Crypto

My goal is not to make a money, not an “investment”. This is simply a form of backup and diversification. There are a few situations motivating me to do this:

  • The USA = sketchy government which could take away my money if they felt so inclined.
  • China (PRC) = sketchy government which could take away my money if they felt so inclined.

The financial system in either of these countries is at an unknown (but non-zero) risk of collapse. Mainly due to volatility in the civil structure of the USA, and China being a direct downstream consumer which depends on that structure.

Wallets

There are three kinds of wallets:

  • Hot wallets - Connected to the internet, and the blockchain.
  • Cold wallets - Offline software wallets.
  • Hardware wallets - Offline wallet with small embedded system for storing private keys.

No keys = no coin.

So, it’s best to keep your coin off of exchanges, and in a wallet which you control.

Hot wallets also have an important differentiation, there are:

  • The kind that you don’t actually own your private keys, e.g., your money stays on the exchange.
  • The kind where you own access to the raw private keys, e.g., standalone wallet application which lives on your file system. Can be mobile or desktop.

Seeing as my goal is to simply buy some cryptocurrency, sit on it as an asset of possibly long term (or maybe short term) insurance, I don’t want all of my crypto to sit in a exchange. I also don’t want to be limited to one exchange.

Also, exchanges are prone to collapse and hacks.

For me, I chose Exodus as a wallet. It’s great, because it works on iOS and desktop. It’s also great because it’s fully decoupled from exchanges.

Exchanges

Trading platforms vs. brokers

  • Trading platform → connects buyers and sellers. (kraken, localbitcoins, bitstamp)
  • Brokers → They buy coin for you from miners.

My addresses

These can be sent coin and it will go directly to my wallet. That’s sick.

  • Bitcoin: bc1qrqxfkj04xf2k6tpctfp5mmhs3w5qfxk3dfd9nq
  • Dogecoin: DJXqjrGzVBJMSAJ3smsiANV4gi4RFK2W9h
  • Ethereum: 0xec95DD585894dA68948A65C5f7BffCF947418449

Arguments Against Crypto

See my notes on why crypto sucks.

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