Why do I recommend Bitkey? Why not just keep your bitcoin on the exchange where you bought it?

00:02 everyone you may be wondering why is 00:04 Joel always talking about it key the 00:07 best way to secure your Bitcoin like why 00:09 why can't you just keep it on Coinbase 00:12 or River or why can't you just buy one 00:14 of the Bitcoin ETFs and the answer is 00:16 you can do any of those things but there 00:19 are downsides and in my opinion very 00:22 clearly the downsides of any of those 00:25 options are more significant than the 00:27 downsides of using Bitey for example so 00:32 any way that you secure your money has 00:35 downsides so if you have US dollars you 00:38 can keep them in the bank but the in the 00:40 bank those dollars are not really yours 00:42 i mean countries have bailins and 00:44 bailouts where the money is not 00:46 accessible you can have your account 00:48 frozen 00:50 at some point the government can decide 00:51 you have too much money right and take 00:53 some of it it happens uh less in the 00:55 United States but it's happened 00:56 internationally um even if you have gold 00:59 you can store your gold at a bank as 01:01 many people did and they found out with 01:04 Executive Order 6102 in uh 1933 the 01:08 government all of a sudden forced 01:10 everyone to sell its gold at $20 an 01:12 ounce when it was worth $35 an ounce and 01:15 the government forced everyone to sell 01:17 their gold to the government and the 01:18 reason they could do that is most of the 01:20 people had gold held at and so the 01:23 government just went to the five biggest 01:25 and said "Hand over all the gold." and 01:27 they did and yours was you know your 01:30 your gold was gone 01:32 anyway so Bit Key is an incredible way 01:35 of storing and securing Bitcoin and I 01:37 want to talk through how it's better 01:39 than each of the other options first let 01:42 me start with the Bitcoin ETFs if you 01:44 just care about the economic rewards of 01:46 Bitcoin meaning you you only care about 01:49 just the economic upside you can buy one 01:52 of the Bitcoin ETFs which is IBIT IBIT 01:55 which is the Black Rockck Bitcoin ETF or 01:57 FBTC which is the Fidelity Bitcoin ETF 02:01 you can buy those and those will give 02:02 you the same economic benefit of owning 02:05 Bitcoin but there's there's drawbacks to 02:08 that for one it's only available to you 02:11 19% of the time the stock market is only 02:13 open 19% of the hours that you are alive 02:17 meaning 81% of the time if you suddenly 02:20 want your money you can't get it because 02:22 if the stock market is not trading you 02:24 don't have any way of selling those 02:26 shares of the Bitcoin ETF so the money 02:28 is not available to you 81% of the time 02:31 and in addition you don't have the power 02:33 of Bitcoin you cannot send a Bitcoin ETF 02:37 to a missionary on the other side of the 02:38 world who has a financial need you 02:41 cannot store it yourself where nobody 02:43 knows you have it your funds on Fidelity 02:46 or Black Rockck or any other platform 02:48 can be frozen by the government on a 02:50 whim and suddenly they're unavailable to 02:52 you and there's nothing anyone can do 02:54 about it um so the uh I guess it's 02:58 similar to when email was invented if 03:00 you had to UPS store or a FedEx store to 03:04 send an email you could think well hey 03:06 this is just easier i don't have to 03:07 worry about like having my own computer 03:09 and stuff it's like yeah but the FedEx 03:12 stores and the UPS stores are only open 03:14 let's call it 19% of the time and if 03:17 they want to block you from sending an 03:18 email they can like why wouldn't you 03:19 just embrace the technology that lets 03:22 you send an email yourself which is 03:24 buying your own computer so yeah buying 03:26 your own computer is complicated if 03:29 you've never used a computer before uh 03:31 learning how to send an email is 03:33 complicated if you've never sent an 03:35 email before but once you understand it 03:37 it's super simple and the power of being 03:40 able to communicate electronically with 03:42 anyone anywhere in the world is just a 03:44 very big deal and I want you to have 03:46 that power the same way I want you to 03:48 have the power to electronically 03:50 communicate with anyone anywhere in the 03:52 world with any mobile app of your choice 03:54 email you know Signal WhatsApp anything 03:58 i want you to have the same power to 04:00 store and communicate value i want you 04:03 to have the ability with your money to 04:05 make it truly yours where nobody can 04:08 take it nobody can freeze it and nobody 04:10 can tell you you have too much and 04:11 they're going to give you a haircut and 04:12 take some off the top and uh where it's 04:15 not frozen 81% of the time you're alive 04:18 completely inaccessible to you which is 04:20 the case with the Bitcoin ETFs so 04:22 they're not bad they're great for 04:24 retirement because for retirement you 04:26 know I'm not planning to retire maybe 04:28 ever but regardless at a minimum many 04:31 decades into the future and so yeah if 04:33 it's locked up in a Bitcoin ETF I'm okay 04:36 with that for retirement funds because I 04:37 don't treat those as my real-time term 04:40 money and so I have my retirement funds 04:42 in FBTC the Fidelity Bitcoin ETF that is 04:45 where 100% of my retirement funds are 04:48 i'm okay with that personally it's still 04:50 better to have in your own self-custody 04:52 but the the uh technologies to do 04:55 retirement funds in self-custodies in my 04:57 opinion is still too hard to use uh even 04:60 for me I just don't want to deal with it 05:02 so why not just keep your Bitcoin on an 05:04 exchange like Coinbase or River well 05:07 there's multiple problems there which is 05:09 one hackers and scammers are constantly 05:12 trying to get your Bitcoin and I mean 05:14 constantly you are probably getting 05:16 multiple text messages a week saying 05:19 "Did you buy an iPad in Salt Lake City 05:22 Utah with your Coinbase account if not 05:24 call this phone number." And of course 05:26 there's a skimmer on the other side 05:28 planning to tell you that your account 05:29 has been compromised and that they need 05:31 your password and two-factor 05:32 authentication code in order to secure 05:34 your account and if you give it to them 05:36 they will immediately steal all your 05:37 Bitcoin so uh and people fall for these 05:40 scams constantly people have they log 05:42 into Coinbase with a Google account and 05:44 they're using the same password for 05:46 their Google account that they're using 05:48 for some other account on the internet 05:50 the other account gets hacked the very 05:52 first thing hackers and scammers do 05:54 anytime they hack a password on anything 05:56 is see if they can use it to log into 05:58 someone's Gmail account so they use the 06:00 the your Gmail account and the h the 06:03 password associated with your Gmail 06:04 account that they got from Men's 06:06 Warehouse or some random you know 06:08 whatever it is that got they try it on 06:11 Google and if they try it on Google and 06:13 you don't have two-factor authentication 06:15 enabled on your Google account then 06:17 they're into your Google account and now 06:19 they have all your passwords with your 06:20 Google password manager and they have 06:22 your two-factor authentication codes if 06:24 you use uh Google authenticator a lot of 06:27 people do not have their Google accounts 06:29 locked down they do not have two-factor 06:31 authentication uh which they call 06:33 two-step verification turned on uh you 06:36 absolutely positively need to do that if 06:38 you do not have two uh two-step 06:40 verification turned on on your Google 06:42 account you absolutely pause this video 06:44 go do that right now you absolutely will 06:46 get hacked so people are getting hacked 06:48 constantly um not so much on River river 06:52 is a much smaller exchange but Coinbase 06:55 accounts are getting hacked on Coinbase 06:57 all the time people who are just they 07:01 don't you know they're reusing passwords 07:03 they didn't realize they didn't have 07:04 two-factor authentication turned on in 07:06 the Google account anyway and Biti just 07:11 saves you from all of that bit secures 07:14 your Bitcoin in a way that that no 07:16 centralized exchange ever can coinbase 07:19 River none of them can secure your 07:21 Bitcoin as effectively as Bitkey and 07:24 Bitkey can secure your Bitcoin so 07:26 securely because it's something you 07:28 physically have which means nobody can 07:30 take your Bitcoin because they don't 07:32 have the thing you physically have and 07:34 in the case of Bitcoin uh Bitkey they've 07:37 got uh all sorts of ways to recover it 07:39 if you lose your Bit Key device and all 07:41 that sort of stuff so it's called it's 07:42 what's called self-custody meaning you 07:44 actually own it and the Bitcoin is 07:46 actually within your own self-custody 07:48 meaning you control it that also means 07:51 your account cannot be frozen so I've 07:53 had at various point Bitcoin that is on 07:56 centralized exchanges that was uh where 07:58 the account was restricted it was 08:01 restricted meaning I could not buy any 08:03 more Bitcoin i could not sell uh I could 08:05 sell the Bitcoin but I could not buy it 08:08 and I could not send it to anyone so 08:10 it's basically frozen now again I can 08:12 liquidate it to US dollars and I can 08:14 push those US dollars back to my bank 08:16 account but that's not what I wanted to 08:18 do i wanted to own the Bitcoin so um 08:21 anytime someone else controls your 08:23 account there's a chance that your 08:25 account gets restricted or that it gets 08:27 flagged for fraudulent activity which 08:30 and I've had this happen multiple 08:31 accounts uh times to accounts I 08:33 controlled where um again not so much on 08:36 River river is a much smaller and and uh 08:39 you know a much smaller service so it's 08:41 not it's not uh targeted by hackers and 08:43 scammers to the nearly to the degree 08:46 Coinbase is but lots of people on 08:48 Coinbase have had the experience of 08:49 having their accounts restricted uh 08:51 which basically means again your funds 08:53 are not completely frozen because you 08:55 can sell the Bitcoin and you can move 08:57 the dollars to a a bank account and then 08:59 you can move it to for example and I 09:02 keep the Bitcoin but that's a you know 09:04 royal pain and um I it's not a royal 09:06 pain but like that's not what I wanted 09:08 to do i wanted to have my Bitcoin and I 09:10 wanted to send it somewhere and my 09:12 account was restricted i I could not 09:14 send it um so Bitkey eliminates that so 09:18 uh Bit Key eliminates the Executive 09:20 Order 6102 problem like the government 09:23 did with gold where the reason the 09:25 government could take everybody's gold 09:27 is because almost everybody had their 09:28 gold 09:31 all the government had to do is tell the 09:32 banks to hand over the gold and they 09:34 knew where all the banks were and they 09:36 knew the banks had the key and so it was 09:38 super easy to take everyone's gold in 09:40 the case of Bitcoin centralized 09:43 exchanges work the same way i'm not 09:45 saying that's likely to happen i'm just 09:47 saying if everybody's got their Bitcoin 09:50 on Coinbase or River the FBI shows up at 09:53 Coinbase and says "Hand us everybody's 09:55 Bitcoin." I mean what are they going to 09:57 do like you know they're they're stuck 09:59 which means you're stuck um because the 10:02 vast majority of companies in the vast 10:05 majority of cases comply even if uh what 10:09 the government officials are doing is 10:10 not legal i don't think a confiscation 10:13 of Bitcoin would ever you know hold up 10:15 in court or anything like that um I 10:18 don't think the government could take 10:20 away people's gold in the modern era the 10:22 same way they did in 1933 10:24 they got away with it in 1933 because 10:26 the government controlled the media the 10:27 government controlled the government 10:29 controlled a lot more back in 1933 than 10:31 the government controls now the 10:33 government's a lot bigger now but uh as 10:35 far as their ability to control the 10:37 narrative it was a lot lot higher in 10:39 1933 and they got away with it they took 10:41 away everyone's gold in 1933 which is 10:44 why Fort Knox has a ton of gold because 10:46 they stole it from the American people 10:47 by forcing them to turn it over at $20 10:50 an ounce and then immediately they 10:52 revalued it at $35 an ounce and then 10:54 ultimately gold went much much much 10:56 higher than that and the people who own 10:58 the gold did not get any of the benefit 10:60 uh so anyway Bit Key keeps you uh to 11:02 recap here Bit Keys you from getting 11:04 your account ever frozen they cannot 11:06 freeze your account if you have Bit Key 11:08 your account will never be frozen the 11:11 government can't take your Bitcoin 11:12 unless they go doortodoor they never The 11:14 government never goes door to door to 11:16 take people's stuff they always go to 11:18 the centralized places where the people 11:20 have the stuff 11:22 it's why we don't keep all of our guns 11:23 in a centralized garrison everybody 11:26 who's got guns generally keeps their 11:28 guns at their house if everybody in 11:30 Mississippi who had guns kept them at a 11:33 massive locker in Jackson Mississippi 11:35 and the government wanted everybody's 11:36 guns they'd show up and they'd take all 11:38 the guns from one place the reason the 11:41 government is never going to take 11:42 everybody's guns in America is because 11:44 the guns are distributed they are 11:46 decentralized they are in everybody's 11:48 houses so I want your Bitcoin to be just 11:51 as accessible to you as everyone does 11:54 for example which is hey it's in your 11:56 possession it's not that the government 11:58 can't take it but if they want it they 12:00 got to go door todo so I spend a huge 12:02 amount of time hopefully you know I am a 12:04 very pragmatic person i spend a huge 12:06 amount of time thinking how can Bitcoin 12:09 be accessible to people available to 12:12 people and secure in the easiest 12:15 cheapest simplest way and I don't want 12:18 to over complicate everything i just 12:20 want Bitcoin to work for you the way 12:22 Bitcoin was intended to work which is as 12:25 absolute freedom money where you get the 12:28 economic benefit of the increase in the 12:30 price of Bitcoin but you'll also have 12:32 complete control over your Bitcoin in a 12:35 way that nobody can freeze your account 12:37 you can't be hacked you can't be scammed 12:39 you can't be frozen you can't be 12:41 confiscated and uh Bit Key just does 12:44 that anything else in the world so you 12:48 know it's it's also amazingly easy to 12:50 use so it's why I recommend Bitkey it 12:53 solves the problem of money that you 12:55 control and you possess better than 12:57 anything else in the world and I spend a 12:59 huge amount of time thinking about that 13:00 and make recommendations in an easy 13:03 pragmatic straightforward and elegant