GettingOnZero - Attempting to Live on Bitcoin in Germany (Experiment) \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Hey, guys! So, I recently watched a podcast by Jack Mallers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdZZ7780b-w), and his idea is fascinating - let's get on zero. Convert your paycheck to sats, live off the credit card for the whole month, and then pay it with bitcoin at the end of the month. Due to bitcoin volatility, I find it challenging, remembering times when bitcoin lost 30-40% in a month. But, to be honest, I've had similar thoughts lingering for a while now - how do you get on zero? It's probably possible in El Salvador, El Zonte, at the Bitcoin beach where you have a circular economy. It might work in cities where you have at least some merchants and shops accepting bitcoin payments. However, in my city, I think I know of only 2 restaurants and 1 ticket shop that accept bitcoin payments.

In the meantime, I have some experience using online companies that sell gift cards and merchandise for sats, like Bitrefill, Coingate, and The Bitcoin Company. I also tried to use Nexo, but they hold your bitcoin for you, and you know the saying - not your keys, not your bitcoin.

One story from Jack Mallers' podcast struck me tough - if you are not going to watch it, the idea is this: he and Dyllan wanted to go to a restaurant to get a steak, but when Jack saw the price, he thought it was overpriced in sats terms. That's it - I thought - if you get on zero, you automatically have to price everything in sats - and isn't that what we want in the end? So, I guess we have to start somewhere. We had this in the past when the German Mark was replaced with the Euro; people were holding Euros already but still pricing everything in Marks for a while. I have friends who still say - well, it used to be this amount of Marks, etc. So, this is a really long process to reprice everything in your head.

So, the experiment.

The idea of my experiment is to allocate some monthly budget (let's say 250 EUR a week) in bitcoin and then try to live my daily life, knowing that I have 0 EUR for the week and ~620,000 sats.

Let's see how it works. I will start on the 1st of February and will update the post as I go through the month.

132 sats \ 2 replies \ @SahilC0 31 Jan

Hey! I've been on zero for 2 tax years, happy to answer any questions if you have any

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Catcher OP 31 Jan

I think most obvious will be - what's your way of doing it - spending credit or spending BTC directly? I think I'll have more questions when I spend a week like this at least)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SahilC0 31 Jan

Great, shoot em my way here or twitter! I spend on credit and then pay off the bill with sats (selling). Honestly though, most of the time when income comes in, I just pay off the bill directly without buying/selling first.

In the future, we'll have better tooling for automation. i.e., auto-buy any time fiat hit your account. Auto-"sell" any time you pay a bill.

writing a get on zero series guide that will come out next month. stay tuned