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.

1. 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.

   35 minutes · Open lesson

2. Receive 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.

   45 minutes · Open lesson

3. Send with fee and change

   Review destination, amount, selected outputs, fee rate, absolute fee, and change before signing a simulated Bitcoin payment.

   55 minutes · Open lesson

4. Handle 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.

   65 minutes · Open lesson

5. Back up and recover

   Protect seed words, passphrase, wallet policy, and derivation information, then test recovery without exposing live secrets.

   35 minutes · Open lesson

6. Defend against scams and signing mistakes

   Recognize seed phishing, clipboard replacement, address substitution, fake support, malicious approvals, and irreversible-payment pressure.

   45 minutes · Open lesson

7. Use Bitcoin with deliberate privacy

   Understand address reuse, change identification, coin selection, network observers, and the privacy trade-offs of sharing wallet or exchange data.

   55 minutes · Open lesson

8. Buy 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.

   65 minutes · Open lesson