21% chance $100k in Nov and 73% in 2024 according to Polymarket.

why not just buy a btc etf?

The plethora of questions you have about this is concerning. I have never used Kraken or Jade (or metal plates, which seems a bit extreme), so I can't answer them. But I suggest you reconsider your plan.

Self-custody is the gold standard for experienced, savvy crypto investors. But it sounds as if you've never even sent crypto from one wallet address to another.

So from a risk management perspective, which is more likely: that Kraken will lose your coins somehow, or that you will lose access to them yourself? And if leaving them on Kraken seems too risky, what about Binance or Coinbase—do you think they would be safe there?

The counterargument to "not your keys, not your coins"—which won't be popular here, I realize—is that the average retail investor is more likely to lose their coins through self-custody vs. just leaving them on a reputable exchange.

And what if you die prematurely or become mentally incapacitated: will someone else know what to do with your metal plates?

To be honest, you sound like a good candidate to buy a BTC ETF if that is an option for you.

The counterargument:

Because I'm from the UK and bitcoin ETF are not available here.

Happy Thanksgiving

Splitting your seed phrase in two is a bad idea. You've reduced the chance of someone discovering it, but you now have twice as much chance of losing it. Did you not understand my previous reply to you? This is a much better option:

Split it into THREE parts, in the following way:
Part 1: Contains the first 16 words of your 24-word phrase.
Part 2: Contains words 1-8 and 17-24
Part 3: Contains words 9-24

You (or a potential thief) require any two of those parts to form your seed phrase. You can worry less about losing a part of it- you would need to lose two parts at the same time (which is virtually a zero chance if stored safely and separately). A would-be thief would also need to find two parts.

The reason seed words are 24 words is its basically impossible with current technology to brute force it.

If you're effectively making your seed words 8 words (attacker finds 16 of them) it's much easier to brute force.

I'm sure it's still difficult, but 8 should be possible these days.

Something to think about.

don't over think it... no one is looking for your bitcoin horde.

tattoo it on your body in the form of a tramp stamp and just tell everyone that it is a poem.

Btc cme futures are above 100k now... incoming is imminent.

Seeing the CZ vid a few posts back, is CZ in prison? Feels like I haven't seen anything with him involved forever.

Dude had to pay like $4B in fines or something insane iirc.

Was released about 2 months ago.

@Ukay

I've never used Jade so I can't give you any advice about that. Storing Bitcoin can be as simple as having the private key saved on notepad stored on a USB stick or put in a paper wallet. Rather than make it extra hard to access your bitcoin, you could also consider storing it in multiple places. So with 20k, you could put 5k on 4 USB sticks individually. That way if you lose one it isn't as bad of a blow. You could also store 5k on 2 USB sticks, 1 on a paper wallet, and 5k on an exchange. If you are worried about losing your bitcoins in a house fire you could further place them in fire safes. The beauty of it is you can store it however you want. Losing access to the coins is always a risk.

I personally get terrified with the whole "you have this many guesses on your passphrase or the bitcoin disappears thing".

I always liked bitaddress.org for generating bitcoin addresses. The site creates the addresses using javascript to generate addresses. When I initially did this, I would hand write it out on a piece of paper with the neatest handwriting possible and oh so super careful not to make a mistake. I think the safer option is to just print it out or type it out on notepad on the computer and save to a USB. Maybe save multiple files of the same thing just in case you accidently hit a key and delete some characters off your private key and the mouse gets bumped by your elbow and clicks file save. That would suck.

I remember another time when there was so much money on a paper wallet that it was making me uncomfortable, so I ended up splitting it up and moved it to some other places.

I believe the correct approach is to spread your money out rather than keep it all in one safe secure place. Don't overwhelm yourself either though. Have fun with it. You want to find that happy medium between secure, but not overly complicated so that you lose access to your money.

I agree, plus I'd like to add that improving your security is a process over the years, start small, stack, and hold Bitcoin, and while your wealth grows you invest and experiment with improved security, with paper wallets, apps, cold wallets and so on... take your time and learn from experiences.

@MeleaB I understand the splitting it into three parts, however I don't have three locations that I can rely on. I have decided that by splitting it into two and keeping both separate if one is compromised then the attacker will not have access and I can send my bitcoin to another hardware wallet. The only point of failure is if my hardware wallet and one part of the seed is lost which is very unlikely. If I lose one half the seed I can send to another wallet, if I lose the wallet I still have both half of the seed and can back it up.

@TheGodson Thanks that is definitely something to consider. If I am purchasing the bitcoin on an exchange like kraken or coinbase, then how do I get the bitcoin to a usb? I have got a jade offline wallet device and gone through the process of sending the first £50 there, however was getting confused with the address (see below).

I purchased my first bitcoin for £50 today on kraken and transferred to my jade. This is the first bitcoin transaction I have done and am not sure if I have done it correctly.

It was my understanding that bitcoin addresses do not contain "i", "l", "0" or "o" so people don't make silly mistakes typing in the wrong address.

However when I went on the blockstream green app and created an address and confirmed it with the jade, the address had 0s in it and also a character that looked like a combination of an "i" and "1" I found this to be very confusing and when I inputted the address into kraken it said the address was invalid. I double and triple checked it. I believe I was trying to input the character as a "1" but I don't know if that is why it wasn't working.

So I then copy and pasted the address in an email to myself and then just coped the address from the email to the kraken sending address and it worked. I don't know if I have sent the £50 to the correct address or not.

When will I know if the transfer has gone through correctly? How do I tell if this character is an I, L or 1? Without copy and pasting it in an email? Is copy and pasting it in an email safe?

Sorry I am new to all of this, appreciate all help.
Edit, I have an update. On the green app it shows the transaction as complete and it now shows my 0.00064248 BTC or 60.86 usd. It shows the received on address and the transaction ID.
However when on kraken pro I click on the blockchain explorer link it shows fee sats $36.80 Fee38,736 sats $36.80
38,736. Why did I still receive $60.86 if the fee was $36.80?

Is it safe for me to share the blockchain explorer link here? Thanks.

Something to look at now too, if you haven't already, is understanding UTXO's(Unspent Transaction Outputs) and how in the future there is going to be a problem with small UTXO's becoming dust because they can't be spent on-chain as transaction fees(sat/vB) rise above single digit sats.

The workaround will be to consolidate all your UTXO's in the future when transaction fees are low, but the sooner you take this into consideration the better.

If interested:

Give chatGPT 30 words 1 at a time, 24 of which are your seedphrase and have it write a short story using each word in a paragraph. Doesn't take long to memorize where the correct words are.

11 states so far. Now it's a game of states front running federal.

https://x.com/Dennis_Porter_/status/1864339481480056878

nice run to 99k over the last hours

<1% away from 100k... December 4, 2024

Boom!

$100,000

Actually hit 101k.

Insert dancing emojis

Congrats all. This will make normie news tomorrow, even here in the UK where the gov and the bbc absolutely hate bitcoin.

Microstrategy open should be interesting, this might have been Saylor buying and he would announce that tomorrow I think.

Cheers everyone, especially the long term hodlers. 2+2 rules.

congrats guys .. from a dude who sold way too early..

I feel so alive.