Use Bitcoin safely: a practical first path
Practise choosing a wallet, receiving, sending, fees, backups, recovery, scams, and privacy with simulated funds before protocol theory.
Follow these 8 lessons in order, or choose the topic you need. Each lesson combines an explanation, a worked example and practice inside the Guild.
Choose a wallet by trade-offs
Compare custody, source transparency, platform, backup model, hardware isolation, coin control, and support without treating one wallet as best for everyone.
Open lessonReceive a first payment
Create and verify a fresh receiving instruction, distinguish an address from a private key, and monitor the payment from unconfirmed relay to chosen confirmation depth.
Open lessonSend with fee and change
Review destination, amount, selected outputs, fee rate, absolute fee, and change before signing a simulated Bitcoin payment.
Open lessonHandle a slow payment
Diagnose low fees, distinguish replace-by-fee from child-pays-for-parent, and decide when waiting is safer than changing the transaction.
Open lessonBack up and recover
Protect seed words, passphrase, wallet policy, and derivation information, then test recovery without exposing live secrets.
Open lessonDefend against scams and signing mistakes
Recognize seed phishing, clipboard replacement, address substitution, fake support, malicious approvals, and irreversible-payment pressure.
Open lessonUse Bitcoin with deliberate privacy
Understand address reuse, change identification, coin selection, network observers, and the privacy trade-offs of sharing wallet or exchange data.
Open lessonBuy and withdraw bitcoin safely
Compare exchange and peer-to-peer purchase risks, verify the withdrawal network and address, test with a small amount, and confirm self-custody before increasing exposure.
Open lesson