transfer. While there are fees, there
are usually no transfer limits, but the process is a bit
more involved for you. And it's going to take more time. 99.9% of people are not going
to be utilizing this service. So let's just go ahead and move on. So now that we covered the
basics of buying Bitcoin and how exchanges work,
so now let's talk about storing your Bitcoin. Well, after buying crypto,
you need to keep it safe because there is no federal
insurance for cryptocurrency. No FDIC, No SIPC. This means it is your responsibility to keep your Bitcoin safe. And we know that crypto exchanges have been hacked in the past. And if your crypto is lost, it is not recoverable
and it is gone forever. So you can't just call up your
bank to try to get a refund if you lose your Bitcoin or
if the exchange is hacked, or if you basically lose your private key. The more control you
have over your crypto, the safer, however, it is
going to be the lowest, yielding option because if
your Bitcoin is just sitting there in a hardware wallet,
you can't exactly loan it out and earn any interest on it. So basically the safest place possible for your cryptocurrency is
an offline hardware wallet. However, that is not the most
profitable place to store it. So let's talk more about the dangers of keeping cryptocurrencies
on an exchange. So most exchanges out
there hold your Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency in
something called a hot wallet. And keeping your crypto in
a hot wallet is very risky. This is because these wallets
are connected to the internet and your private key could be
exposed if there was a hack. Now BlockFi, Coinbase, Gemini, they're all very secure platforms. However, there's always some level of risk that a hack may occur, there
is no guarantee in the world. Other smaller exchanges
may not be as safe. So that is why you should be very careful when deciding what crypto
exchange you work with. And, again, consider if
you're not earning interest on crypto, it should most
likely just be sitting offline in cold storage. Now the only benefit to keeping
your crypto on an exchange is that it requires no
extra work to sell it and you also don't have
to buy a hardware wallet. However, there is the
risk that you could lose that cryptocurrency if there was a breach. In my opinion, there's no real
reason to worry about this until you have about $1,000
worth of cryptocurrency. At that point, it's
definitely time to consider setting up a hardware wallet. But that is just my two cents based on the cost of a hardware wallet. And so for example, when I
ended up selling my Bitcoin to put towards the purchase of my home, it was a bit of a
complicated process because I had that cryptocurrency
offline in cold storage. So I basically had to
send that cryptocurrency from my hardware wallet back
to the Coinbase exchange. And then on the Coinbase
exchange, I was able to sell that Bitcoin and put
it back into US dollar, then I took the US
dollar and moved it back to my U.S Bank Account. So it's a little bit longer of a process. If you keep your crypto on the
exchange, you don't have to transfer it back out of
your hardware wallet, but you are running that risk
of a potential breach or hack. Now with the hardware wallet,
this is generally the safest way to store your Bitcoin
or other cryptocurrency and it's often referred to
as well as a cold wallet or cold storage because it is
not connected to the internet and is less susceptible to
a hack, unless somebody can physically locate the device
or your recovery phrase. Crypto cannot be moved without physically having
the wallet and your passcode. However, if somebody finds your passcode, they can simply order a new wallet online and tie those two together. So the most important part is
not the actual wallet itself. It's the actual recovery
phrase or passcode. With this, the Bitcoin is
fully under your control, you have custody of it, you create a secret
phrase to recover if lost. And it is a random sequence of 20 words, you put it on a piece of paper,
what I recommend is cutting it up into pieces, giving
it to two different people. But I also set up my recovery phrase on a titanium hardware wallet
just in case there was a fire that would not burn, it could be recovered to find that cryptocurrency. I take this stuff very seriously guys, and I try to store my cryptocurrency
as safely as possible, assuming I'm not earning
interest on it over on BlockFi. Now as far as the hardware wallet goes, it's not very expensive, it's around $59, there's gonna be a link down
below if you want to check out the exact hardware wallet I
use, which is the Ledger Nano S. It's not very expensive,
somewhere around 60 bucks, and it is pretty easy to
set up and I'll be walking you through some of those
steps later on in this video. Now, just to give you more
detail here on BlockFi and their storage of cryptocurrencies, well, keeping your Bitcoin in
an interest bearing account like BlockFi is a mix between the two options we discussed before. It's definitely less safe
than a hardware wallet because you don't have
actual physical custody of your crypto, but it is
as convenient as keeping it on an exchange in terms of transactability and the ability to swap currencies. The benefit is that you're
earning interest on your Bitcoin and now potentially able to
be paid in two different ways instead of just asset appreciation. The downside is you are
taking on more risk. However, BlockFi keeps their
crypto stored with Gemini, which does have a private insurance policy on their stored crypto. Thankfully that insurance
policy has not been needed yet because they have yet to
experience any significant hacks. Now that being said guys
beyond the storage risks and exchange risks, there are other risks associated with Bitcoin and
other cryptos specifically. As a newer asset class, it is still relatively
unproven and very volatile. It is also very possible
that another crypto could take the throne of Bitcoin based on what we have
been seeing this year. There's a lot of speculation
maybe that could be Dogecoin. It could be Cardano. There's a lot of new
players in the market. And probably I'll be doing
another video at some point discussing what Altcoins
I am personally buying. Also, guys, as mentioned
with the storage risk, if you lose your crypto,
also meaning losing your private key or recovery
phrase, it is gone forever. If somebody gets your private key, they can steal your Bitcoin
and it's gone forever. Also, crypto is very susceptible
to big booms and busts. And it has been heavily
manipulated in the past, not to mention the utility
value of Bitcoin as a currency has yet to be seen based
on that volatility. And there is still ongoing regulation risk and risk of restrictions
from governments could cause dramatic price movements, not
to mention, we've also seen this sort of risk associated
with Elon Musk, and whatever he has to say about Bitcoin
and cryptos on a given day, contributing to massive price swings. And so if you want the
honest truth coming from me as a four year crypto investor,
on what's going on with crypto investing in 2021, well,
most beginners are going to expect unrealistic returns
from cryptocurrency. And many make the mistake of speculating and trying to bet on
Bitcoin or other Altcoins looking for 100% returns
or more in the short term. Not so much with Bitcoin,
but a lot of people are trying to buy Altcoins,
like Shiba Inu, for example, and some of these Sheep Coins, I don't even know what they're called. But I've been seeing people
losing money left and right on all these random dog coins. And that's the type of speculation
that is very dangerous. Keep in mind investing is
a marathon, not a sprint. And short term investing
is speculating largely, relying on luck, whereas
long-term investing is about the underlying utility value or
value that something may have. If you personally see value in Bitcoin, it might be something you
put your portfolio in, or you just have a better
understanding of it and why it has the perceived
value that it does. Also, most crypto investors buy and sell at exactly the wrong time,
based on psychological factors driving our buying and selling decisions. And also, I do have a quote I like to hear from Richard Branson, he said, "People have made fortunes off Bitcoin, "some have lost money. "It is volatile, "but people make money
off of volatility, too." So that is how most people
make money with crypto is long-term buy and hold or profiting off of the ongoing volatility. So the next thing I want
to talk about here is taxes associated with a
cryptocurrency investment. Because at the end of the
day, the taxes incurred from investments are not created equally. And there are certain things you may want to take
advantage of in the tax code. Basically, the tax system favors long-term investing strategies
and you can apply this with cryptocurrency investing as well. And this is why I personally
recommend and follow a long-term investing strategy. So your crypto gains can be
taxed as ordinary income, or as long-term capital gains. And there can be a huge
difference between these two in terms of the amount of money you're actually paying in taxes. So if your crypto falls
under the classification of ordinary income, your gains
are taxed at the same rate as your wages and this is the
highest tax rate you will pay as an investor and it
is in your best interest to minimize the amount of
taxation as ordinary income. So there's two different
types of profits recognized that will fall under ordinary income. First of all, if you do what
I do and utilize BlockFi to earn interest on your
crypto, that is unfortunately going to be ordinary
income no matter what. Also short term capital gains,
meaning you buy and sell a cryptocurrency within
365 days and turn a profit, you would pay the maximum
possible taxes on those gains. So if you bought something for
$3500 and sold it for $4000, a day later, you know you're
gonna pay ordinary income tax on $500 short term capital gains. So more information on short
term cap gains here guys, if crypto was purchased
and sold within 12 months, it is taxed as ordinary income. And depending on what state you live in, this could be as much
as 50% in total taxes. So the taxation system favors investors as traders are taxed at
the ordinary income rate. So if you wanna minimize the
amount of taxes you're paying on your crypto aim to own
it for longer than one year to pay long-term capital gains tax. Now with long-term capital gains taxes, you're basically paying
either 0%, 15% or 20%. However, this may change based
on the new administration. One of the easiest ways right here guys to cut down on your
taxes is just to go long and hold your crypto for
longer than 12 months, and it's gonna be taxed at
long-term capital gains tax rate. That being said, here's
some other important details surrounding a cryptocurrency taxation. First of all, you're
only taxed when you sell or once a gain or loss is realized. So even if you buy Bitcoin,
and you're up a ton of money, if you don't actually sell
and realize that gain, you don't pay any taxes, not
to mention also the record date and cost basis are used to determine the tax classification and taxable income. So you need to keep track on
your own of your cost basis. Now, if you're not doing
too many transactions, this really shouldn't be too difficult. But if you're trading left and right, you're gonna want to make sure you keep track of all your transactions. And there's a tax site called TaxBit, which could do this for you at a cost if you plan on doing a large
number of crypto transactions. If not just log all of your
purchasing in a spreadsheet and keep track of that
cost basis that way. Also, if you move your
cryptocurrency off of the exchange into a hardware wallet,
you will no longer know your cost basis because you
could be receiving money into that wallet from all over the place. So cost basis is impossible
to track at that point, which is why you need to
maintain your own records. Also, let's talk about capital losses with a cryptocurrency investment. If you lose money on crypto,
and you recognize a loss by selling this is
considered a capital loss. And a capital loss is
typically tax deductible and can be used to offset
income from a capital gain. So if you made $20,000
on cryptocurrencies, but you lost 10,000 on another investment, that loss would offset that gain. Or if the money that you
lost exceeds the money that you made, you can deduct
$3,000 of capital losses from your taxes each year. And anything above and beyond that $3,000 can be deducted in the following years. So if you somehow lost like
$10,000, in cryptocurrency, in 2021, you can deduct that
against your personal income for the next four years going forward. Obviously, guys, that is not
the goal here of losing money. But if you do just
understand that you can use that to offset gains
or potentially income. Also, guys, if you are
looking to pay less in taxes, there is a option to invest
in Bitcoin through an IRA. The option I like for this is Bitcoin IRA, I have a link for them down
in the description below. And I may do a full video in the future just explaining the process
of how to buy Bitcoin through a retirement account,
which could basically, give you a huge advantage
in being able to shelter yourself from Bitcoin related taxes. So that wraps up the
presentation here, guys. Let's jump over into my Coinbase account and talk about the process
of getting set up over there. Okay, guys, so I'm gonna walk
you through the process now of signing up for a Coinbase
account, I already have one. So we're just gonna do with
some fake information for now, just to show you what that looks like. That being said guys, if
you use my affiliate link down below, you're gonna
get $5 in free Bitcoin when you sign up. And I'm also going to earn
a commission if you do that. And I greatly appreciate that guys, because dozens of hours
went into making this video. And that's kind of an easy
way to give back to me at no additional cost to you. However, it's completely up to you guys. No worries if you don't want to use it. But this is still what I use
and recommend regardless. So right on Coinbase after
clicking that link down below, you're gonna drop your
email here and do Join Now. So I'm just gonna put a fake email in and get that process moving. So at this point, you're just going to add First Name, Last Name,
set a password and certify that you are 18 years or
older and include your state. So after that, Coinbase
is gonna walk you through step-by-step how to verify your photo ID and get your free $5 in Bitcoin. So now you just click Continue. At this point, they're gonna
send you a verification email. So you should go ahead
and verify that email. So at this point, the next step here is to set up two-step verification. I already have this set
up on my mobile phone, but I'll go ahead and set it
up with a Google Voice Number just for demonstration purposes. Okay guys, so at that
point, you're gonna link your phone number and enter
the authentication code used for two factor
authentication on your phone. So after you do that
two-step authentication there with your phone now you have
to verify your information by including your name,
date of birth, address, as well as what you'll
be using Coinbase for, what your source of funds
is, your employment status, and the last four of your social. Now, since I already
have a coin base account, this is as far as I can show you guys. So you just finish up
the verification process. And then you're going to link
your bank account via Plaid, it's gonna walk you through step-by-step, and then you're gonna earn
your free $5 of Bitcoin. So now I'm gonna log
into my Coinbase account, and we're going to complete
a Bitcoin purchase live. So here we are logging
into my Coinbase account. And it's gonna kick back a
two-factor authentication code, just to make sure your account is secure. Alrighty guys, so here we are
inside of my Coinbase account. And in this account, I have a
total value of around $3,000. And that is because the
majority of my cryptocurrency is over on BlockFi, that
way I can earn interest. I'm gonna show you that next. But let's first discuss Coinbase. So this is the desktop version of the app. But they also have the mobile
app, which is awesome as well. But I'm just gonna show you how to do everything over here on desktop. So this right here shows you
a view of your Portfolio, as well as overall
performance watch lists. They also have options
where you can like earn free cryptocurrency by learning
about different cryptos, I've never done that myself personally. And then you can also go over
here and do recurring buying if you wanna follow dollar cost averaging, which is definitely something I recommend. So my Portfolio right now
here is a tiny bit of Bitcoin, here I have about 10 bucks
worth and then I have a 99.8% of my Portfolio here in Polygon,
which is a cryptocurrency Altcoin that I am
personally bullish about. So that being said guys,
let's go ahead and purchase some Bitcoin on Coinbase. So what you're gonna do is click on this blue Buy Sell button at the top, and you're gonna come to this screen here. Now Coinbase allows you to
buy, sell, or you can convert your currency right here,
if you wanna just swap it from one thing to the other,
which is really handy. But what we're gonna
be doing is purchasing $200 worth of Bitcoin
out of my bank account. So it's a one time purchase,
and we're gonna type in $200, we're gonna be buying Bitcoin, but you can also select any
of these different currencies like Ethereum, Cardano,
Uniswap, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Chainlink, Polygon, and then all kinds of other
Altcoins that are supported via Coinbase that you can
store on this exchange as well. We're gonna do $200 worth of Bitcoin paying with my bank account. So we click on Preview
Buy and it's gonna show us what is going to happen. So we will be buying with my bank account, paying a price of $38,486.78 per Bitcoin for a purchase of $197.01. And we're gonna pay Coinbase
here a fee of $2.99. So what we're gonna do is click on Buy Now and let it do its thing
and just like that guys, our order completed here. So if I go ahead and refresh this, we should see a new value to my Portfolio. And there we go, guys,
the Portfolio is now worth $3183.01 since we added our Bitcoin, which is reflected right here. So this wallet here now
has a balance of $205.98. And we're gonna send some of that over to a hardware wallet now for cold storage. And we're also gonna send
some of it over to BlockFi to demonstrate how you can
earn interest on your crypto. Alrighty guys, so now I'm gonna
show you the signup process for BlockFi assuming you
want to earn interest on the crypto that you purchase. Also, guys, if you use my
affiliate link down below, you can get a cryptocurrency bonus by making a certain deposit. So let me just scroll down now and show you guys the bonus tier. So if you deposit anywhere
from $100 to $249, you're gonna get a free
$15 payout in Bitcoin. If you do $250 up to $1000,
you're gonna get $20 in Bitcoin, if you do $1000 up to
$5000 basically or $4999 you're gonna get $40 in Bitcoin, $5000 to $9999 you get
$75 of free Bitcoin. If you do $10,000 to up to $19,999, you get a free $150 in Bitcoin. And if you deposit 2$0,000
or more, you get $250. I personally transferred
over about $13,000 worth so I got a $150 bonus in Bitcoin when I completed my transfer. So if you wanna take
advantage of that guys, use that link down below and
you can get a bonus in Bitcoin for your deposit and I would
earn a small commission as well if you do decide to use that link. So after you click on that
link to get that bonus, you're gonna click the
yellow Sign Up button and follow this process of
filling out your name, email. And you can leave that partner code there, assuming you want to get that bonus, and you want to give me
credit for the referral. So let me go ahead and fill this out now with some fake information. So that's as far as I can show you guys with the sign up process there since I already have a BlockFi account, but you're basically going
to verify your email. And then I would highly
recommend setting up the Google Authenticator
two-factor authentication, which it should prompt you to do. And at this point, guys, you don't really have
to do much more here, you should verify your
identity with your license just so you have full
functionality of the app. And this is when you
would now be able to send your cryptocurrency from Coinbase
over to the BlockFi wallet in order to earn interest. So let me show you guys
how to do that now. Okay, guys, so here we are
inside of my BlockFi account, and we can see what exactly
I have going on here. So right now the total value of my assets here is about 13.8k. It was around 22k before the
sell off here with Ethereum. And that is the majority
of my Portfolio right now. As you can see, I do have
Borrow against this Portfolio. So I do have a loan
out against my Ethereum in the amount of $10,200. As I said, I'm just putting that towards home improvements right now. So my active balance here
is $9547, that excludes the collateral I have in
place on that loan here. And today, I've earned
basically $17.71 in interest from my crypto balance. So aside from the
collateralized asset there with the Ethereum, these are
my other crypto balances here, I have 5799 in Bitcoin,
tiny bit of Ethereum, tiny bit in Chainlink and a little bit of Litecoin over here. So let me show you now how
you would send your Bitcoin from Coinbase over to BlockFi
in order to earn interest. So what you're gonna do from
this screen right here is click on the Deposit button assuming
you want to deposit Bitcoin. However, if you're looking
to deposit other currencies, these are currently the
ones that are supported. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin,
Chainlink, PAX Gold, US Dollar Coin, Binance
USD, PAX and then GUSD. I'm not familiar with most of these, but I do have these four
balances in this account. So let's go ahead and add some Bitcoin by clicking on Deposit. At this point, This right
here is the public address. At this point right here,
this is your public key, this is your wallet address,
or your email address, which you're able to share. And you guys right here
are able to see this, if somebody wanted to,
they could send Bitcoin right to this address, but
they can't take it out. It's only a one way street. Since I'm looking to send my Bitcoin here, I'm gonna go ahead and
copy this wallet address, and now switch back over to Coinbase. So now over on Coinbase, I'm
gonna want to scroll down to my Bitcoin wallet and click on it. And then I want to click
on Send slash Receive. Now I want to go ahead and send $75 worth of Bitcoin over
to my BlockFi address. So let's go ahead and do that now. So I'm sending it at $75,
and we're going to pay with my Bitcoin wallet, and
we're gonna send $75 worth and I'm simply going to
paste in the address here. At this point I'm paying with Bitcoin, we can double check and
verify I'm receiving to a Bitcoin wallet,
because if you were to send Bitcoin to an Ethereum
wallet, for example, it would be irrecoverable
and lost forever. So you always have to send your crypto over to the correct wallet. At this point, I'm
gonna click on Continue. And then it's showing I'm sending $75.15 and I am paying a network fee basically and it should be over
there in about 30 minutes. So let's click on Send Now. I now have to confirm that with my phone by entering the two factor code. So there we have it guys, I
entered that two factor code and my $75 in Bitcoin was officially sent over
to my BlockFi account. Now we wait about 30
minutes and we will see the balance settle over there in BlockFi. So while we're waiting
for that to come over, let's go ahead and cover
the current interest rates on BlockFi, which are subject
to change at any time. Right now on Bitcoin,
they're paying a 5% APY. On Ethereum balances, they're paying 4.5% on Litecoin they're paying 5.5%, on Chainlink 4.5% APY, on PAX Gold 4% APY, on the US Dollar Coin that
is the highest at 8.6% APY, Binance USD also pays 8.6% APY, PAX also pays 8.6%. And the GUSD also pays 8.6%. I'm not familiar with these myself, the only balances that I
hold are Chainlink, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin
within my BlockFi wallet. Also guys, the transaction
showed up under Pending here almost instantaneously showing
the deposit here on May 19. And if you want more information, if you click on Transaction Hash, that brings you over to the
public blockchain Ledger, we were talking about earlier, where you can see all of this in action. So right now somewhere in the world, there is a Bitcoin miner,
verifying this transaction and completing this process
of sending some Bitcoin from Coinbase over to BlockFi. And in return, I pay
that small network fee to facilitate the transaction
and essentially give that miner a kickback for
completing this for me. Alrighty, guys, so now
I'm gonna talk about the Ledger Nano S Hardware Wallet. And I actually have three of
them in front of me right here. And that is because I'm
gonna be using one of these as a demo device to set
up and I'm gonna be giving two of these away to the viewers here. So if you want to potentially
win a free Ledger Nano S, these are all factory
sealed right from Ledger, completely legit. All you have to do is
basically share this video with a friend and then take a
screenshot of you doing that and send that to me over on
Instagram @ryanscribnerofficial, make sure you blur out phone numbers and personal information. All you have to do is
share it with a friend. And in the next two weeks,
I'm gonna pick one person who does that, actually two
people rather and they're each going to win a free Ledger
Nano S Hardware Wallet. Also guys, if you wanna
purchase a Ledger Nano S hardware wallet, I would highly recommend using the link down below
directly on the Ledger website because there are a
lot of scams out there. And you wanna always
make sure that you have a factory seal on your
Ledger hardware wallet. So the safest possible way to
do that is with the link below doing it directly through
the Ledger wallet store. But I'm gonna go ahead and
open this bad boy up and we're gonna start the process of
setting up a hardware wallet. So I took the rap right off
of it, all these, as I said, were sealed and then we're
gonna go ahead and open it up and talk about what comes inside. So the first thing is the
actual USB device itself, pretty much just looks like this. It has a couple of rocker buttons on top for making selections and
a USB port on the bottom. Beyond that in the packaging, you have the bottom that comes out here and then you're going to
find your different paperwork and other things that you may need. So this also comes with this free lanyard that you may want to attach. I personally am not gonna do that. And then another lanyard
if you want to potentially wear your wallet around your neck that way nobody could ever
lose it, but that seems crazy. And then a ring here if
you want that as well and then a USB card. Pretty much you can set
everything aside for now. What you're going to need
though, is just the USB cord, as well as the wallet itself and then this packet of
information right here. So when you open up this envelope, it's gonna come with a
couple of different things. You have three different recovery sheets for you to record your recovery phrase. It also comes with
instructions on getting started which is going to start.ledgerwallet.com so we'll go ahead and do
that on my computer now. Okay guys, so here we are
on start.ledgerwallet.com. And we're gonna go ahead and follow the setup instructions now. So step number one is get Ledger Live to start setting up your device. I'm using this on my Mac. So we'll click on Get the Ledger Live App and then click on Mac. So all I did so far is go to that website, download Ledger Live,
install it and now here I am getting started with
the Ledger app itself. So we're gonna click on the
blue Get Started button. At this point, you just
have to go ahead and accept their different Terms of
Use and Privacy Policy. Obviously read that very carefully. And then you decide on your device. So as we can see right here,
this is the Ledger Nano S, that's what we're gonna
go ahead and select. So let's pick Ledger
Nano S and then continue. Hello first time using your Ledger Nano S? That is the case. So let's click on First Use,
this is gonna now walk us through the basics of getting it set up and explaining how this is going to work. Explaining the private key
and a lot of the things that we have already covered. So now after you read through that, click on the blue Let's Do This button. And honestly guys, Ledger
has made this way easier than it was When I
started three years ago, setting up a hardware wallet. They said it is gonna
take about 30 minutes, you should grab a pen to
write with and stay alone, and in a safe, quiet environment. Also, guys, don't do
something like this in public, where somebody could be
potentially watching you or jotting down your recovery phrase. If somebody gets this
phrase, they can get anything you have in your wallet
and clear you right out in a matter of seconds. So what we're gonna do now is actually plug the Ledger wallet in. So you basically have a
USB port on the bottom, and it comes with a USB cord. So we go ahead and push
that into the bottom. And then you plug the other end of the USB right into your computer. And as soon as you do
that, you start getting this blue flash on the Ledger unit itself, showing you that it's actually in use. And it says, Welcome to Ledger Nano S, and we press the right rocker to continue. So the first thing you have to determine is going to be your PIN code, which is a four to eight digit number that you should store safely
and you can't forget this code. If you do forget it, you can use your recovery
sheet to recover it. But if you lose both of
these, you're completely SOL. So this is where you set that pin code, you check the box saying
that you understand, that you have to choose it
yourself and keep it safe, and then set up your PIN
code on the device itself. So I'm gonna do that now. And I'm not actually gonna
share this with anybody, this wallet, so we're
just gonna set it as 1234. And then after you set the code, you have to confirm
the PIN code once more. And so now it's gonna go word by word, and give you 24 words to
write down on the sheet. I'm gonna show you guys
because I'm not gonna put much of any crypto in here I'm
actually gonna move it out as soon as I'm done with the video. So if you want to hack me, you guys can but there's gonna be no
cryptocurrency in this wallet. Anyway, let me write those words down now. Okay, guys, so I just wrote down my 24 word recovery phrase here. If you want to try to get
a good look at it, you can, as I said, there's not gonna
be any cryptocurrency in there, but if you want to try to
steal it, go right ahead. Obviously guys, you don't
wanna show this to anybody. And you don't want to share
your pin with anybody either. And this is all somebody
would need to get access to all the cryptocurrency
held within this wallet. So what I recommend doing
is taking this sheet itself, wrapping it in packing tape,
cutting it down the middle, and then giving each piece
to one trusted person each. That way you need both pieces
to actually recover this and each person with half of the card can't necessarily do anything
unless they work together. But that's why you do this
with a trusted friend. Also, we're gonna talk
about titanium wallets which is an additional step
seeing as this is paper and it could be burned or destroyed. And then at this point you have to confirm your recovery phrase, which
is a very tedious process, you got to confirm all 24 of those words to prove that you actually wrote it down. Okay, guys, so it took
me about five minutes to put in all of those selections
and verify that phrase. Now it is processing and finishing up the setup here for the Ledger. So I'll go ahead and click Continue. We already did the recovery phrase step. So I will continue that as well. We wrote that all down,
confirmed the phrase. Now we are all set, and we are ready. And basically now it's actually gonna have you answer a short
quiz this is totally new to me to see if you understand how this works. So as a Ledger user, my crypto
is stored on the blockchain or on the nano, the answer is
actually on the blockchain. Okay, the next question here, if my recovery phrase is no
longer secure, or private, no problem, Ledger can send me a copy or my crypto is no longer safe, and I need to transfer
them to a secure place. That is, of course the answer. And then the last question
here, when I connect my Nano to the Ledger app my private key is? And the answer is still offline. There are the answers to that
quiz you successfully passed. So now I got a confirmation
saying my device is now ready. And now we can press both
buttons to enter the dashboard. And we'll click Next Step
over here on my computer. Now it's gonna do a quick check to make sure this is a
genuine Ledger Nano S. You'll see this inside of the
welcome papers that you get. It says right here: Did
you notice there is no anti-tampering sticker on this box? A cryptographic mechanism
checks the integrity of your Ledger's device internal software each time it is powered on. The secure element chip
prevents any interception or physical replacement attempt. This is basically how it verifies
it is a legitimate device. And that happens every
time that you plug it in and connect it to your Ledger dashboard. So let's go ahead and have
it check my Ledger now. And we got confirmation that
this Ledger Nano S is genuine and we are ready to use Ledger Live. So let's press Continue. Now we have to add an
account to get started. And we wanna start off
with a Bitcoin wallet because that is what we
are looking to store. But as you can see, there are tons of different wallets available,
hundreds of them available through the Ledger Nano S. So let's go ahead and
use Bitcoin right here. And I will press Continue. At this point, I now have to
open the Bitcoin app over here, which means I have to install it. So we select the button over here that says Install App,
which we have to do over in the Ledger Manager,
over on our computer. Now before I do that, I
wanna go ahead and update the firmware to the most
current firmware on this device. Checking the box saying
I have my recovery phrase before we proceed. So at this point, the Ledger
is just performing the update. This should take around
two to three minutes. And you'll have to confirm your pin in order to complete that process. So it successfully completed and now I have to open up
my Ledger using my pin. And now we're gonna go ahead and install some apps on
our newly updated device. And for the time being, the
only thing we have to install is that Bitcoin wallet for
demonstration purposes. So we click on Bitcoin
and we click on Install, and it's going to go ahead
and do that for us now. So it shows us confirmation
that the app installed successfully and we can now
add our Bitcoin accounts. So let me click on Manage My Accounts. At this point, I'm setting
up a Bitcoin wallet. So I click Continue,
and then on my device, I have to open up the Bitcoin
app with confirmation. The whole point of this is
you always have to confirm with the buttons on
the side before you can really do anything with the Ledger Manager giving it that additional
step where somebody could not remotely hack your device
without pressing these buttons. And right now it is
setting up a Bitcoin wallet and synchronizing that. So just go ahead and let
this go automatically. So it took about 20 seconds
to synchronize the account. Now it's all set, so we
click on the blue button for Add Account and the
account was added successfully, meaning we are ready to send
the Bitcoin from Coinbase over to our Ledger hardware
Wallet for offline storage. So at this point, we see a
$0 balance in our wallet. So let's go over here to Accounts and we see our Bitcoin wallet. Once we do that it shows us
there are no crypto assets yet so we're gonna go ahead and
click on the blue Receive button and we want to receive money
to our Bitcoin 1 account. So we click Continue. At that point, we have
to verify the address on our Ledger wallet and
make sure it matches the one shown here and you do that
by using the buttons on top. So the address matched up, I'm
gonna go ahead and approve it and now we are ready to receive Bitcoin. So what you're basically gonna
do here is take this address for Bitcoin 1 and you're gonna
click on this Copy button right here and now that
address has been copied. Now we're gonna jump over to Coinbase and send some Bitcoin to this wallet. And just like earlier guys,
this is gonna be pretty much the same process, you're gonna
go over here to Send/Receive, and we wanna make sure that we are paying or sending our Bitcoin. We're gonna go ahead and
send $10 worth of Bitcoin over to our hardware
wallet, which we copied, so we just paste that address in there. And then we click Continue. So now at the confirmation,
it shows us the total cost with network fees is gonna be $11.34. So the more you send, it's typically going to be less expensive, but we're just doing it
for demonstration purposes. So now we click the blue Send Now button. At this point, we have to enter again, that two-step verification
code from your device. Okay, guys, so we just got
confirmation from Coinbase that we successfully sent over our
$9.97 to our hardware wallet. So now we just wait about 30 minutes for that transaction to confirm
over on Ledger Live. Okay, guys, so just like
that, we now have that $9.94 that came over and it actually has gone up a tiny bit in value since then. So we have now successfully
stored that $9.96 on our Ledger Nano S
Wallet in cold storage. The only way to access this
is by utilizing this device with your pin or by having
this recovery sheet right here. So again, keep those two
pieces of information stored offline completely and safely. I recommend splitting
this up across two people. Or you can also get a titanium wallet if you want to be ultra safe. And that's gonna be linked up on Amazon, the exact one I used, down
in the description below. It basically comes with
a bunch of metal numbers and you make a metal version
of this recovery sheet and you store it somewhere safe. And then even if there was a
fire, you would still be able to recover that and
recover your cryptocurrency even if the paper was destroyed, and the USB itself was
completely destroyed. Now as mentioned, this is
going to be the safest way to store your Bitcoin and crypto. However, you're not able to earn interest directly through the Ledger platform. They may partner with somebody here because they offer a lending program, but I'm not familiar with that. I personally use BlockFi
for my crypto lending. And then of course, if
you wanted to sell this, you can sell through the Ledger app, but I would just personally
sell through Coinbase. You would send this crypto
back out of this wallet and into the Coinbase wallet
and then that would be allowing you to transact and put
it back into US dollar. Or if you wanted to send
crypto from your Ledger wallet over to your BlockFi account,
or back and forth in order to earn interest you're
able to do that as well. So anyways guys, that is
gonna wrap up this video. Thank you so much for tuning in. As I had mentioned
earlier, I am giving away two completely sealed Ledger
Nano S Hardware Wallets to two people who basically
share this video with a friend. What I'm asking you to do is basically send a text or a message over to a friend, take a screenshot of that and send that to me on Instagram
@ryanscribnerofficial. Of course blur out any
personal information. And honestly I think this
is one of the best resources I've seen out there on
Bitcoin for Beginners. I certainly hope you guys agree. So hopefully by sharing
it with other people, we can provide more value to
them and give them a easier way to learn about how to potentially invest in
Bitcoin and other cryptos. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. If you wanna stay updated
on my investment portfolios and what I'm doing,
make sure you subscribe, hit that bell for future notifications, drop a like if you made
it all the way to the end. And as always, I hope to
see you in the next video.
