Best Way to Learn About Bitcoin is to Just Take the Plunge and Buy Some

Here’s a good piece of advice:

Unpopular opinion: Buy #Bitcoin first, then learn about it. Nothing will give you the motivation to learn as having skin in the game.” – @Adelgary

Another tweet I liked about pretty much the same concept:

Stephen Chow @chowcollection· You’re gonna die one day, might as well buy $100 of #Bitcoin in 2021 and see what happens in a few decades. How are you gonna feel in 20 years if that 280,000 sats is enough to retire on? Did you really need to buy that pair of shoes or go out to dinner that one time, instead of RETIRING FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT?

The simple truth is that there’s a lot to learn about bitcoin. Even bitcoin maximalists still discover fascinating new things about it years later. It just never stops. Cryptography, wallets, confirmations, public keys, fees, blockchain, miners, nodes, lightning. How can a newbie possibly comprehend all that?

Well, the truth is that just reading about it won’t help you. You might have the mental capacity to comprehend it, but you really need to get your hands on some bitcoin and use it in the real world to see its potential. Arrange an international payment to some freelancer that can’t use Paypal or wire transfers. See how permissionless it is.

Feel the anxiety of the first transaction you make with a moderate sum between your accounts. Ten minutes is not a lot, but an observed pot never boils. You stare at the wallet and wait for the transaction to go through. And you wonder, did you make a mistake? Did you paste the target address just right? Did you double-check? Did you put in enough payment fees or will it take forever to go through? Should you check the mempool? How many sats per byte is it right now? What does the estimator say?

You refresh the blockchain explorer, it says 0 confirmations, transaction pending.

Did you lose your money?

And then it goes through. Just like that, bitcoin appears on your wallet. No gatekeepers, no banks, no working hours, no signatures on paper, only cryptographic ones, and no limits. Absolutely no limits.

And that’s when you realise this is the internet of money, and how it will change the world.

So, take the plunge and buy your first 100 dollars or euros’ worth of bitcoin. You can always sell it back if you don’t want it.