I Bought My First Bitcoin

I am now the proud owner of 306,000 satoshi (sat)! That sounds like a fortune, but it's actually just USD 100 worth of bitcoin. Another way of writing it would be 0.00306 bitcoin (BTC), or, as I prefer it and how my wallet defaults, 3.06 millibitcoin (mBTC).

I first started thinking of buying bitcoin six months ago in January 2021, when bitcoin was on the rise. Because of uncertainty (or laziness), I decided not to buy then. But then, yesterday, I saw a kiosk at my local supermarket for purchasing bitcoin, and I started thinking about it again. When I went to the supermarket today to try to use the kiosk, it said I needed to first download an app to my mobile device. Not wanting to figure out something complicated in the middle of a supermarket, I decided to just go home and figure out how to buy bitcoin on my computer.

So I did just that.

My first step was looking up Bitcoin on Wikipedia and discovering their official website address is bitcoin.org. I went to that site and read the introductory material and discovered that I needed to pick out a wallet to use (I take it wallet is basically synonymous with application). Their website has a feature that helps users find a bitcoin wallet. After selecting my preferences, the website suggested just one wallet for me: Electrum. I then researched them a bit on Google and decided it was a good wallet and proceeded to install the application. I was installing the application on Ubuntu Linux, and, since I am a Linux noob, I had some minor hiccups getting the application to launch. However, because of the helpful Bitcoin and Linux communities, I discovered I just needed to launch the application by entering the command

electrum

in Terminal. (By the way, to install the application on Ubuntu Linux, I just copied and pasted the lines of code found on Electrum's Download page under "Installation from Python sources.")

With the app now able to launch, I proceeded to buy my first bitcoin. But I'm lazy, and I didn't feel like researching where to buy bitcoin—when there was a big button on bitcoin.org to do just that. So I bought the bitcoin from bitcoin.org, which apparently was just using a third-party website called MoonPay. I researched MoonPay a little bit as well, and they are apparently legitimate (as they should be, if that's what bitcoin.org uses).

But it all worked out, and I am now the proud owner of 3.06 mBTC. I suppose I could consider this my first investment. Indeed, it will be interesting to see how bitcoin fares over time.

Maybe I will buy more bitcoin. But, then again, maybe I won't.

Article ID: 8