Tutorial: How I Own Zero Dollars & Live On Bitcoin With Strike
Discussion
Awesome 🧡 Jack
Thanks for sharing Jack
Surprised this isn’t available in California! Curious as to why? 🤔
Great to see Bitcoiners still live in the real world. Looking forward to more of Strike in europe
you need any accountants? I wanna get out of the fiat mining! and get a real job. a btc job!
Bruh you live on fiat credit.
That's smart though. Borrowing fiat (immediate purchasing power) then paying back nominal amounts that have depreciated over time is literally the smartest thing you can do. You are essentially shorting the USD.
It’s definitely smart. And it’s what all rich folks do. Sit on assets and live on credit. But it’s not living on bitcoin. It’s living on lines of credit.
I guess I am unclear what your definition of "living on" something is. Nobody "lives on" money. They exchange the money for food and clothes and all the things that keep them alive. You exchange the bitcoin for the credit and the credit for the food. The work for the bitcoin. The food for the work and so on. It's all kind of recursive.
I mean we’re not there yet but if I told somebody that I lived on bitcoin, what I would mean by that is that I earn bitcoin and I use bitcoin to pay for all of my durable and consumable goods.
I find it disingenuous to claim to live on bitcoin when really one is living on credit secured by assets. Rich folks have been doing that for ages.
They’re not living on equities and real estate, they’re living on dollars credited to them based on underlying assets.
It’d be like if some oil magnate was like, guys, I live on oil, I don’t own fiat, I’m on a petroleum standard, come see how you can do it, too!
It’s just because Bitcoin IS money that it gets muddled.
Hmm. I understand the lens from which you are viewing this. I guess (from my economic nerd background) the underlying asset being redeemed in the usage of credit confers to me that you are living on the asset. The dollar is a coupon without an asset so I would say that the Dollar is the muddling/confounding factor not the Bitcoin.
Because assets can use any coupon as currency, using credit (layer 3) to convey dollars (layer 2) that is redeemed for Bitcoin (layer 1) IS using the asset. The coupon (dollars) is the strangest currency because it is not tied to ANY asset nor any pretense of being pegged to one.
Paying your Credit card bill with Gold, oil, or any other hard asset IS living on that asset abstracted by the Dollar and further abstracted by the issuance of credit.
I don't see Jack's framing as disingenuous as saying you live off of any hard asset would imply the use of an exchange medium like currency even if abstracted through credit.
I would say "living off" of dollars is to have no wealth and not really be living off of anything beside perceptive value rather than appreciable value.
So, I get what you mean but on a technical level no one "lives off" of their true wealth by that narrow definition.
You make great points, and maybe I don’t quite have a precise handle on my irritation with his saying that. My thought now is of the other party in nearly all of his economic transactions as a human. Sure he knows businesses/vendors and the like who accept bitcoin and try to contribute to the bitcoin circular economy, but largely, the world doesn’t exchange with him via his assets, it exchanges with him via dollars. It’s the dollars he lives on because it’s the dollars that the vast majority of other parties want in exchange for whatever good or service they provide him. Without dollars Jack is in rough shape. I guess I get very practical when I think about living on something. To live I need my next meal. If I want that next meal I need dollars to pay the store or the restaurant. I’m not going to the grocery store with an ounce of gold and demanding $2k worth of groceries. I don’t live on gold and I can’t in the modern world-at least not without great difficulty-. I live on dollars. Whatever personal economic activity or yield on a particular asset that provided the dollars that I “own” is almost irrelevant when it comes to my getting along in the world and satisfying whatever needs I have. Maybe I’m overly focused on the medium of exchange aspect of the expression, “living on” or “living off” any particular thing. I understand what you’re saying, but for me in the most practical sense, he’s living on dollars because it’s dollars that the other party wants.
Most importantly, and I think this is a good summation of where my head is at, but it’s only when the world wants his bitcoin in exchange for all of those goods and services it provides him, only then, imo, should he say that he’s living off or on Bitcoin. When he goes to the grocery store or restaurant and the only option they give him is to pay in bitcoin, then he should rightly say that he’s living on bitcoin.
I totally get that. Building layer 2s that don't rely on trust (like lightning doesn't) is essential to eliminating the perception that dollars are needed in the entire chain of commerce. That day is coming shortly but as you allude to with your point of view, it's not here or at the very least, not in the zeitgeist. The only thing I would add is the counterparty doesn't want dollars either but that's just me nitpicking. Onward.
They’re nothing different or particularly special that he’s doing that other rich people have done and will continue to do. It’s just that his underlying is bitcoin, or his business Strike, of which I’m a fan, but the whole “I’m living on bitcoin” thing, nah.
I guess all I mean is that at rock bottom, his primary medium of exchange and a human living in 21st century America is the dollar
Hi jack. Will this feature come to the UK? Keep smashing it 🫡💪🏼
Will it optimize BTC spending for long term vs short term capital gains?
The biggest issue I have is attracting Government attention by giving them a yearly 1099-B. I was really hoping it would be technically possible to have Strike be the "Buyer/seller" incurring the tax that "isn't a big deal" because you would have avoided the REAL tax of inflation.
The point is most people when they get paid, pay every bill they can, then use anything left over to buy Bitcoin. Hold it for over a year using FiFo and never really incur tax like the 37% Cap gains this proposes.
To be clear I love what strike is doing and trying to do. I just think giving the Government 37% so that they don't inflate away your purchasing power is short sighted.
So awesome, love the work you’re doing Jack
Man! This looks fantastic! I especially like the idea of it taking care of keeping track of any potential capital gains associated with each expenditure.
One concern, though: I presume that since it wasn't mentioned, there is no FDIC-like insurance associated with your Bitcoin balance. Is this correct? It's not necessarily a deal-breaker. I don't even know if it's even really doable. But, it would be nice to know for sure one way or the other when weighing the pros and cons of potentially switching to this.
Awesome! That’s great stuff. Really. Appreciate your constant work on the #Bitcoin ecosystem and you advocacy for adoption of this Technology.
Do I move to ES or wait for wen strike runs in spain?
What about security, app on the phone is not great…
It's time to get on zero USD
👋 JP Morgan Chase
Seems like I can toggle the payment source freely. Example: mortgage paid via BTC-ACH in December, but in Jan I flip to dollars. Same routing/account for mortgage auto withdrawal. Do I have this ease of funding source flip right nostr:npub1cn4t4cd78nm900qc2hhqte5aa8c9njm6qkfzw95tszufwcwtcnsq7g3vle ?
great job Jack
when Strike will be at Latam?
Righteous!
wen EU? 👀🤣
Does the app show you how much cap gains you’re racking up after each payment or will it be a surprise once users get the tax forms the following year?
Would be nice to have that metric so people can both be aware of their tax liability and if they are actually beating inflation (more cap gains than cap losses)
plan your escape from the fiat mines 😀
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With my trad-fi bank, I could easily have two accounts, one long term-rainy day fund, and one slush-fund for short term stuff where I'd be able to segregate them for mental accounting reasons but easily be able to transfer between them... kind of like savings and checking accounts. Does Strike offer anything like this? My bit of looking says no but personally, I wouldn't want to be too quick to send to cold storage for utxo management reasons and sometimes things come up, and yet, the bigger my slush fund gets, the more likely I am to waist money on dumb shit 😃 So even if I could just have labeled buckets that look like different buckets when I log into my one account, but for all practical purposes (accounting, back-end, etc.) are just one bucket/account, that could be really nice! And I don't think I care if, like with the savings/checking account example they have different features, or if the only difference between the buckets are the names and balances.
Any plans for a web app?