How to Use a Coldcard Hard Wallet for Bitcoin Self Custody with BTC Sessions

welcome to the coin Stories podcast where we talk about investing hard money Bitcoin and how technology is revolutionizing the global economy I'm Natalie Brunell and I'm here to learn with you so this is for educational and entertainment purposes only none of the discussions should constitute as official investment advice and you should always do your own research make sure you're subscribed to my page so you don't miss out on any new content this show is made possible through Partnerships with companies I trust and I'm very picky about who I partner with so I hope you take the time to listen to the ad reads throughout the show first up Swan I partnered with Swan because it is a Bitcoin only company that is focused on helping people save for their future and self-custody their Bitcoin Swann can help you start a direct deposit to take advantage of Bitcoin as a savings technology and learn how to take it off the exchange Swan's mission is to educate 10 million future bitcoiners through free resources and media projects like the hard money show Swann also offers retirement planning with an IRA tax loss harvesting and a white glove private client server yes I use Swan to dollar cost average and I deposit a little bit every day that's equivalent to what I might spend on a meal so that I add to my future nest egg and lower my yearly cost basis Swan Studios produces my hard money news reports simplifying Bitcoin for Mass audiences and documenting Bitcoin adoption around the world to learn more and get 10 in free Bitcoin head to swannbitcoin.com Natalie Brunell all right next up Bitcoin conference 2024 the world's largest Bitcoin event is headed to Nashville next year early bird tickets are now available and this is the lowest cost you'll be able to secure for the conference all year and if you use the code huddle hodl you'll get an extra 10 off so come join us for three great days of networking events panels Keynotes workshops and more you never know what big name might be announced when tickets are much much higher in price head to b.tc conference and use the code Hudl and before Bitcoin 2024 the next conference I'm headed to is bit block boom this August in Austin Texas where I'm really looking forward to speaking alongside Preston pish Mark moss and other great voices in the space you can get your tickets at bitblockboom.com and use code huddle for 10 off I'll see you there alright it's time for the show hello I'm so excited to share this episode it's my first ever how-to tutorial video and who better to teach me to do something than Ben Perrin BTC sessions thank you so much for helping me this is going to be a cold storage tutorial with cold cart I'm really proud that I have partnered with this company I think BTC sessions you recommend it for Cold Storage Hardware Solutions as well so thanks so much for joining me I'm stoked to be here and I'm stoked to see you uh get on your your cold card here well so let's start from the very beginning and first for those who may not be familiar with your background I mean you do these how-to sessions and tutorial videos you've done them for all sorts of different products and services so can you talk a little bit just give people a summary of your background and how you got to do these videos and why you're so passionate about breaking it down in a simple way for the average audience yeah um so I uh I I started noticing Bitcoin years ago around 2014 and I was trying to learn my way through and I was I'm a pretty visual learner and so as I got curious about Bitcoin I wanted to learn some of the Practical stuff around it you know how do I set up a wallet how do I secure my Bitcoin and uh a YouTube search yielded next to nothing um it was really difficult to learn at the time and oftentimes people would direct me to some message board and say scroll down and look through the comments and somebody wrote a bullets Point list of how to do things that's just not how I learn um so after a couple years of tearing my hair out trying to figure out things um I got comfortable enough where I decided to start making videos myself so people wouldn't have to do the same um so that was 2016. and I started making step-by-step practical tutorials how do you do all of the basics and now advanced stuff in and around Bitcoin uh and I started doing a tutorial once a week and I haven't stopped for seven years and so here we are um I had a little bit of an education background and by that I mean I taught little kids how to break dance for about a decade oh that's so cute yeah so the the you know teaching adults technology is very similar to teaching kids complex movement so oh really yeah it transfers over well enough as long as you know the subject material it's the same same idea so yeah I've been teaching people uh for around seven years now um and uh just everything Bitcoin well you do an amazing job and I have to say that cold storage it's so important but this was one of the most intimidating aspects of Bitcoin for me especially when I was a newcomer and I just felt like taking that responsibility was a little bit intimidating and scary and now that I've been in the the network and working in this ecosystem for a couple of years I realized that it's way easier than people think and it's also really important to take that step I just interviewed Matt O'Dell about a week ago and and he had a great analogy he said if you can raise a kid you can definitely store your Bitcoin in a cold storage wallet if you can drive a car you can do it so I hope that people you know take take a video like this and see that I'm someone non-technical I don't have a technical background but especially with your help I'll be able to walk through the whole thing so we'll start from Ground Zero I have a bunch of different cameras going I'm gonna try my best in terms of the edit um but basically we'll go over everything you need all the equipment we are going to in this video do the wired version so there's another um sort of even even more secure way to put your Bitcoin on a cold card and that is totally offline air gap off the internet and so that we're going to do in a future video but for now this is sort of the more simple way to get um acquainted with this device and just a quick question Ben why why do you recommend this cold storage wallet because there are so many out on the market I know some people have been concerned about updates that some of the devices have had and they just want to make sure that their Bitcoin is safe so what are your thoughts why do you recommend this specific brand and device yeah so I love cold card in that it can be used very simply or it can be used in a very Advanced Manner and you can actually start simple and then kind of level up your learning as you go and then start to use the device in a different manner um so that's one aspect of it I love we're gonna again we're gonna start simple here and then maybe later on we'll make the tin foil hat version of uh using a cold card and and that'll be fun too and people can level up there um the other aspect about the cold card that I think is very important is even though the average person watching this won't themselves go and audit the code that governs this device and actually go and look through the lines of code that make it work the way it does it is possible for anybody to do that and so what that means is you have eyeballs on the code that is actually in the firmware of this device and so if anything shady were going on if there were something malicious in the code that might be able to steal your money then people can actually have the opportunity to spot that and call it out and warn others about it and so by having it open like that where you can actually audit the source code um it actually protects you from you know if a company were malicious and were to put something into their devices that you weren't privy to uh you would have that Canary in a coal mine of somebody seeing it and is that unique to these devices it depends on the device that you are getting there are some devices on the market that are closed source and there are some that are open which you can actually audit and cold card is one that is open that you can audit also the cold card does have what's known as a secure element and what that is is on any device on any hardware device that is securing your Bitcoin inside the device there's the keys that unlock your money basically the keys to your money are inside any hardware wallet that you're using um when you're when you're doing that on a device that doesn't have what's known as a secure element um then somebody that gets a hold of this device not this one but other ones gets a hold of your device if it doesn't have a secure element with a little bit of time and know how somebody can actually extract the keys to your money from the device and that's not something that you necessarily want to happen obviously uh definitely not no and I actually wasn't aware of that prior to talking to nvk who runs the company that makes these I I had no idea that something like that was possible obviously very very scary and again I mean not your keys not your coins you have to keep your Bitcoin secure we have learned some painful lessons over the last two years especially with some of the third parties and counterparty risk that has existed in the space so hopefully this video will help and last question before we we really get into it um you know some people think that when you get one of these devices it's kind of like a hard drive for your computer and so you take a file like an MP3 or a Microsoft Word file and you move it onto the drive and then all of a sudden it's on the drive and it's secure that's not how Bitcoin Works um can you kind of break down for people what the relationship is between Bitcoin and these devices yes so um I'm I'm sure you've mentioned in plenty of your shows before how you know Bitcoin is is a global Ledger of who owns what and so another way to look at it would would be imagine there was a giant safety deposit box in the sky and it was completely transparent so you could look up at the sky you could see everybody's individual box although you don't know who owns what you can see all the boxes and you can see all of the money that exists and and where it's allocated and all of the boxes have a little slot where you can always slide in more cash to somebody's box what you have with a device like this is you have the keys to a particular box so you can always see and you can always deposit anywhere but unless you have the key you can't open up somebody else's box and take money out so these are the keys to your safety deposit box in the sky is effectively what this is um funny enough and we'll see this um you actually don't need this device to deposit money into the cold card you don't even need to plug it in in any way shape or form and we'll see that in practice that that safety deposit box slot mechanism uh we're gonna get that so that you can always add money to your cold card without ever having to plug it in again wow okay let's get into it first of all let's just go over what you're going to need so if you're listening to this in audio I'm going to put a list in the show notes if you're watching this I'll pop a list up as well but you're going to need the cold card which we recommend order this from the manufacturer make sure that it's not been tampered with there are lots of companies and third parties that are starting to sell cold storage devices you don't want to risk anything so make sure to get it directly from the manufacturer and we have a discount Link in the show notes as well you're going to need a USBC to USBC if you're using a Mac like me so I've got that ready I'm going to have something to write down my seed phrase and I will be showing you guys this if you watch this on video it'll probably be a little bit easier to follow and understand but uh but maybe some people will listen on audio and then you're also going to need a desktop application called Sparrow so download that and we'll be showing you those visuals as well do I need anything else then that is it um we're doing the simplistic one you just need the device Accord and a pen and and your computer and you're good so okay perfect so let's get to cutting I'm really excited because they now have released uh colored versions of the cold card so I requested a pink one I'm a little jealous I still have the clear ones and I'm gonna I'm gonna cut it open so this is completely new so what it comes with is this little warning and on the flip side is where you can write down your pen and your seed phrase and you can either choose between 12 or 24 words obviously 24 is more secure I'm sure we'll get into to some of that uh you'll also get this cool little sticker actually actually I think you get two stickers um I think there's another one in here but all right um and then here is the cold card and I'll sew it on this on this camera as well perfect and that's a little case on the front it will slide right off by the way all right let's slide it out which way does it slide uh up all right so we're sliding It Off okay and now it looks like a little calculator yeah it's perfect opsec friendly yeah this is just my calculator and is it true that with this device you can essentially set kind of a dummy wallet where if if you were to be in duress someone's threatening you you could say yep here it is here's here's my Bitcoin but actually you're directing them to a place that does not actually have all of your Bitcoin yeah yeah you can absolutely and that's maybe that'll be an advanced thing that maybe we'll touch on at some point but yeah you can absolutely have a a pretend pin where if somebody again was was uh holding you under duress it would lead them to a decoy wallet where they they would get a pretend stash okay so what is the first thing you do yeah so one thing that you're going to make note of and in a second we're going to plug in the cold card but uh the bag itself has a number on it an identify identification number um and I think if I'm not mistaken inside the bag is there a little piece of plastic that also had a number on it um there are two areas that have the number on the bag so right below the barcode and then on the blue okay perfect all right so so that basically identifies the device um coming from the warehouse where they actually create the cold card and when you plug in the device it will ask you to check and verify uh the number on the bag versus the number that will be displayed on the cold card so I'm actually going to get you to plug in the cold card now and it should show you that and you're gonna have to uh because I I can't see your phone you'll have to kind of tell me what you're seeing and then once we get all the way set up then uh we'll be at the same place okay I'm gonna plug in right now okay so right now it says cold card wallet by using this product you are accepting our terms of sale and use Perfect all right so there's going to be a few intro screens here just to orient yourself on the cold card on the number pet on the number pad there's an up and down arrow and a side to side arrow and that's kind of your navigation going through the menus and then bottom left there's an X that's if you want to get out of something or check mark if you want to advance and so we're going to advance forward by hitting the check mark all right and then that number pops up so let's verify the number on the bag is 579-579 on the card 310-310-870-870-436 your new cold card should have arrived and then we can I assume punch down yep sealed in a bag with the above number please take a moment to confirm the number and look for any signs of tampering and there were none Perfect all right we can advance forward okay so now the screen says choose pin code Advanced slash tools bag number help okay so what we're going to be doing now we're going to be setting up uh the PIN code and what I'd like you to show on camera if you can is it came with a little uh piece of cardboard or you know like a little piece of paper that you're going to be recording your pin and your uh your seed phrase and everything on and the way that the pin works is there's actually two parts to it and uh there's a prefix and a suffix so there's a beginning and an end to to the pin each part of the pin can be anywhere between two and six digits long so you could have it be one two and then the second part B three four or you could have it one two three four five six one two three four five six you know don't probably don't do those ones do something that is uh you'll you'll be able to remember but again for this demo if you wanted you could just have one two three four five six on both sides of the pin you can change it later but in order to change it you need to know the old pin so it's very important that when people are setting up their pin they recall what their their uh and they write down what their pin is because if you don't remember your PIN the device is a brick okay so I will I will stress that please recall your pen they're gonna get you to enter it twice to confirm that you've done it correctly so don't worry too much about that but please do note it down so we're gonna hit choose uh choose pin code for the check mark okay so now on the screen it says choose pin pick the main wallet's pin code now scrolling down be more clever but an example one two three dash four five six seven yes it has two parts prefix one two three and suffix four five six seven each part must be between two and six digits long total length can be as long as 12 digits the prefix part determines the anti-fishing words you will see each time you log in your new PIN protects access to this cold card device and is not a factor in the wallet's seed words or private keys there is absolutely no way to recover a forgotten pin write it down okay hit that what do you suggest for people out there just in terms of you know essentially if they're writing something down on a piece of paper obviously paper is flammable someone can drop water on it what's your best recommendation when it comes to writing down such sensitive information so one would be obviously the cold card is is an electronic device and if there was a fire or something you know that that device gets burnt up if you have the seed phrase stored alongside it um with the sensitive information and it's on paper and there's a fire in both those things are gone your access to your money is gone so one would be if it's written down store it separately it's very unlikely that you're gonna have simultaneous fires in two different locations so you know segregating those two devices to different areas uh is important um but obviously coincide offers uh solutions for your seed phrase where you can stamp it in steel and uh and those things can go through a four alarm fire and and be totally fine in terms of pin as it said in in the setup there the pin itself does not have any bearing on on your seed phrase on your back up to the wallet it's just for the device so if somebody found the device they couldn't get into it without so um something that you can remember you can jot it down keep it separate that's fine you don't necessarily need your pin on steel though it's you're not going to lose access to your money entirely got it and just remember guys don't put something like your birthday if someone were to get a hold of this device and they know anything about you they're obviously going to try numbers associated with you first so make it as difficult to re difficult to guess for someone else but easy for you to remember all right so I was just going to say a side note too the cold card gives you 13 tries to put in your PIN so you know if if you accidentally mess up you've got a fair amount of leeway but for somebody that's just trying to put in numbers after 13 the device again is a brick so know that you've got some safety there too is that the situation that we've heard about with someone who's looking for all of their Bitcoin in some sort of um dumpster or you know sometimes yeah right now yeah sometimes you'll have a mechanism where there's x amount of tries that you get but luckily in this situation we will have a backup so even if you tried 13 times you could always go to your backup and recover your money Perfect all right so I'm going to hit the check it's going to give you another warning here warning there is absolutely no way to reset the pin or factory reset the cold card if you forget the pin do not forget the PIN code wow yeah uh scroll down because nvk really is really concerned for you and wants you to read the whole thing press six to prove you read to the end of this message [Laughter] good job nvk all right stick so we press six now enter PIN prefix all right so this is a tester obviously um you know even if someone's watching and you're a bad actor trying to steal some Bitcoin that I put on here this is a dummy device so uh go for it yeah all right one two three and it doesn't actually show so when you're looking at the device the numbers don't show up on the screen yeah okay so now words are coming up okay so I'm gonna tell you what these words are before we advance okay these words are anti-fishing are anti-fishing words and so the way it will work will be every time you go to log into your device you're gonna put in the beginning of your PIN so you just did one two three is that correct oh I did one two three yes okay so next time like when you log into your device after it's been off you'll type in one two three and then you're gonna hit the check mark and you'll see these two words and those two words as long as they're the same every single time it means that you've entered the beginning of the pin correctly and that the device has not been physically tampered with if either of those things are untrue like if you accidentally put one two four and hit the check mark the words will be different or if somebody actually gets a hold of your device and tampers with this circuitry inside and you type in one two three correctly and hit the check mark it will still show different words and that's your Canary in the coal mine okay so should I write these words down on the wallet backup card yes you'll write that on the wallet backup card you can write in the one two three the anti-fishing words and then we'll move on to the next part of the pin okay and just to remind everyone and to clarify what we're doing is cold storage for a single signature single seg we're not doing multi-sig but it's highly recommended to decentralize so that you don't have just one seed phrase um this is something that you know I think once you feel a little bit more comfortable you can get to that next Advanced step sometimes people choose custody Solutions like Unchained for that so that a company has one seed phrase then you have another maybe you a loved one has a third and you need two out of three keys but just try try not to have a single point of failure do you do you agree with that yeah yeah and I mean this this can be a a step down the road right like if you're starting with you know if people are watching this this is your first time using Hardware don't don't worry about like having to do that right away but level up you know get comfortable with this and then down the line you get enough Bitcoin and and you're like well I would I would like to be a bit more secure then you can dive into multi-sync all right so I've written down the words and I'm assuming that I hit Check Yes exactly okay now we're going to enter that second half of the pen so I'm gonna do four five six seven perfect now it's asking for the pen pin prefix again okay so basically what you've done is you said this is my prefix this is my suffix and it's giving you the two words in between now it's just taking you through a second time to make sure that those are the numbers that you meant to put in so you're going to put in the first part of the pin again now and hit check we recognize the words it's asking if we recognize jealous and powder those were the two anti-fishing codes so we're going to hit check and now we're going to enter four five six seven again so our dummy pin once again is one two three dash four five six seven but I highly recommend not doing that now yeah maybe don't do that but yes okay now we have a screen that says new seed words import existing help Advance slash tools and if we scroll down there's uh settings as one last option and real quick of some a pop-up came on my Mac that says allow accessory to connect do you want to connect coincide cold card wallet to this Mac I'm going to allow it yeah perfect okay so basically what we've done is the PIN is all set up the pin will remain the same um throughout the life of the device unless you explicitly go in and change it later okay so this is now the main pin um and in order to change it you need to remember the original pin okay um right now the cold card by itself it doesn't have any keys to any money on it and so this is where we're going to create uh new seed words we're basically creating the keys to your Bitcoin right now on the cold card can you explain to people who again are just coming in new um maybe they purchased Bitcoin on one of the big exchanges and they don't even know what a seed phrase is or how this works they understand public versus private keys but what is a seed phrase and how is it generated right okay so um the main takeaway here is a private key is a key that allows you to unlock and spend any Bitcoin that you are holding in your wallet so a a private key would allow you to say hey I've got I've got Bitcoin in my cold card and I'm going to approve a transaction and send it to somebody else without a private key you cannot do that a public key is simply the information necessary to be able to deposit more money into your wallet or to audit the balance but you cannot spend with only a public key actually later on when once this is all set up we're going to give the public key to Sparrow wallet so that we can deposit and audit the balance but we cannot spend without the cold card so we're going to have a private key sitting on the cold card and eventually we'll have a public key sitting in Sparrow but now what people will see on the next screen is a whole bunch of random words how are those generated yeah so what a a private key when you actually look at what a private key looks like it's just a mess a string of digits and everything and it's very difficult to make note of that and secure it easily um there is something called bip 39 a bip is a Bitcoin Improvement uh proposal protocol man proposal yeah yeah uh and so uh this allowed us to take all of that gibberish and distill it down into easily readable English words 12 or 24 typically and so these 24 words that we're gonna take down here are very simply just another way of communicating your private key and so they are sensitive but easier to deal with and so we're going to make note of them you can think of it kind of like creating a spare house key or in this case a spare key to your safe where you keep your cash so you treat like a key you never let anybody get a copy of it and that includes photos digital this is why we're physically writing it down the cold card itself is not connected to the internet so it's not touching the Internet it's staying in that secure element that chip that we mentioned um and so it's not going to leave that chip and your physical copy is obviously not on the internet you don't take pictures of it you keep it secure so yeah think of it as a spare key to your money and the Order of the words is going to matter so make sure when you're writing these down that you're not just writing down a list of words in any given order the order matters yes okay 100 so I'm going to scroll back up to the top and I'm going to click on new seed words that's right should we choose the 24 word or the 12 word or the 24 word dice roll or the 12 word dice roll what's the dice roll it's time for a quick break to hear these messages from my partners fold is the best Bitcoin rewards debit card and shopping app in the world you can earn Bitcoin on everything you purchase from Amazon to groceries to your Bitcoin conference tickets with folds Bitcoin cashback debit card and you can win free satoshi's every day or even play for a whole Bitcoin by spinning the rewards wheel you can also buy Bitcoin and stack stats directly on fold and earn even more incentives and rewards this is a great app to get someone totally new into Bitcoin and way better than earning airline miles or hotel points head to foldapp.com Natalie and if you use my link you'll get up to 10 000 stats when you sign up for spin or spin plus and spend at least twenty dollars on the card I'm so excited to share that I have partnered with coincite and we are committed to making sure everyone has the information they need to safely self-custody their Bitcoin coincite produces the cold Card Wallet which is the cold storage device I am switching to for safe keeping my Bitcoin it is Bitcoin only you can verify the source code it's Ultra secure and as I'm learning it's easy to use even if you're a beginner if you head to their site in my show notes you can find all of their products from cold cards and different colors to seed plates top signers stats cards block clocks which I have behind me and more I'm also in the process of creating some how-to videos on cold card so watch out for those in the near future become your own bank with Bitcoin and coincite alright back to the show Good Old nvk gives you so many options okay so um the difference between 24 and 12 first we'll say 24 technically is is more secure but if we're being realistic it's kind of like trying to find a singular grain of sand in the Milky Way galaxy versus the known universe like it's the it's not gonna happen um you're gonna be fine with 12 words however I do recommend choosing 24 because later on if you level up and you're like oh I'd like to use some of these cool Advanced features some of the advanced features are not available if you only have a 12 word seed phrase that's okay so just keep that in mind we'll go with the 24 word default the dice roll just for people that are curious if you don't trust nvk and coincite that they're really generating numbers randomly in this device and that they've injected something even though you can audit what the code is doing if you don't trust the random number generator you can actually roll dice and add more Randomness to the creation of your 24 words wow yeah that's probably too Technical and over my head so we'll just do the 24 word defaults all right yes I've chosen that and now it says generating okay record these 24 secret words all right so we're going to start I'm going to record all of these and and we'll talk through um I mean again I'm I'm giving my seed phrase out so again this is not you'll never do this is what I'm saying yeah no don't don't do what I'm doing right now um and I know that this is a little bit paranoid but I've even heard you know don't do this around cameras don't do this with um speakers on while you're saying the seed phrase out loud you really do want to be careful especially if you plan to store you know a good chunk of your life savings be in a room that you know no one's looking over your shoulder there are no cameras or microphones listening just be ultra ultra careful because again you don't want to risk anything so yeah we have the device right here and my first word I I think it's meant to be it's it's news there we go it couldn't have been a better one this is and as you're jotting uh the first few I will I will say that this is the most tedious part of the setup process but it is very necessary so just as you're writing these down you know just be careful and and slow and methodical just make sure that you're taking them down correctly and then afterwards the cold card will do a little quiz to ensure you've jotted everything down correctly as well um but yes just know it'll take a bit of time and that's okay as you're creating the keys to your money okay and and here this is interesting so I assume that to get to the next three you hit the check mark but that's not the case because now it's asking word 19 is question mark so I should have just scrolled with my up and down arrows yes if you hit X I think it will take you back okay are you sure throw away those words and stop this process that's what it's asking me you Advanced early so we'll just um just hit X and or sorry just hit um you you want to throw away those words and start and then there's no way to go back unfortunately no oh no okay well this is actually really good you know so you're learning with me um I already I already now know that I should have I should have been just scrolling down arrows so don't do what I did don't hit check hit the down arrow so I'm going to start over that's all right it's it's uh you didn't even we only got to the first three words so it's not uh catastrophic you're just gonna choose new seed words again okay so my new words are can follow and flip so I've written those down and again don't hit the check mark don't do what I did at first hit the down arrow now I see four five six seven number four is awake five is lip again six is bread seven is shed scroll down we've got fruit broom mistake and word number 11 is Major just another reminder do not give these out do not speak them out loud around speakers basically find the exact opposite environment in which we're doing this in in any of the good don't do as I'm doing right now 13 Supreme 14 Muscle we told you these were random words 15 is action scroll down 16 is snack 17 is Liberty 18 artists 19 ill last couple of words here number 20 is curve 21 is honey 22 is coyote 23 is earn 24 is Lim and you don't want to hold these on a cloud don't you know put them on a device that's attached to some sort of cloud that someone could potentially compromise don't go taking a picture of it and Publishing that anywhere so now I've scrolled down and now I think it says please check and double check your notes there will be a test oh nvk is going to test us press 4 to add some dice rolls into the mix press one to view as QR code okay so you don't need to do any of the fancy stuff the dice rolls all that we're gonna we're gonna bypass that we're going to uh we're going to hit the check mark and we're gonna do our quiz and I'll I'll walk you through how it works okay so word number 11 is honey major or imitate and on my sheet I've written major so number two and it will go through every single word here no way so we're going to go through 24. okay word number 19 is ill word number 14 is muscle word number 13 is supreme word number six is bread word number 17 is Liberty word number 22 is coyote word number 18 is artist word number eight is fruit word number ten is mistake word number nine is broom word number 23. is earn word number four is awake word number 12 is Hollow word number 24 is Lim word number three is flip word number 16 is snack word number twenty is curve word number two is follow word number five is flip word number 21 is honey word number seven is shed word number 15 is action word number one is can applying see if I got this right right now it's asking enable NFC slash tap lets you tap your mobile phone on the cold card and transfer data easily via NFC you can change this later under settings Hardware on slash off uh so for now just so you get less questions and and options as we're doing transactions we're going to turn this feature off okay can you explain just sort of what that means for people if they were yeah so the cold card has a function that allows you to with your mobile phone actually tap to transfer basically to approved transactions you can turn on NFC for your cold card and just tap your phone to it to basically get those signatures uh or those uh credentials to be able to spend money so instead of plugging it in physically you can tap via NFC perfect okay so we will move forward here how do we say no it asks enable NFC tap do we just hit check we will say x because we're going to turn that feature off for now okay now it's asking disable USB port question mark if you intend to operate in air gap mode where this cold card is never connected to anything but Power then this will disable the USB port you can change this later under settings Hardware on slash off okay so does it say uh it's asking if you want to disable the the port we do not want to disable it because we're using it so we're going to say X okay now it says ready to sign passphrase address Explorer secure log out and if we scroll down Advanced slash tools settings okay so this is your main screen of your cold card this is just kind of all of the basic menu stuff that you will see anytime you log in to your cold card and go to use it um what we're going to do right now is we need to we basically set up the entire cold card the cold card is is done ready to go you you've got ready for big words yes exactly so you've got your PIN you've got your your backup written down and you're fully ready to go what we need to do now is we need something that's connected to the internet your computer to be able to deposit Bitcoin into a wallet that is is connected to your cold card in some way um and so we're using something called Sparrow wallet and anybody that's looking you can just go to uh Sparrow wallet.com and I'm sure those those will be in the show notes but uh and there's a little download button up in the top right and you basically end up choosing the version of sparrow that is right for the computer that you're using so if you're on a Mac and it's a relatively new one then you'll just download the the uh the appropriate one if you're on Windows or Linux whatever it may be there's a different version for the type of computer that you're using um I will make a side note there's probably a number of people using Windows um when you go to download it for Windows you're going to probably choose the installer which will do everything for you and install it for you just by double clicking on it um and then if you're unsure about what type of Mac you're on it's really simple you just in the top left of your screen screen where the little apple is in the corner of your computer you click on it and you choose about this Mac and you'll either see something that says M1 or M2 or you'll see something that says Intel and that will kind of tell you which version of sparrow that you need but nonetheless you're going to download it and install it to your computer perfect so maybe I'll share my screen right now because I just downloaded this so I will share my sparrow screen here okay all right so we have this welcome to Sparrow introduction Sparrow is a Bitcoin wallet with a focus on security and usability okay so we're gonna um for this intro because I don't want to overwhelm people with Sparrow Sparrow is an excellent wallet and you can be as simple or as advanced as you like with it we're gonna go simple with it and so we're gonna kind of blow through a few of these initial screens just to kind of get us set up because I don't want people to get overwhelmed it's it's a great tool but keep it simple and then learn and ask questions as we go so we're just going to hit next here we're gonna keep going through here um we're this is basically how we're gonna be connecting uh to Sparrow normally and this is how most wallets uh work is you're connecting to somebody else's node and a node is basically just a record of all the transactions of who owns what and your wallet will check somebody else's copy of the Bitcoin blockchain to see if you have money basically you're just saying like hey is there any Bitcoin in my addresses um so this is just telling you about what a public server is so we can just hit next hopefully in the future we'll do a node setup yes 100 now this is telling you about other ways that you can refer to other nodes this would be an example of running a node on your own computer and connecting to it that will be an advanced thing that you might look into later so we'll hit next and then this is another option where you might run a node on your own dedicated device that sits on a shelf like the one I have behind me right now and it's just another way to do things we're gonna leave it for now we're just gonna hit configure server yes stay tuned because I do want to show people how to set up an umbral in the future oh yeah and so that's that's the intro screen and then I think you might need to share one more time because it bumped you out of that one window oh there we go okay so all you're going to do here you don't really need to do anything special uh can you just hit the test connection button okay you are now connected to the Bitcoin network uh so you're using uh one of the pre-selected Bitcoin nodes that Sparrow often connects to basically just so you can check your balance and uh and now we're gonna hit create new wallet there we go perfect okay so I know this screen looks scary stick with me because it's super easy I promise you okay and if you're listening on audio this this might be a time where you want to flip over to the YouTube side I think I think on the for the audio setting up the cold card getting the seed phrase pretty self-explanatory but this you might the visuals might be helpful so I'm gonna have chapters marked so that you can just scroll right through and and head to this part of the video so that you can just see on screen exactly what you would be looking at as well okay so this is basically your wallet setup screen where you're telling Sparrow what do you want to do are you making a brand new wallet are you importing some sort of wallet that you're dealing with and so um earlier you mentioned that you know the single signature and multi-signature it already says single signature here basically all the whole top area we don't really need to touch because we're not doing anything special or technical we don't need to worry about any of this so I want you as a newcomer to gloss that over you're going to look straight to the bottom and it says uh connected Hardware wallet we're going to click on that and so that gives you a pop-up that allows you to scan for connected Hardware wallets and and that your your cold card is still plugged in on ready to sign it is perfect now should I should I hit the check on ready to sign no we're going to leave that b we're just going to hit scan okay so you can now see it detects a cold card and we're just going to hit that big blue button import keystore so it's importing your public key to Sparrow wallet and giving all the information so that you can deposit so you can check your balance all of that stuff and again there's a lot of technical jargon here you don't need to know what all this means currently this is something for later when you get it Advanced if in doubt look for the Blue Button because that's always the next thing you want to do so bottom right you're going to hit apply okay and and just real quick Ben for people who are are doing this process and they go so so the company that sold me this they cannot see the seed phrase there's nothing on their end where whatever words that their device just generated they don't have a copy of it or now that I've I'm plugged in and I've been plugged into my computer this entire time this third-party application that I'm running or even just my computer they have not taken my seed phrase how do you answer that so with cold card again the cold the the code can be audited by anyone to ensure that's not happening with the version that you're running uh Sparrow wallet is not created by coin kite so it's an entirely different fully open source wallet that we've just decided to use because it's good and anybody can also go and audit that code if something were to be malicious you would need um cold card to have injected something into their code that would do that and nobody to have noticed and they would need to be colluding with Sparrow wallet because Sparrow wallet is what's getting the information here for the public key Sparrow what would also need to be able to collude and extract that information and somehow relay back to somebody and on top of it spare wallet as I said is open source and anybody can audit that code as well so you've got degrees of of certainty um and verifiability that that's not happening uh but furthermore if you do want to wear that tinfoil hat that's where you come back for air gapping because in that case you don't even ever plug the cold card into a computer we're gonna hit apply yep add a password to the wallet leave empty for no password we're just going to leave it empty in this case I would recommend you do set up a password but since we're just doing a demo am I okay with no password yeah let's say no password and uh just so you know the password applies specifically to Sparrow wallet on your computer which means if somebody were to get into Sparrow wallet on your computer and not have your cold card all they would be able to do is see your balance and give you more Bitcoin if they wanted to um so so not the end of the world but you know if privacy is a concern then sure you can add a password but we don't need to um so your wallet is now officially set up and I'm just going to kind of show you what's in front of you this screen that we're on right now is the city settings screen and it's a little scary looking you don't really need to come back here um this was just the initial setup but let's look at the screens that actually kind of matter let's go up to transactions up on the left the little tab there this will be your main screen that basically shows your balance any previous transactions um any incoming transactions all of that stuff it's kind of like your home base what do I have in my wallet and what have I been doing um over on the left there's also a send button so let's click on that and see what it looks like really quick and so this is basically where you set up if you want to send out your cold card you know where are you paying to what Bitcoin address are you sending to what amount are you sending all of that kind of stuff is here and you don't need to know what all of the technical stuff is yet you just need to know the basics of where am I sending and how much am I sending that's pretty much it and then finally let's take a quick look at the receive screen over on the left as well just to kind of get an overview of what we're happening um this is an address that belongs to your cold card or another way of putting it is if you send Bitcoin to this address you won't be able to send it back out without your cold card approving that transaction so let's say you know Nat I know that you do a ton of work with Swan and everything let's say you had a DCA set up and it was sending to an address from this screen well that as soon as that DCA hits this address it is now secured by your cold card it is now in your possession and unless somebody had your cold card and the PIN to get into it they couldn't spend that money got it now um also just to remind people let's say they have they have their wallet backup card they have their entire seed phrase but something happens to this calculator looking device uh they lose it they bring it somewhere and they don't have it um they can still access their Bitcoin via the seed phrase and create a new cold Card Wallet right yes that is absolutely right um they can at any point if you grab another cold card and actually as a matter of fact those 24 words are Universal they would work with any other device any other Bitcoin wallet whether it be hot or cold obviously if it's a cold wallet and it's life-savings you might not want to put it on a hot wallet meaning something connected to the internet but any device those 24 words would work so if cold card no longer existed like you broke your cold card and coincite was no longer a company for whatever reason those 24 words are still securing your money and can be input in any Bitcoin wallet great all right so should I send myself a little bit of Bitcoin here so that we can see what it looks like when you actually have Bitcoin on your cold card let's do it absolutely and actually just for fun um unplug your cold card it's time for another quick break to hear these messages from my partners next up I want to share with you about crowd Health which is a Bitcoin alternative to health insurance health insurance costs are sky high today and you send your money every month to a massive Corporation and then you never see that money again even if you don't need a doctor but if you do need care you end up having to pay even more out of pocket especially if you end up as one of the 20 of claims on average that aren't covered crowd health is all about community and the community crowdfunds everyone's health care so if something happens to you and you need medical care crowd Health negotiates down the medical bill lower than what insurance would be and then the community helps you cover it and in turn you help cover others needs which has been so rewarding I am so glad I switched to this program and for more information you can head to join crowdhealth.com Natalie and use promo code Natalie for a discount I am so excited to share that I have joined orange pill app as an advisor if you haven't downloaded this app yet you are missing out on connecting with bitcoiners in your area the orange pill app is building the social layer for Bitcoin and helping to create opportunities for in-person connections and Community Building you can create a profile and you will see lots of familiar faces there and then you can search for bitcoiners or Bitcoin events based on your location I am geotagged in my home base St Louis and I'm super grateful because the orange pill app has helped connect me with bitcoiners in my new city so come join us just download the orange pill app and head to theorangepillapp.com for more information alright back to the show unplug your cold card and the reason I'm getting you to do this is to prove that you can deposit money into your cold card without it being plugged in you can continue adding to your savings without the cold card ever being plugged in you only need to plug it in if you want to spend so the cold card when I unplugged it the screen goes dark when I try to click anything it doesn't work anymore it is is it not the case with these devices the way that you have hard hard drives where you have to hit that eject button can you just unplug it anytime yeah you can just unplug at any time um yeah worst case scenario the only time that you really hope that doesn't happen is if you're in the middle of writing down your 24 words especially near the end if you don't do that yeah so so be careful as you're setting it up but other than that um yeah you can just straight up unplug it at any point and it just Powers down I get my wallet of Satoshi and I can scan the QR code that's right on the screen in the sparrow wallet and now I have my my other phone here all right so I'm just going to toggle this to Dollars and I'm going to send twenty dollars to this address add note it's gonna say demo return okay so now people can see on my wallet of Satoshi 20 I'm going to hit send relatively quickly I I believe you'll get a little notification from Sparrow wallet that pops up that says oh there's a a incoming transaction and typically it pops up in yeah there it goes um so those watching that saw what happened on screen right now two things there's a notification that says oh you have a new transaction but secondly if you were looking at the receive screen you would have seen that address change and the reason for that is that every time you send to an address uh in Sparrow it will generate a new one and that's kind of like a a privacy mechanism so uh if you just had a singular address um and you had multiple different people sending you money then people would be able to see how much money you have in that particular address when it swaps it out every single time for a new transaction it's just kind of helpful not kind of letting people know what's in your bank account more or less exactly so it'll change the other thing that I'll note about this receive screen sometimes it's a good idea to put in a label of where it's coming from we forgot to do that but that's okay we can add it after the fact um but nonetheless uh if you know you're going to receive you can always type in a little note in the label but what we'll do is we'll go up to the left where it says transactions and there's our our transaction coming in and actually we've already got a a confirmation there so we actually have um the twenty dollars now sitting the 64 000 and 26 sats are now in your in your penny from me Ben I mean no it's that volatility I think but honestly I mean can you just take a step back again this is incredible I mean lightning speed nobody exaggerates when they talk about just the the power and and this revolutionary technology that is Bitcoin where you can literally say I could have been in another country and I would have gotten it in the speed of light and no intermediary no Bank no one I had to trust no one that could censor me I mean it I don't think people appreciate it until they play around with it and actually see it and so I just it's never lost on me you know and it's and it's sent directly into your secure digital Vault that you just created offline on on a calculator that's right that's right okay so if I were to plug this back in can we take a look can I is there a way to see my balance just on the device no and I'm going to tell you why the device is unaware of the internet that is this I want you to think of the cold card as as a literal key like the key to your house doesn't know the contents of your house so exact same thing the key to a safety deposit box has no picture of what's inside the Box this is literally holding a key to your money it is offline by Design and so all that you've got in Sparrow is you've got basically the mechanism through which you can deposit money you've got a mechanism that says hey this is my little safety deposit box in this in the sky these are the slots so you can slide money into so that I have a balance this is just the key to the box that's it um so the the cold card doesn't know anything about your balance it just knows that it can unlock money if it's in the Box okay um but what we can do is we can make sure that you're able to send out of your cold card now that's all set up let's uh let's do that maybe if um uh well let's let's get in there first we'll I'll get you to plug in your cold card and put in your PIN so that you're ready to go first okay so I'm plugging the device back in you can see it right here if you're watching on video I'm going to type in one two three my prefix and then jealous and powder those are indeed my anti-fishing code words and then I'm going to hit check four five six all right it says ready to sign passphrase address Explorer secure logout Advanced slash tools and settings Perfect all right so you're on the main screen of your code card you're all good it's all plugged in we don't need to touch it yet um let's go to Sparrow and let's send yourself some money so maybe we can send it back to uh your wallet of Satoshi if you like that might be an easy thing to do okay so we're back in Sparrow here okay so you're gonna have to send and um so there's two different ways to do this if you had let's say somebody had texted you or emailed you or messaged you in a Bitcoin address you could paste it into the field that says pay to but if you're using something like uh wallet of Satoshi and you're sitting at your computer and uh and you were to hit receive and and that on your on your wallet of Satoshi when you do hit receive along the bottom there's different options of ways to receive and the one with the Bitcoin B is an on-chain address yep and so yeah so we're gonna we're gonna do the on chain address because um that's how we're securing our Bitcoin it's on chain with the cold card um and so that's the address we're going to use and I'll I'll give you the choice you can either copy that and message it over to yourself or in Sparrow there's actually a little camera icon beside the address field and that'll actually use your um your webcam and you'll be able to scan the address just from your webcam on your computer okay well let's uh let's go ahead and try that Bitcoin there's a camera here you know it should be able to scan relatively quickly perfect really really I mean honestly okay we'll label this my wallet of Satoshi here and just for the heck of it let's hit that Max button so you can obviously manually enter the amount over on the left there or you can just hit max if you're sending all of it out the other thing I'll show really quick is see where it says amount there's a drop down arrow um if you prefer to deal with the the decimals like with BTC you can choose that but right now it's already in SATs so we'll just leave it there I gotta we got to start talking in stats when I look at it it looks so much nicer in Seth yeah yeah sats are the standard for sure okay so now the next thing that you're gonna do you already said I want to send it to this address here's my label it's going to wallet of Satoshi here's the amount I'm sending the last thing I want you to do is down where it says fee see there's that little slider yep so you can slide that kind of back and forth but right now it's saying oh hey that's way overpaid or if you go way down lower it'll say high priority let's go for medium priority so right in the yellow range kind of in and around the eight I think that's probably pretty good there that's like 30 cents to send okay and this is again an on-chain not a lightning transaction an on-chain transaction um and so that's basically for those unfamiliar if you're saying well why would I bother paying more or less it's it's all around regular Bitcoin transactions on the main chain the fees are dependent on how busy the network is and how much data you're sending not the dollar amount that you're sending but how much data does your transaction require and you can get into the details of that later but um if you set it super low then you might be waiting longer if it says low priority if you set it medium or high then it'll get through relatively quickly so I'm not going to go into the little diagram at the bottom that's a question for an advance today um so so we'll leave that it's just kind of showing the flow of money out of your wallet into wallet of Satoshi but we'll we'll get into the details of all that fun stuff on another one okay so we'll hit create transaction yeah okay this just gives you an overview you don't need to again you're just saying hey it's this money is going to wallet of Satoshi it's going from your demo cold card we can finalize that transaction and you know it's funny because whenever I'm actually using my my cold storage devices and and again total transparency I'm actually switching to the cold card that's why I'm doing this um I believe in the product I've had so many people recommend it so I personally will be using the cold card now thanks to you not this particular one I'll do this on my own but um but you know that that was what gave me the most anxiety I mean I would sit there and when I was transferring from The Exchange to my cold car or cold uh storage wallet for the first time I was sweating like checking every letter and number worried that you know all of a sudden I could just be sending my Bitcoin off into the universe never to be seen or touched again um so can you explain just how careful do people really need to be in in verifying when when numbers come up when transactions you know things come up on the screen and you actually need to make sure that what your device maybe says is the same as what a screen might say yeah so good rule of thumb is like let's say you're sending yourself of money from The Exchange to your own wallet when you copy the address say to your cold card and you go and paste it in on Swan or wherever or to another wallet that you're sending from it's a good idea to check you know the first chunk of digits and the last chunk of digits of that address and just kind of cross reference and make sure that they look similar it would be it would be incredibly difficult for a wallet to be able to create a very similar address that somebody also owns that somebody would be able to steal it to that's likely not going to happen but there have been instances of wallets that were malicious that when you go or you get a virus and you go to paste if you don't check at all it might just paste in a totally different address so cross reference the addresses to make sure that they look the same and then the other thing obviously just due diligence around am I sending the right amount is that right did I did I didn't do like accidentally you know you should have the slider for the fee you can access it like if you weren't paying attention you slid it all the way to the right and you paid some exorbitant fee to send a transaction not great so just little details like that is it the right address am I sending the right amount and is the fee that I'm paying you know reasonable and that's that's pretty much it yeah okay all right so we're going to finalize the transaction for signing here yep and so your cold card is plugged in um again when in doubt in Sparrow wallet look for the Blue Button because that's always your next step all of these other buttons down at the bottom are the advanced stuff that we might use for an advanced video but we're doing the simple version we have a plugged in cold card with the pin already put in so you're going to click sign and then you can see the cold card listed it detects it you're going to click sign then it's going to ask you some questions on the cold card all right so it said validating and now a screen comes up that says okay to send question mark and it has the amount in Bitcoin not satoshi's .0063082 Bitcoin to the address and again this is where you know these numbers and letters come up you want to you want to verify um this is something that this is when I was first setting these up I'm like oh my gosh every single letter don't don't have too much anxiety it's not that difficult the network fee is going to be a tiny amount of Bitcoin press ok to approve and sign transaction X to abort so we're going to hit check green there you go yeah you see that bar come across it basically says what you've basically done is the equivalent of um when you have to sign a trend uh credit card transaction or something it's you giving that signature saying yes I approve this specific amount of money going to this specific address and no more and no less and so it now has that signature all you need to do is tell the Bitcoin Network about it so you're going to broadcast that information out to everyone and as soon as this goes off the there you go the world now knows that Nat has sent not specifically you but Nat has sent Bitcoin from her cold card to another address or from the address it was in to the new address nobody knows it was a cold card nobody knows that it's wallet of Satoshi but it has been sent and that transaction is now proliferating around the Bitcoin Network Satoshi which I'm going to bring up again it actually says how much Bitcoin is on the way into my wallet perfect so this is unconfirmed it's waiting it's in the mempool it's not a day where they're verifying a ton of nfts hopefully yes yes 100 and we brought the screen back up of the demo cold card so I just went back into transactions and you can see I'm I'm about to drain this entire wallet so whoever's watching this and wanted to drain first you can't do it and you actually got a confirmation already there you go all right well this is see I mean it is so much easier um than I really thought when I was entering into this space I thought this was so techy so over my head so impossible and that I almost want to out of convenience just trust a third party like I've always trusted the banks but you know it really it really is important to take the time to learn this maybe some people decide ultimately not to do it um you know I don't know why when it's this easy but it's just so important because in our world where we're seeing what's happening with these Banks and the financial system that's literally propped up by debt by by credit we don't have that money it doesn't exist somewhere in Vault you know I think it's really important for people to take self-soverty take responsibility over your financial future this is a an instrument of empowerment I really truly believe that you can do this anywhere in the world this is not I'm not we're in I'm in America Ben's in Canada you can be anywhere in in the world using these devices so I just I just really want to stress that it's a lot easier than you think it's much more approachable and if you have questions you know put them in the in the chat send me a message send me a DM I'm happy to you know go back and hopefully we'll do a second video but um but it's really easy and Ben made it even easier so thank you you did it no problem um all right can I show you one last thing before we wrap here absolutely yes okay so we just did our transaction so see up the top of sparrow where it says wallet of Satoshi can you click on that that little tab so every time you do a transaction it makes its own little tab for what you're working on once you're done with it once it's sent you can hit the little X to get rid of that tab so they'll now it'll go away and you're back in your wallet but also the cold card itself is a tab and you can actually X out of that so let's just try just in case because somebody that watches this will probably do it and then go where'd my wallet go it's not gone don't worry just hit the X where it says demo cold card up at the top of uh Sparrow wallet okay I hit X hit X here okay yeah okay so this is kind of this was the main screen of sparrow whenever you open it up and you don't have a wallet explicitly open in uh I think it's the same for Windows and Mac up at the top of your Mac screen with Sparrow wallet selected you're going to click on file and then open wallet and that will open up a spot where you should see your cold card demo wallet it's a little pop-up and you should be able to click open there you go there you go you need to open if you're watching on video this is a little bit more visual than on audio so um yeah I mean it looks pretty simple can you also get Sparrow on your phone let's say I have my iPhone and I want to toggle between the two so what I recommend for so Sparrow wallet is a desktop wallet but you can actually still view your cold card balance um from a variety of different options so when I'm using my cold card or or even just viewing my balance on my phone I like to use nunchuck wallet okay um which is awesome I've done videos on how to do it and actually nunchuck wallet does work with the NFC feature where you can tap your phone to your cold card and do transactions that way again for another day but uh you can you can definitely uh track your balance and deposit into it from nunchek wallet on your phone awesome cool well let me get back into a full screen here um just before you know we leave Ben we haven't had you on on the show and one of the reasons why some people tune into this podcast in particular is they love the backstories um so I'd love to hear a little bit more about your journey you know I know you're from Canada um I've had I've had the pleasure of seeing you and meeting you and your beautiful family in different conferences around the world um how did you end up finding Bitcoin and can you share even further back a little bit about just your upbringing yeah so um let's see how far back am I I love when you asked Odell this question he's like well I'm not gonna go that far back I know that are very open about this question but not that's that's okay um yeah so you know I I kind of uh I grew up um you know not having uh not having a lot of money and also not having a lot of Education in and around um and around anything Financial like I did not have that fiscally uh financially responsible um upbringing and so money to me always kind of escaped me I suppose um I I had a problem where I I wouldn't save and you know things through my childhood that just kind of led me to believe that like saving was just kind of a losing game and why bother and so uh but I always had a little bit of interest in I I wasn't a technical person but I also liked um playing around a little bit you know I'd play with different devices just for fun you know I was not not to the point where I'm like coding or anything like that but you know I liked my occasional little nerdy fix and so sometimes I would get fed articles about um you know Bitcoin as it was in its early stages and and I often would see it and go huh maybe that's interesting maybe I'll take a look at that but much like everybody you you think oh I missed the boat every time you see it yeah so I did that a good handful of times for for a year or so and um and then in one of those famous kind of blow-off tubs I'm looking at it going okay this is either a giant Ponzi scheme or there's something more to it and so I ended up going down a rabbit hole I actually read about it for about three months before I ever actually got any Bitcoin um and uh and I I got my first Bitcoin wallet and bought my first little bit of Bitcoin 50 bucks 100 bucks something like that and uh you know I had it in my own wallet actually at First uh and but the the same week that I bought uh was the week that mount gox imploded uh I didn't have I didn't have money there but all of my friends that I had said hey I'm looking at Bitcoin I might get some Bitcoin and then the week that happened I'm getting all these messages I hope you didn't buy any of that crap and and sending me all the articles but it was the recognition and and I'm sure you've noticed this too is there it was the recognition that the reporting around it was just wrong the the messaging around it was Bitcoin failed when really it was a poorly run business that failed and I was lucky enough that I had read enough and understood enough about Bitcoin at that point to go well if this reporting is totally wrong then actually Bitcoin is still working as expected and so barring a catastrophic failure of what I think Bitcoin is and and why I think it's important unless that changes then why would I stop using it stop learning and stop accumulating so I just kind of kept on going through that whole bear run as everybody assumed Bitcoin was dead and it paid off so years later again after tearing my hair out for a while I I learned enough and felt confident enough to kind of start helping other people learn about how to use the tools and um yeah it's been a wild seven years of the channel but nine years playing in Bitcoin so amazing I mean I I really truly admire what you've what you've done because there are so many people out there from different backgrounds you know busy and different jobs they're trying to figure this out and you make it so easy and approachable um what's something that you wish you knew at the beginning of your journey that you you know now especially embarking on all of these tutorials with different products and services I'm sure there must have been a lot of learning lessons along the way yeah I mean there's a couple that stand out one is um again to I'm going to give him a second shout out but uh Odell's Odell's famous quote stay humble and stack SATs there's there's no substitute for working hard spending less than you earn and just saving in Bitcoin um it may seem like it it may seem like a genius for a period of time but by and large most people uh when they they get a little too cute and they try to gamble a little bit and get ahead um would have been better off if they had just stayed humble stack SATs do what you're good at and and saving Bitcoin um I think that is is a huge lesson that I've learned over the years and there were many mistakes where I could have had many more SATs today uh but we all do it and that's the price of tuition um the other thing that I'll say is um and I'm going to give a shout out to Stefan Lavera for I think he coined this term but um analysis paralysis where you get into a situation where you you force yourself to stand still because you try to do too many things at once as you're learning in Bitcoin always simply ask what is the next singular step I can take to level up and so I'd say you know obviously a good trajectory is one get off zero get some Bitcoin two learn how to use a hot wallet and three get into Cold Storage if you can get those first three steps then you can start playing around and start learning some of the even cooler stuff like running a node or like some privacy stuff or lightning or you know those are all cherries on top of the foundation of self-custody and security so I would say start there one step at a time don't worry about doing too many things at once it's a process and that's okay that is such great advice I really appreciate your time and your help like I said you've made this so so easy um you guys can get your cold card with a special discount the link is in the show notes also a link to all of Ben's BTC sessions great tutorials so you can learn how to do some more advanced things hopefully he'll come back on the show to teach me a couple of more more things with both the cold card wallet and maybe some other devices so Ben thank you so so much no worries thanks for having me thank you so much for watching the video version of this show I really want to hear from you if you have suggestions or guest recommendations you can email me at Natalie talkingbitcoin.com Please Subscribe if you want more content and I'll see you next time

Channel: Natalie Brunell

Views: 25,934

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Id: IJbog_k5XWE

Length: 82min 54sec (4974 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 18 2023