My friend and crypto associate, Patrick Hakim, aka, “Divi Daddy” wrote the article Crypto’s 10 Commandments (How to Live the Crypto Life). I am sharing this article because I believe it addresses the root causes of why people are afraid to take their first step with crypto and also addresses, most importantly, how to protect yourself.
- Lack of understanding what crypto is, how to obtain it, how to use it, and how to increase your wealth with it.
- Fear of losing it through scammers, fear of not being able to access it or move it around when its needed.
Patrick, “Divi Daddy” Hakim https://thedividaddy.com/ breaks it down for us – in his own unique, direct, and non-apologetic way. Knowledge truly is power. Read on!
Crypto’s 10 Commandments (How to Live the Crypto Life)
By Patrick Hakim
Last week a good friend of mine lost over one million dollars ($1,000,000) in cryptocurrency through a scam. The worst part? It could have been prevented. It’s stories like this and countless others that have led to the formation of Crypto Confidential and the Crypto Commandments.
In this article, I want to lay the foundation for what we will be doing and discussing moving forward. I want to clarify why we’re in crypto at all and how we’ve integrated it into our everyday life and discuss the principles that guide us in how we interact with cryptocurrency.
I call these the Crypto Commandments. The Commandments force us to consider all aspects and ask hard questions to find the purpose and utility of different cryptocurrencies and allow us to consider if our values are aligned with the project and team behind the token. By sharing the Commandments with you I hope to bring you along for the journey, on a partnership where we can learn, and succeed, together.
Obviously, there is more to all of this, and we will break down all the concepts here in more detail in the future. This is just to get everyone on the same page (literally) and get us going in the right direction.
The Crypto Commandments are as follows:
- The Dollar is Garbage
- Choose the Freedom Mindset
- Don’t Sell; Borrow
- Cover your Ass-ets
- (KISS) Keep it Secret, Stupid or Keep it Super-Secret
- Two Transactions are better than one.
- Do your own Research
- Do you know where your Keys are?
- Have Multiple Fiat Bridges
- Always Have a Plan
Crypto Commandment #1: The Dollar is Garbage.
If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening in the world, I don’t have to tell you that your dollar doesn’t go as far as it did 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Some of you remember gas below a dollar a gallon. Thanks to inflation, the purchasing power of the dollar declines a little bit every year. The current inflation rate hasn’t been this high since the 80’s. In addition to that, the Fed is currently printing trillions of dollars at a time. All this and more leads to the simple fact that The Dollar is Garbage. The mathematics, data, and our lived experience all say the same thing: Storing your wealth in dollars is a bad idea.
Crypto Commandment #2: Choose the Freedom Mindset.
I believe that people should have the freedom to choose. My shoes, car, job, and freedom over my money. I want the freedom of knowing that my money is in my possession, and I get to choose whether it leaves my account or not. I don’t want to jump through the hoops of waiting a week for funds to transfer or get questioned about why I’m transferring money.
So, one reason I’m in crypto is this freedom mindset. Freedom to have a decentralized, secure, trustless currency that I hold and control. So, every time there’s a decision to be made, I ask myself, “Does this give me more freedom, or does it constrain me to the dollar or a certain country’s system?” I don’t know what’s going to happen in the United States or the rest of the world, so Bitcoin and Crypto provide a solution and grant me the freedom to do what I think is best for myself and my family. And it gives you that Freedom too.
Crypto Commandment #3: Don’t Sell; Borrow.
In reference to Commandment 1, we know cash is trash, and if you own crypto and you’re in it for the long haul, you have to do your best not to sell for as long as possible. We know Bitcoin has outperformed every other asset class for the last several years. So, in light of this, it makes the most sense to hold your crypto long term and borrow against it in the short term. We borrow against it because we know the value of the crypto in the future will be worth more than it is now. As such if you sell your crypto now, you likely won’t ever get back the amount you had for the same price. So, if you’re a long-term crypto believer, trust the process, hold, and borrow against your crypto if you need cash in the short run.
Crypto Commandment #4: Cover Your Ass-ets. Pun Fully Intended.
The idea here is to create a strategy for what you’re holding, where you’re holding it and why you’re holding it there. No matter where you are on your crypto journey now, we all started out having to learn about how to buy Bitcoin for the first time, what a wallet is and how it works. The important part is we continue to build on this experience and make smarter and smarter decisions as we go forward. So, when you purchase Bitcoin on an exchange, you don’t hold the private keys to that wallet. That means, ultimately, that exchange controls the currency. Is that what you want? Does it line up with Commandment 2, Choose the Freedom Mindset? The safest place for your crypto is in a wallet whose private keys belong to you and that wallet stays somewhere safe.
Most of us have different accounts like savings, checking, 401k, retirement, etc. So not all of our money is in one place, and we don’t walk around carrying all our money with us. In the same way, you don’t want all your crypto in one mobile wallet that you carry around with you every day. You need a strategy. Some crypto is for trading, which needs to be easily accessible. Some is a long-term store of value, which needs to be on a cold storage wallet. etc. All of this will vary from person to person, but the important takeaway is to Cover Your Ass-ets. Keep your crypto in a safe place and make a plan for what you store, where you store it and know why you’re storing it there. One of the safest places to store your crypto is on a crypto only laptop. I personally use a crypto only laptop from Calix Solutions.
Crypto Commandment #5: Keep it Secret, Stupid Apologies.
If this comes across as brash to some with milder sensibilities. But the language conveys the importance of this point. If you win the lottery the worst mistake you could make is telling anyone else, you won the lottery. Also, as discussed in Commandment 4, you don’t just walk around with your retirement money in your back pocket. And in relation to Commandment 2, your money is your business. Brandishing money and holding crypto in large amounts on devices you interact with, in the public sphere, are invitations for trouble. The second side to this coin *wink* is the private keys that protect your crypto. Your seed phrase is like the keys to your house. The only reason you need to give it to someone else is to let them in. 95% of the time, if someone is asking for your seed phrase or private keys, they want to walk into your house and take everything you own. If someone asks for your seed phrase in person or online, it should be like someone just yelled “FIRE!”. The red flags should go up and you should proceed very cautiously or get the hell out of there. Your seed phrase keeps your crypto safe, so Keep it Secret, Stupid.
Crypto Commandment #6 Two Transactions are Better than One.
This is a simple concept; it’s better to send a test transaction first before you literally lose all your money because of a typo. Crypto addresses are long strings of numbers and letters and there’s no room for error; one missed letter and that crypto is gone. A feature of the blockchain is it is immutable, which means transactions can’t be reversed or undone.
So, if you’re sending crypto to someone else, send a small amount first, confirm they got it, then send the rest. If something is wrong, you then have the opportunity to correct it, send another test, then get the full amount to where it’s going. No matter how long you’ve been in crypto it’s always important to be vigilant and not take unnecessary risks when you don’t have to.
Crypto Commandment #7: Do Your Own Research.
Scams. Phishing. Fake live streams. Send one BTC and we’ll send you back 10 BTC. Rug pulls. Pump and dump schemes. There are a ton of ways to lose your money in crypto. And even the experts usually have at least one story where they were a victim of theft or came very close to being one. It is critical that you understand what you are doing before putting money into a project or sending crypto to someone. Like we discussed in Commandment 6, if you send money to someone or give away your seed phrase and they steal your money, that’s usually the end of it. Sometimes there are things professionals can do to help recover funds, but this is usually not the case. If you’re going to hold your money, you have to be responsible and learn how it works or suffer the consequences of ignorance.
Part of doing your own research is understanding that the crypto sphere is expanding too fast for any one person to keep up with everything. And that’s where people like Patrick Hakim step in. He is a seasoned crypto expert who enjoys educating and sharing information. Our community is here to provide information, keep you safe, and hopefully make everyone a lot of money doing it.
Crypto Commandment #8: Know Where Your Keys Are.
You don’t leave your house without locking the door, and if you lock your door, you know where your keys are to get back in. (Ideally, of course.) A responsible homeowner should know exactly where the access point is to his home. In the same way, if you own a crypto asset, you should know exactly where the keys are to that asset. Otherwise, do you really own it? If the crypto is on an exchange, as discussed previously, those aren’t your keys, so that’s not really your crypto.
If you go down the route of choosing a custodial company for your crypto, follow Commandment 7, do some research, and find out if they hold your private keys on your behalf, if they are insured, and what their fees are for using their services. Before risking large amounts of money, follow Commandment 6, do test transactions to make sure you can put crypto in and get it back out without issues.
Crypto Commandment #9: Have Multiple Fiat Bridges.
Unfortunately, we still have to use cash sometimes, for now. So, it’s important to have multiple places where you can buy and sell crypto for fiat (cash) in the event that an emergency arises. These are called on and off-ramps in crypto lingo. The main idea is you want to have the ability to liquidate your crypto when you need to, and the best way to ensure that can happen is to have at least 2 off-ramps where you can convert crypto to fiat and withdraw it to a bank account or money card or something to that effect.
Crypto Commandment #10: Always Have a Plan.
Suppose your kid runs into a fence and you need $5,000 tomorrow to pay the dentist for braces. Do you know how to get $5,000 from your crypto account to your bank account that fast? If the crypto market blows its top off and you wake up to $1,000,000 in your name, do you know what steps you’re going to take to secure those funds? In relation to the Commandments, it’s ok to break some of them from time to time as long as you’re following this one. Always have a plan, know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Keep researching and updating that plan so nothing can surprise you, and you know what to do in any situation that comes your way.
So, there you have it. You might call it a mission statement, crypto philosophy, or a value statement. Whatever you call it, this set of Commandments lays out the values that we hold dear regarding crypto. These Commandments give structure to the thought process and actions surrounding and interacting with crypto and allow us to live out our values in other parts of our lives, like putting family first and being good stewards of what we’ve been given.
You can find more of Patrick, Divi Daddy’s articles and insights here. https://thedividaddy.com/
