Hello folks. I'm fairly new to this Bitcoin business. My grandson has been teaching me about it over the past few months, and I'll admit, a lot of it goes right over my head. He helped me set up one of those Lightning wallets called Wallet of Satoshi, and so far it seems to work just fine.
I've used it a couple of times now—bought some fresh vegetables at the farmers market and even treated the family to Steak 'n Shake with it. I have to admit, it was kind of neat paying for things with my phone.
Now, I don't pretend to understand all the technical stuff. Every time I ask my grandson about it, he starts talking about Bitcoin being "moral money" and then somehow the conversation ends up on thermodynamics. He's a smart kid, but he loses me after about five minutes.
The more I've been thinking about it, though, the more I'm wondering if I ought to slow down a little. I never really considered the risks that come with using something like Bitcoin or Bitcoin-related stocks, and I'd rather be cautious until I have a better handle on what I'm doing.
One thing I've been wondering: is Wallet of Satoshi FDIC insured? If not, how do I know the money I have in there is actually safe? I'd appreciate any advice from folks who've been doing this longer than I have.
PSA: This quacks like satire.
Fight fire with fire.
#1520584
didnt wanna be the one to say it.
We love to hear about new Bitcoiners!
I'm glad you are thinking about this risk. In fact, "Wallet" of Satoshi is a misnomer - It's actually a "Bank" of Satoshi. You have a bank balance that is denominated in Bitcoin, and the custodian sends payments for you when you ask. It's convenient because WoS handles the Lightning infrastructure for you, so you get easy an easy user experience.
The downside is that WoS can steal your money, censor your payments, or spy on your transactions/sell your data. Basically, all of the properties that make Bitcoin special no longer apply once you deposit it into a bank.
If you want to store and save any significant amount of Bitcoin, you should switch to a different wallet software that allows you to generate your own private keys, which looks like a set of 12 random words. Write these 12 words down on a sheet of paper, and keep it hidden. This will allow you to recover your BTC in case your phone breaks or gets stolen.
I recommend Wasabi Wallet for desktop and Phoenix Wallet for mobile.
(FDIC insurance is arguably a worthless promise anyways in the event of widespread financial collapse. The amount of deposits FDIC covers is less than 2% of their reserves)
Wasabi is great for those who already kinda know what they’re doing, but I often recommend Sparrow for newbs cause coinjoins might be a bit overwhelming at first. And unfortunately some brokers still block coinjoined coins.
Sure you can use Wasabi without coinjoining too.
Sparrow is horrible for newbs because it leaks your entire wallet history to chainalysis servers by default. I would never recommend Sparrow to someone if I wasn't certain they were already running their own full node.
Do you have any recent examples of this happening? I've coinjoined for years and never had any funds blocked.
Yep, the only part of Wasabi's UI that wouldn't make sense without coinjoining is the "Privacy Progress %" metric. I hope that a future redesign will move this away from the main screen so it won't bother people who don't coinjoin.
Sure. Any public Electrum server can potentially be monitored.
Yeah, my concern was that newbies might get overwhelmed.
Not super recent but late last year some shitcoin chain bridges (BTC to USDC) blocked coins from Wasabi. I would assume it hasn’t changed.
FDIC insurance only applies to US dollars sitting in Regulated Banks in the US.
Your Wallet of Satoshi is neither storing dollars, nor is the company a regulated bank.
It is a startup out of Australia. You don't know the money is 'safe'. It could all shut down tomorrow, and you would have no recourse.
Take the time to learn about storing Bitcoin in offline, or cold wallets. Of course, the 'value' is never guaranteed, but the coins cannot move without the offline key.
When we say "Cold Wallet Bitcoin" is safe, we mean that as long as the keys are not leaked, the coin cannot be moved or stolen.
register your nym so we can talk
Probably not it’s free
Nice to have more boomers around. Siggy was getting lonely.
How did you find SN anon grandpa?
How did you get money in to wallet of satoshi?