Oddbean new post about | logout
 All income from my fiat job goes to Strike, who converts it to sats on receipt. From there, I quickly send it via lightning to hot storage.  I do not keep a balance of sats on Strike.  Can't be too careful. Also I don't need Strike to have a record of how old sats are or where they came from.

As I need to pay fiat expenses throughout the month, I send sats to Strike from hot storage through lightning, then immediately sell them for USD and have the USD sent to my fiat bank. Again, no balance held on Strike, and they have no knowledge of how old those sats are,  what USD price I may have paid for them, or how they should be valued.

I keep a small hot balance in my fiat bank in a linked saving account, in case I can't get dollars out of Strike fast enough. I keep a contingency margin in my checking accounts for similar reasons, or if I absolutely need paper money for something. Everything else is paid for on credit cards with decent rewards programs that are either cash back (applied to CC balance) or Amazon/Costco credits-back, since I buy enough from there to make it worthwhile.  

I would welcome a Strike card to try out, but it hasn't happened for me yet, probably because of how bullish my bitcoin adoption has been and its effect on fiat balances.

Any fiat income outside of my fiat job is just cycled into the fiat banking system, and I'll occasionally cycle it back to Strike for an additional buy of a dip.  The hot balances in the fiat bank also give me some ability to buy a dip, but it has to be REALLY attractive to do that.  There's enough flux in the Strike outflows to essentially DCA the bitcoin sales around dips, and enough contingency everywhere to absorb dramatic price actions.  

It took several years to get to this point, several failed attempts at doing it before, and it still isn't perfect - but it is working. My margins are tight by design, but they work as long as I am focused on accumulation and not gratification.

This is entirely a hot system, and does not impact my cold storage at all - never touches it, does not involve it, nor should it.  If I want to decrease a hot contingency account into my cold storage, I can - but that is not what this system is about.  This is all about accumulating slowly while living day to day, and forcing me to choose every time I want to spend a sat whether or not it is truly worth it to me to do so, since everything in my system starts in Bitcoin.

Today's nod to Jack was related to a customer service matter that I felt was handled tremendously well by the Strike team.  I can't say I've had the same treatment elsewhere, and wanted to thank him for the company ethos that he has built.  I will not get into details of what the matter was here, but it was felt, and that is what matters.