Learn: Why Bitcoin? (start here)

Instead of watching that movie, TV show, or sports game tonight, begin watching these presentations, in order:

Learn: How to Buy and Hold Bitcoin

  • River.com: The best place to begin buying bitcoin for the first time.

  • Strike.me: An alternative place to buy bitcoin that can also serve as a great way to transact with other people.

  • Unchained.com: The best place to get help securing bitcoin holdings without single points of failure, protecting you from both third-party custodians, as well as from yourself. Unchained allows you to buy bitcoin, but setting up the secure custody is a prerequisite. You can even upgrade an IRA or 401k to bitcoin here.

  • 11 Imperatives to Defend your Bitcoin from Modern Scammers: After you get bitcoin, you need to understand how to keep it safe and not become the victim of a trick.

Learn: Why Bitcoin? (do the work, grow your conviction)

Learn: How Bitcoin Works

Learn: Navigating Bitcoin

  • BTCSessions (Youtube Channel): If you have your eye on software, hardware, or an app related to bitcoin, chances are Ben has a helpful tutorial on his channel.

  • Bitcoin Optech: A weekly newsletter describing the current technical and directional debates in the bitcoin community and other bitcoin news.

  • Metal Seed Storage Reviews: Jameson Lopp has stress-tested most metal seed products on the market.

  • Mempool.space: One of the most useful websites for visualizing the bitcoin protocol acting in real time; its API is also available for people running their own node.

  • Clark Moody Dashboard: A nice dashboard for up-to-date data related to bitcoin.

  • Timechain Calendar: Another nice dashboard for visualizing the current state of the bitcoin network.

  • Glassnode: Create a free or paid account for playing around with on-chain analysis.

  • checkonchain: A resource with many great charts to examine bitcoin trends and data.

  • Pay Me in Bitcoin Theory: An article by Parker Lewis explaining why a money must first be acknowledged as a reliable store of value over time prior to becoming widely used for payments.

Advanced Technical Tools

  • Transaction Size Calculator: Tool to learn how transaction sizes are calculated, and thus, transaction fees as well.

  • CPFP Calculator: I website I created to help calculate the fee rate for a CPFP transaction.

  • Deconstruct Transaction Hex: Learn how transactions work behind-the-scenes.

  • Coinb.in: Open source tool to create, verify, sign and broadcast raw transactions. Warning: unsafe for beginners.

  • Wallets Recovery: A list of derivation paths for recovering funds from different wallets.

  • IanColeman.io: A collection of useful tools to play with behind-the-scenes operations including BIP39 mnemonic code converter, and Shamir’s secret sharing. Warning: do not use for keys securing funds.

  • Address Calculator: Several tools to demonstrate how to start at private keys and end at addresses. Warning: do not enter private keys that are securing funds.

  • PSBT Explorer: Decode raw PSBT data.

  • OP_RETURN Bot: Easy way to create a permanent message in the bitcoin blockchain.

  • Txstats: A collection of interesting dashboards showing popularity of address types, etc.