I gave up $10,000 of free Bitcoin for SECURITY and PEACE OF MIND

I gave up $10,000 of free Bitcoin because my security and peace of mind are more important. All right, here's the story. So, back when I was selling all of the gold and silver that I had bought back in 2017, uh it just so happened that when the check hit, uh it hit during the very small time window when Coinbase was offering a bonus for any assets that you put on the Coinbase platform. that they would give you a 3% automatic uh bonus as long as you kept the assets on the platform for at least two years. Well, I was buying six figures worth of Bitcoin. And they were also offering, which they still do, that if you have at least $200,000 of digital assets or US dollars on the Coinbase platform, that they would give you a 4% uh Bitcoin back on the Bitcoin credit card, not the debit card, but the credit card rather than the standard 2% or if you have more than $10,000 of assets, 2.5%. So, the difference when I calculated it and they you had to leave the assets on there for a full two years. So, it was all the way until, you know, November or I guess December or whatever it was of 2027, which was two years into the future as compared to when I was doing this, which I guess was December of 2025. I ran the math based on my spending uh habits and the 3% if I had left all of the Bitcoin on Coinbase that I had, uh the 3% would have added up plus the 2% on the uh credit card, the additional 2% on everything I bought with the credit card would have added up over the course of two years to more than $10,000. And I actually considered it. I mean, even though it's against all the advice I've ever given anyone, I actually considered it and uh because as soon as Well, I'll tell you the rest of the story, but I considered it um because I was like, you know, $10,000 that's basically free. I mean, it's not just basically free. It literally is free Bitcoin. But again, you had to keep uh I would have had to keep a balance on Coinbase of $200,000 and which meant keeping all of the Bitcoin that I bought with the gold and silver I bought on Coinbase. uh plus some extra and again I would have gotten the 4 percent rather than two 2% Bitcoin back on the Bitcoin credit card. Uh the reason I didn't so first of all I considered it and I thought while I'm considering it just in the day or two I'm considering it I will move it to Coinbase uh vault because obviously I'm not going to sit there with $200,000 on Coinbase just like sitting there where somebody can, you know, walk up to me at a gas station and say give me your Bitcoin and I could transfer $200,000. I'm never going to do that. That's a It is ridiculous to have that much Bitcoin on your phone where it does not require something like Bit Key. Bit Key requires you to touch the Bit Key to the back of your phone, which obviously if you keep it in a safe safe deposit box at a bank or something like that, you can't do and a hacker can't do and a scammer can't do and someone who holds you up in a gas station parking lot can't do either because you don't keep the bit key on your person. So, so I stuck it uh initially in Coinbase Vault and I'm like, I'm going to think about this for a day or two. But Coinbase Vault only allows you to have your Bitcoin on uh Vault with a 48 hour unlock. And I don't want a 48 hour unlock. Like my goal is for my Bitcoin to be inaccessible to be very difficult to reach. Any meaningful amount of Bitcoin needs to be very difficult to reach. And I thought, look, if somebody holds me up in a gas station parking lot and says, "Give me your Bitcoin." And I say, "I can't." and they see that it's in Coinbase Vault, they're going to realize, oh, there's only a 48 hour unlock window. Well, we were planning to just hold you up in a gas station parking lot, but now it turns out if we hold you hostage for 48 hours, then the unlock period on Coinbase Vault expires and then they can get the Bitcoin. I'm like, nope. I'm just not going to play that game. I am not gonna play the game of having $200,000 sitting on Coinbase where it could, you know, theoretically somehow still be hacked or scammed, even though Coinbase Vault does a very good job of keeping that from happening, uh, at least from hackers and scammers. But I was like, I am not going to put myself in the position where when account data gets leaked, which happens all the time, somebody's like, "Oo, he's got $200,000 sitting on Coinbase." No, I'm not going to keep balances. I'm not going to keep high balances on online services like Coinbase or River. I'm just not gonna have high balances on there. I'm gonna have very low balances with only the Bitcoin I need for transactional day-to-day spending. And everything else is going to be locked away, very hard to get to in, you know, periods of time that take way more than 48 hours. So, and uh in other videos I've gone through if you want to walk through uh you know my thinking on that. I did a uh a video on why you do not need to worry about being kidnapped for your Bitcoin, but I walk through how I think about that. So, just do a a keyword search on my YouTube channel for the word kidnap or something like that and you can go watch that video. But anyway, I ultimately concluded I'm like, I'm not playing this game. I am not playing this game of my Bitcoin's available within 48 hours unlock. I'm not playing this game of if my my information gets leaked online, they're going to know that $200,000 is in Coinbase. They're going to assume it's available. If somebody gets a hold of that, they're going to assume it's available. They're not going to know that it's in Coinbase Vault, which has a 48 hour unlock period. And I'm like, 48 hours unlock is not long enough anyway. I want there to have to be something that is, you know, a major impediment to getting the Bitcoin. And just waiting 48 hours was not good enough. So, as soon as I, you know, thought about it for a day or two, I was like, "Nope, I'm not playing this game. I know I'm giving up $10,000 of free Bitcoin. I know that's what's happening, and I'm willing to do that because my peace of mind and my own security are such that I'm just not going to leave $200,000 on Coinbase." So, I transferred it to cold storage from Coinbase Vault to Cold Storage. um which is you know my ultra secure that takes forever and is impossible to get a hold of under duress or under you know in situations of armed robbery or you know home invasion or kidnapping or hostage taking or all of that. I was like any of those situations I've set up my Bitcoin where it's basically impossible to get in situations of duress whether I'm in the one dur uh under duress or someone I care about is under duress. I've just made it essentially impossible to get to Bitcoin under those circumstances. So, I'm like, "Okay, good." So, as soon as I transferred it to my incredibly insanely difficult to get to cold storage, I felt a lot better and I was like, "Good. Now, I'm not 48 hours away from unlocking meaningful amounts of Bitcoin. I'm not playing the games from Coinbase or anybody else where they're basically bribing me into keeping assets on the platform. I'm just not going to play any of those games." So soon as I transferred it to cold storage, I felt a whole lot better about everything. And yeah, that means I only get 2% instead of 4% on the Coinbase credit card. And I feel good about that. I'm It's not worth having a a large online balance that anyone can lock or freeze or that the government can take away. I mean, if you got assets on Coinbase, the government can freeze those assets. Coinbase can freeze those assets. Login snafuss can mean that those assets are unavailable to you. There's just all this stuff that can that that can happen that's bad on an online platform that doesn't happen with a service uh like BitKey or it's not a service with a product like BitKey. bit bitty.orld is the website bitke.w by far the best way to store Bitcoin for the long term. So I transferred it all to to cold storage. I felt way better about all of it. And I thought, great, this is just the way it's supposed to be. And, you know, I'm not going to be enticed by, you know, by extra goodies. And when I did that transfer, it said Coinbase popped up and said, "By transferring this Bitcoin, you're losing $6,000." I was like, "Yes, I am." And then I knew uh also because they popped up. I was like, "Oh, by the way, soon as you transfer this, you're also going to only get 2% instead of 4% on the Coinbase credit card, which again I had I had calculated was going to add up to another $4,000 over, you know, two or three years." Um, so anyway, it's worth it. It's worth it to be to have the peace of mind and security of having your Bitcoin in cold storage, keeping nice low balances on Coinbase or River or anywhere else and knowing that look, your Bitcoin is impossible to get to for hackers and scammers and, you know, impossible to get to under duress. Uh, based on my recommendations for how you set that up, which my setup is way more complicated, the setup I recommend for most people is if you have more than5 or $10,000 of Bitcoin, buy a Bit Key. And you can keep it anywhere at your house anyway because for five or 10 thousand you're really just worried about hackers and scammers. And the bit key will keep the hackers and scammers uh from getting your Bitcoin regardless of where it is. If you have more than $50,000 of Bitcoin, I recommend you keep that Bit Key in a safe deposit box at a bank. Safe deposit box at a bank only cost 30 or $40 per year, not month, per year. And it means you can only move large amounts of Bitcoin by going to the bank and touching that Bitkey device to the back of your phone. Now, you can set up a daily spend limit. Um, which means you can get to a certain amount of Bitcoin without going to the bank and touching your Bitkey to the back of your phone. So, let's say you have $10,000 of Bitcoin and you've decided that, you know, sometimes you might need a, you know, a new repair for your car or whatever it is or to pay off something. You could set a limit. You could say, "Look, I can pull out $500 or $1,000 a day without my Bit Key, without actually touching it to the back of your phone." That also means if something bad happens, you know, you get held up in a gas station parking lot, you're like, "Okay, sure. I'll give you $500 or $1,000 because that's all I can give you." Because to get more than that, you know, you'd have to go to the bank. And I promise you, bad guys do not want to go to the bank with you. If they did, they would be going to the bank with people all the time to get money out of the bank. They don't do that because bad guys don't like to be in banks. because banks have security cameras and armed guards and little buttons that call the police and you know all that sort of stuff that bad guys don't like. Um so anyway, in my case, I gave up $10,000 of free Bitcoin because I was not willing to play the game of having large balances on online services. I'm just not going to do that. Um I was, you know, I could have lost a lot more. I was playing around with FTX before it blew up. Thankfully, I had almost no Bitcoin on there, but a lot of people had a lot of Bitcoin on FTX FTX when it blew up in 2022. It's just not worth it. Don't play those games. Get yourself a Bit Key. Keep your Bitcoin in a Bit Key. And in my case, I was willing to give up $10,000 of free Bitcoin because I was not going to play the games that took away my security, the security of my Bitcoin and my peace of mind knowing that it was actually truly and really safe. So, that's my advice. Buy yourself a bit key. If you have more than5 or $10,000 of Bitcoin, buy yourself a Bitkey and use it. And if you have more than $50,000 of Bitcoin, keep that bit key in a safe deposit box at a bank. It's cheap, it's effective, and then just set up a daily spend limit and uh you know, you can get a little bit of Bitcoin that way. Now, look, also if you're worried that like what if you set up a Bit Key, you stick it in a safe deposit box at a bank, then you move and you forget it and you leave it behind, well, there's ways with Bit Key to replace it with a new Bit Key after a security waiting period. Or you can set up a daily spin limit. So, if you got $25,000 in Bitcoin and you set up a daily spin limit of $2,500, then over the course of 10 days, you can slowly move that Bitcoin over to another account or to a new Bitkey, whatever you want to do. Uh, but they have recovery options where you can replace the Bit Key uh, as long as you have access to your phone and your Apple iCloud account or your Google account. They've thought of everything. The BitKey device is genius. They thought of everything. I mean, it's just absolutely the perfect device. Every conceivable thing you could possibly think of that could go bad with you or your Bitcoin. Whether it's the Palisades forest fires in California or you know the bank with your bit key burns down, they have backup options for all of that that make it virtually impossible to lose your Bitcoin. In fact, I have never encountered anyone who has ever lost Bitcoin using Bit. I know a bunch of people that have lost Bitcoin to hackers and scammers and account lockouts and stuff like that on Coinbase and other services, but never Bit Key. Bit key is engineered to make sure your Bitcoin is safe and that nothing bad happens to it. So, that's my advice and I'm here to help and support in any way I can on your Bitcoin journey.