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Hi, I'm 12, and my dad gave me $100 in Bitcoin. I have no idea what to do with it but he says it's a good thing to have. Why is it good? He told me to come here to ask you guys.
Just a tip for online privacy/hygiene: avoid sharing personal information as much as possible. Make random usernames and e-mail addresses, try not to "dox" yourself. Your future self will thank you :-)
You're a lucky son!
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Hi, thank you so much for letting me know. I just changed it. Mt dad was a little ashamed he forgot to mention that.
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humans tend to forget things which became too obvious over time :) so no need to be ashamed imo
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welcome and it's a great place to learn about the best money ever discovered...Bitcoin!
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You got a smart dad!!
Imagine all your toys. And all the toys of all your friends. Imagine all the toys of all the kids in the world!
You see that?
Maybe there are millions of kids in the world. Many have toys. Millions of toys. Rooms full of toys. Big containers with toys. Factories full of toys.
Now toys get created every Christmas right. The last 50 years before you were born toys got created every year! There are so many toys and so many toys get created every year. In the future when you grow up as old as your dad there will be many many toys created. They will never stop creating toys. Your sons and daughters when you have your own kids will have toys. Maybe you will start a tooy factory yourself and make money creating toys.
Now imagine there are only 21 special toys. These are very very hard to get. And nobody can make them. All kids are looking for these toys.
Because they can’t just be made. You can ask your dad for these 21 toys but your dad wouldn’t easily find one.
Can you imagine all the kids wanting one of these 21 toys?
But the most kids in the world do not yet know about these special toys. Most kids are just asking their dads for the normal toys at Christmas. The toys that anybody can make.
Some dads are special. Some dads are smart. Your dad is very smart. He is not like the other dads buying all those other toys for their kids.
No your dad has found one part of one of the 21 super toys for you.
What you got is bitcoin. That is one of the 21 toys. And the piece you got is called a sat. It is a piece of one of the only 21 toys that will ever be created.
Lucky you!!!
Are you going to ask your dad next time to buy one of the ordinary toys everybody got? Or are you going to ask your dad to buy you another sat thatbis another piece of the 21 super toys?
Good luck. We here all are collecting sats a piece of the 21 super cool toys in the world.
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This analogy makes sense the toys are like normal money, and kids want that for Christmas, like all my friends, Bitcoin isn't popular at school, and everybody wants standard toys, but when it's Christmas time, I will ask my dad for the special stuff.
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This is a great explanation!!
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As a dad, I approve this message :)
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Let's say your dad offered you a choice: an allowance of $50 a month, or $1 million I'm monopoly money... I assume you'd take the $50. The reason is that literally anyone can print monopoly money; it's worth only the paper it's printed on. The US dollar is harder to produce. The paper is of higher quality, but more importantly, if the government catches you printing dollars, you'll go to prison. Monopoly money is easy to produce, dollars are hard to produce (or at least harder)
Funny thing about the dollar (or the euro or whatever) is that the government often finds reasons to print more of them. This causes prices to rise as a growing number of dollars is divided over a relatively constant amount of stuff that people want to buy. The dollar is way better than monopoly money, but it's still too easy to print more dollars.
The reason bitcoin is important is because it's much harder to make than the dollar. No one can arbitrarily decide to make more bitcoins.
It'll take time to understand all these things but you're way ahead of other kids your age and kudos to you for trying.
Also, stay away from things that sound like bitcoin sorta, but have different names. Those will get you into trouble. There's a term for them but you should ask your dad about that.
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Don't people realize that the government is printing money, and prices are going up? I watched a Tuttle Twins episode about this and it makes sense. And I also will stay away from "crapcoins."
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Trust him and start saving. Talk to him about using cold storage to start building Your own treasury. A good entry point to understand why btc will be important in Your future is learning about money, its history and how it is in trouble nowadays. Will be a great journey if You start studying this together with Your dad. Try use Youtube and other social media channels to accumulate knowledge. And do it always together with Your family to get best advice.
Welcome, friend. And enjoy it. There will be a lot of surprising stuff about politics, culture and history to learn that makes You advance rapidly.
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My dad and I learned about currency devaluation, and I hope Bitcoin's value keeps going up.
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It will but try to not focus on short term price in dollars. Over your life it will be the safest place to park your life energy.
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If You really understood this point about debasement and You go on learning about Fiat money and the debt spiral You already won! But: You need to learn about the tough times when there is a crash (time to buy more), the volatility to stomach the downside. And You should study the ecosystem like the Lightning Network.
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You are a lucky kid!
Did he teach you how to store your btc and the importance of self custody?
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Yes he did. He bought me a ledger and showed me how to use it, and he told me about keeping my Bitcoin myself.
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Welcome to lunarpunk ;)
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What's Lunarpunk?
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Congratulations! Unless your dad gave you a list of words (12 or 24 in length also known as a seedphrase) you might have $100 in bitcoin IOU's. Check out SeedSigner.com and ask your dad for some more money to buy one (he will gladly give you money to buy the parts) and you can build it together as a fun project! There's a lot of good resources on the website, you'll learn a ton about bitcoin in just a couple hours over there.
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I have a ledger and I got 24 words. I will check out that website and will probably learn tons about Bitcoin. Thanks for telling me about it.
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I agree with Sawzall. Ledger is not a bad place to start but seedsigner is a great place to go to learn more about loads of stuff. It's good because you are in. If you don't have a little to care about, you are on the outside looking in. That's okay too but you'll learn way more and it's pretty cool to get to know different people. Learning might be useful and you can learn as much as you want or don't want to. It's up to you and that's good.
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Bitcoin lets you have freedom. You know how sometimes your dad will tell you to do things you don't want to do? Well, with enough bitcoin, it lets you say "no" to a lot more people and simply carry on as you see fit.
Now, you may decide that your father provides some useful guidance and want to listen to him even if it is not out of feeling compelled to do so (being a bitcoiner means the odds are good he is smarter than most dads so you are rather fortunate there -- you picked a good one), but nothing stops you from listening to him even while having the choice not to.
At 12, it is easy to simple to find yourself going with what the natural environment guides you to do without questioning the nature of that environment or how it came to be. Are the actions you take truly the ones you think have merit?
Now perhaps you are thinking having freedom sounds nice... but $100 of bitcoin, even if it grows 10x tomorrow, only buys you so much. If you had to pay for all your food and pay for your rent, you would quickly run out of money. At 12, it is harder to earn money than it is for an adult -- but if you pursue a "normal" path that ends with you going to college, you will be earning money at age 22, and by that time, the dollar might have collapsed and the value of bitcoin might have grown 1000x.
So that is what you face: 1) pursue education and find your earning potential in bitcoin terms is very low; 2) attempt to build a valuable business immediately under the assumption that yes, it won't be as big, but will it really be 100x or 1000x smaller than what you can build in a decade? Or 3) Realize that I am just some random person on the internet posing the question in particular way and the reality is that you can do absolutely anything that the laws of physics permit ;)
[2 weeks later, maybe: "Dirac, did you talk my son into dropping out of middle school to start stacking more sats?" 😂]
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Why is building a business better than getting a job through college? Thanks for the advice and maybe I'll listen to my dad now.
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Let me break it down with a simpler example: let's say this summer you worked a job that earns you $6k total and bitcoin goes sideways the next few months. You will have earned 0.2 bitcoin. Now let's say next year, you have gotten smarter, and figured out how to earn $9k in a summer, but the bitcoin price is at $90k... well now you will only earn 0.1 bitcoin.
It is extremely hard to keep up with bitcoin's growth rate in terms of increasing one's earning potential. Another way of saying this is that the opportunity cost of your time now is higher than it will ever be.
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It’s pretty simple. Governments can create money when they run out, so eventually they make too much, and the value of the money falls.
Bitcoin has a limit on how much can be created, so if people want it, the value will go up over time.
I gave my son $300 in bitcoin a few years back, and he kept it. Now it’s worth a few thousand dollars. He used some for a new PC, some for a trip, and is still saving most of it. It’s the easiest tool for building wealth (or not losing wealth) when governments and financial predators are trying to take it from you at every turn.
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Ok, I will save my sats, and in a few years I will thank you!
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Keep quiet and try to get more
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Why should I be quiet?
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you could become a target, try to avoid
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Just hold keep stacking one day you will be able to buy a house with it or a car
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Smart think to his/her Daddy he playing some chess with his/her son
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I hope you like this story :)
Once upon a time in the wonderful world of Pokémon, there was a legendary card known as the "Illustrator Pikachu." It was the rarest and most expensive Pokémon card ever created. Kids from all over the world dreamed of owning this valuable card, and its worth was beyond imagination.
But as time went on, the kids started to face some problems with their beloved Pokémon cards, especially when they wanted to use them as a store of value, just like people use money to buy things.
Firstly, scarcity became an issue. While Illustrator Pikachu was rare, the creators could always make more Pokémon cards, leading to even more powerful and expensive cards. This meant that the value of existing cards could go down, just like when too many berries flood the market.
Secondly, divisibility was a concern. You couldn't buy a new game with just a piece of a Pokémon card, and trading was sometimes unfair if one person had a super powerful card that was impossible to split.
Portability was another problem. If it rained outside, kids worried about their Pokémon cards getting ruined. They couldn't carry their entire collection wherever they went, and keeping them safe for a long time became tricky. They couldn't put them in a Poké Ball for protection, after all!
Some countries even banned Pokémon cards, leading to censorship resistance issues. Kids from those places couldn't enjoy the fun of collecting cards and had to miss out on the excitement of trading and battling with friends.
Durability was a significant concern too. Pokémon cards were made of paper, and accidents happened. Cards got torn, creased, or stained, reducing their value and making kids feel really sad.
And there was the problem of verifiability. Some dishonest people created fake Pokémon cards, making it challenging to tell the difference between a real Illustrator Pikachu and a clever counterfeit.
However, one day, the kids heard about something extraordinary called "Bitcoin." It was like a new type of currency that could solve all the problems they faced with Pokémon cards.
Bitcoin had a limited supply, just like rare Pokémon cards, and no one could create more of it, making it truly scarce. It was divisible into tiny parts, so you could use exactly the amount you needed for any purchase, big or small.
The best part was that Bitcoin wasn't physical like Pokémon cards; it was digital! This meant it was portable and could be carried safely in a special digital wallet on their phones. They didn't have to worry about rain or carrying heavy cards around anymore.
Bitcoin was also censorship-resistant because no country or person could control it or ban it. Everyone could use it and be a part of its amazing world.
Being digital, Bitcoin was incredibly durable too. It didn't wear out or get damaged like paper cards, and it could last for hundreds of years without losing its value.
Most importantly, Bitcoin was verifiable. It had a unique code that proved its authenticity, and everyone could check if it was real or fake. This meant no more worries about falling for counterfeit cards!
With Bitcoin, the kids realized they had found the perfect solution to all the problems they faced with Pokémon cards. They still loved collecting their favorite Pokémon, but they now knew that when it came to being a store of value and a reliable currency, Bitcoin was the true Pokémon master!
And so, the children continued their exciting adventures in the Pokémon world, while also exploring the magical realm of Bitcoin, where they learned valuable lessons about scarcity, divisibility, portability, censorship resistance, durability, and verifiability. Together, they lived happily ever after! 🚀💫
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It's future money!
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Bravo!
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It's one great big marshmallow test, if you can resist the urge to take a reward today, you will receive a greater reward in the future. The cool thing about this game is you can keep adding to the size of your future reward and get paid for being patient and learning good financial habits which is spend less than you make
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I agree. I will try to keep it all, and add to it over time. Thank you for the advice!
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You've got an amazing dad. My younger brother got some Bitcoin a few years later than you and had similar questions in the beginning.
I remember sending him this documentary as a start: https://youtu.be/LszOt51OjXU
Also, Stacker News is a great place to hang out, ask questions, and get some Zaps in to get paid in Bitcoin for being part of the community.
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What is the best way to earn sats on Stacker News? Also, I will watch the documentary. Thanks for the advice.
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You can get zapped. It's that Lightning symbol next to every post or answer. If people like your ideas or content, they'll send some Sats your way. They'll then land in your wallet. Another way is to get onto things like nostr and get rewarded for good content. There are tones of threads on here to dive down that rabbit hole.
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Good Dad!
Hope you spend some time learning about bitcoin
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Congratulations, stay humble, stack sats, and let this be the last time you share the amount you have. Good luck!
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Go to LNMarkets.com. There's no KYC (verification) required and you can use any Lightning address or email to sign up. Lever your $100 bitcoin 10x. What a few hours, then come back and tell us what you learned.
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Save it safe in your offline wallet, record the day. Come back to it in 5-6 years and compare your $100 bitcoin from today to the future value. Thank Your Dad :-) Then get a summer job and stack some more. You will get the benefits from it in the future, invest in yourself and never look back. Oh, and Thank Your Dad again! :-)
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Congratulations!
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