“Get off zero.”
I wish someone had told me that the first time I learned about bitcoin.
Among all important things in your life, perhaps one of the most important actions for your financial life that you can take is buying your first bitcoin. Getting off zero.
Most of today’s world is still unaware of the change taking place in money, but if you’re paying attention and want to position yourself accordingly, then read on. We’ll have you set up with your first bitcoin safely in cold storage by the end of this article.
What Does “Get Off Zero” Mean?
The phrase “get off zero” simply refers to the act of buying your first bitcoin, thus protecting you from fiat debasement.
“Get off zero” is a mantra that bitcoiners have taken up to spread the message about the importance of bitcoin to everyday people. Fiat currency debasement is a problem that every human on the planet has to deal with, but owning even a tiny fraction of bitcoin puts you in an infinitely better position to protect yourself from slowly losing your purchasing power over time.
If you have a 0% allocation to bitcoin today, you should understand why that’s a dangerous position to be in.
Why Is It Important To Get Off Zero?
To know why having zero bitcoin is like playing with fire, it’s important to understand bitcoin’s monetary policy.
Bitcoin is perfectly scarce. In total, there will only ever be 21 million BTC available to the world. Bitcoin is infinitely divisible, meaning that with those 21 million coins, we can divide them into infinitesimally smaller fractions. This flexibility accommodates for its rise in value over time, so that loaf of bread you want to buy may cost 0.1 BTC today, but tomorrow it may only cost 0.01 BTC, then 0.001 BTC, and so on…
The standard unit of division today is a “satoshi”. Sats. There are 100 million sats per bitcoin, meaning there are 2.1 quadrillion sats in total.
Now, how does the dollar’s valuation look against these 2.1 quadrillion sats over time?
This chart, which looks like a rug pull, shows that $1 USD gets you 2,336 sats (0.00002336 BTC) today – a bit less than the 40 million sats (0.4 BTC) that a dollar could buy you back in 2012.
Bitcoin is not rug pulling anyone, though. This is simply what the value of infinite fiat currency looks like when priced against a truly finite asset.
From this perspective, it’s not unreasonable to think that one day, $1 may only net you one sat, or even less, if this trend continues.
If bitcoin is to become the next global reserve asset, it’s critical that you protect yourself from this trend. The fiat that you hold in your bank account will continue to devalue against scarcer assets. But even historically scarce assets like gold and real estate are technically infinite and have zero scarcity when priced against the only perfectly scarce asset, bitcoin.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t own a home or nice gold jewelry, but bitcoin’s new monetary policy demands that all value trends to zero against it over time. So don’t expect to be able to continue protecting your wealth in those assets that have historically worked.
This is critical to understand.
Even if you’re well off with a diversified portfolio of historically safe, value-appreciating long-term assets, every single one of them will also lose value relative to bitcoin over the long term.
And if we enter into a world where merchants at large decide to accept bitcoin, you better hope to have some if they also decide that they don’t want to accept devaluing fiat, heavy gold bars, or a house as a form of payment for your coffee and groceries.
It doesn’t matter how rich you are in fiat terms if the world moves on to a different set of monetary rules. You’re playing the wrong game at that point.
With 21 million BTC total, assuming equal distribution to the whole world (which is impossible), there would be a maximum of about 0.0026 BTC, or 260,000 sats per person.
You can purchase that amount for $111 today. But as bitcoin continues to appreciate as more people try to escape fiat, that price tag will keep going up.
Don’t be late. Get off zero bitcoin today.
How You Can Get Off Zero
To ensure maximum protection of your wealth while also keeping things simple, here are quick steps to buying and securing your first stack of bitcoin.
1. Generate & Store Your Seed Phrase Securely
The first order of business, before you even purchase bitcoin, is ensuring you have a safe place to store it.
Keeping it with a custodian is not getting off zero bitcoin. When you hold your bitcoin on an exchange or in an ETF, you are giving up custody to them, and they give you an IOU, essentially, in return.
Until you take self custody, you don’t truly have any bitcoin.
It all starts with generating a seed phrase safely for your private key. Our guide walks through plenty of ways that you can safely generate your own seed phrase without having to trust any external third parties.
If you are in a pinch and want to keep things simple, however, you can rely on a seed phrase generated by a dedicated Bitcoin wallet (Discussed in step two below). Writing a seed phrase down that’s provided by a hardware wallet is commonplace for many bitcoiners. Just make sure that the device you are using is open-source to verify that it won’t produce a seed phrase that’s pre-determined by the wallet manufacturer.
After generating it, you’ll have to write it down and store it safely. The best way to do this is with a metal seed phrase storage product, but there are other acceptable methods that may work for you.
2. Get A Bitcoin Wallet
Whether you purchase one from the market or build one yourself, you will need to get your hands on a vessel to store your private key in.
While a hardware device is preferable, software wallets can get the job done too if you only have the means to operate from a computer. We’ve covered the top 10 Bitcoin-only wallets in detail, both hardware and software, so that you can understand the differences between them and make the right choice for you.
If you don’t want to buy a pre-made device from any sole company, you can build one yourself using the SeedSigner. SeedSigner merely provides the tools you need to build a hardware device and configure it to your own preferences.
After getting your storage device, rather than trusting that the seed phrase the wallet gives you is properly randomized and unknown to others, you can import your own private key using the seed phrase you generated yourself.
3. Buy Your First Bitcoin
Now that you have a safe place to keep your bitcoin, you can buy some safely using either a KYC or non-KYC exchange.
In terms of KYC exchanges:
Swan (affiliate) is the first place to look for a reputable Bitcoin-only exchange that makes it easy to stack bitcoin and move it off the platform into cold storage. They even offer an auto-withdraw feature that takes care of transfers for you, so you can set it and forget it.
CashApp (affiliate) is another great option because of their low fees and ease of use. CashApp is one of the most straightforward ways to buy bitcoin, since it’s already integrated with the traditional financial system. Many people already have CashApp installed on their mobile device, so getting quick access to bitcoin is easy.
If you prefer the anonymity and safety of non-KYC platforms, check out our affiliate AgoraDesk, or consider other platforms like Robosats, HodlHodl, or Bisq. While KYC exchanges may be easier to use, non-KYC platforms help you use bitcoin anonymously and protect your privacy.
In general with non-KYC bitcoin, you will have to expect to pay a relative premium on its spot price given the fact that all non-KYC trades take place over the counter (OTC).
4. Test Your Backup
Now, don’t just send the full clip of bitcoin you just purchased directly into cold storage without looking. You’ll want to ensure that your backup works properly. In case you ever lose your hardware device, you’ll also lose your bitcoin if you don’t have a proper recovery process in place.
For most people, you can simply purchase or build a new device, and import your private key with the associated 12 or 24 word seed phrase that you wrote down.
Keep in mind, however, that alternative self-custody methods like multisignature setups require extra steps to recover your bitcoin.
5. Transfer Bitcoin To Cold Storage
Finally, once you know that your Bitcoin wallet is working properly and will house your Bitcoin private key without any hiccups, then feel free to transfer your bitcoin to the wallet and save it for the long haul.
It’s best practice to use a new BTC address each time you transfer BTC to cold storage as an easy additional layer of privacy. If you send to a static address, it may be more convenient, but it leaks your financial privacy as anyone watching that specific address can see how much bitcoin you store there.
There are plenty of other best practices for retaining your privacy with bitcoin. Once you are more comfortable with the technology, you should look into those practices and how else you can use bitcoin to keep your privacy protected.
At this point, though, congratulations! You’ve officially gotten off zero, and are now protected from long-term devaluation of your currency and other assets that you own.
Other Ways To Earn Bitcoin
You may not have the luxury of buying nice protective seed phrase storage products or hardware devices, but don’t fret; There are still plenty of other ways you can earn bitcoin online and get off zero.
Thanks to bitcoin’s Lightning network, bitcoin can move a lot more freely online than it once could. That enables entirely new ways to monetize online content and engagement.
Alternatively, if you’re a business owner, you may consider accepting bitcoin for your products/services. This way, you can passively earn BTC doing what you always do, while supporting the Bitcoin circular economy and pushing hyperbitcoinization forward.
Finally, while mining bitcoin may not be as efficient for an individual, it’s the best way you can earn bitcoin for directly supporting the network’s integrity. Without miners all around the world contributing hash power, bitcoin would lose its security, and thus lose its value. It takes the collective efforts of everyone to make decentralized money work for the world.
Get On Zero…Fiat
After you get off zero bitcoin and start to learn the fundamentals of bitcoin, you come to understand that the end goal, ultimately, should be to get on zero fiat.
The sooner we are able to adapt our lives to bitcoin, and thus the quicker the Bitcoin circular economy spreads, the sooner we can do away with fiat monetary policy.
Everyone has bills to pay and mouths to feed, and luckily Bitcoin developers are working everyday to create products and services that let us spend our bitcoin on retailers, restaurants, bills, and more. Depending on where you live in the world, you can already operate entirely on a Bitcoin standard. However, there is still a lot of friction in the way of getting people there, let alone getting off zero. Hopefully with articles like these, you have a better understanding of what it means to live on a Bitcoin standard, and how to implement bitcoin into your own life.
Final Thoughts
It’s of utmost importance in the 21st century to get off of a zero bitcoin allocation and start saving your wealth in the scarcest asset ever created.
The pitfalls of fiat currency will only continue to widen as governments are forced to print more fiat. On the other hand, bitcoin will only continue to become more scarce as BTC moves into cold storage. Eventually, there will be none left, which is a problem that our fractional reserve system has never had to face before.
Don’t get caught in the aftermath of this problem. Get off zero and buy your first bitcoin today.
Thank You
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