How You Can Add to the Bitcoin Value

To help our users decide on the best time to buy Bitcoin, we addressed how to determine fair value for Bitcoin as well as the speculative crypto market cycle, right here on the Coinmama blog. These big-picture factors, namely fundamentals and speculation, are the major drivers of price trends in the Bitcoin market. Another major driver of increasing importance is crypto adoption and promotion by major corporations, such as PayPal, or influential tycoons, such as Elon Musk and Michael Saylor.

But as an individual Bitcoin user, without a corporation or hedge fund backing your plays, you might be wondering if there’s anything you can do personally to add to Bitcoin’s value… And the answer is a resounding yes! While you might not be able to shift the Bitcoin price by hundreds or thousands of dollars (unless you’re rich enough to buy a whole lot of Bitcoin!), there are plenty of things you can do to add to the overall Bitcoin value.

Here are just some of the ways an individual or group can add value to the Bitcoin network, economy, and community:

Encourage User Adoption

The more new users Bitcoin attracts, the greater the health of the overall project and the higher the demand for bitcoins will be. If you want to spread the word about Bitcoin effectively however, your first step should be to gain a solid understanding of how the system works and how it differs from regular money. Coinmama highlighted a number of books that can help you better understand how Bitcoin works. We promise they’re all great reading!

Secondly, remember that your goal is not to convince people to buy Bitcoin, but rather to encourage them to investigate it for themselves. If it makes sense and appeals to them, they’ll probably get back to you regarding the best way to enter the Bitcoin market.

If they do inquire about how best to buy Bitcoin, we suggest recommending conservative strategies, or following similar investment strategies as they already practice.

Never pressure people to buy Bitcoin with promises of glorious profits. Not only can this approach make crypto sound like a scam, but it can also damage your relationship if (and when!) markets drop and the person loses money. This is especially true when Bitcoin is in a bullish phase and overshooting its fair coin value. Newcomers are much more likely to get involved when price is rising and hype is prevalent, but this is exactly when they should be more cautious.

Andreas Antonopoulos, a renowned public speaker on the subject of cryptocurrency, has an excellent Youtube channel wherein he shares his wide knowledge of Bitcoin. Not only are his lectures and Q & A sessions a great way to learn more about Bitcoin, they’ll also teach you how to effectively communicate about Bitcoin to others.

Encourage Business Adoption

If you sell goods or services, then accepting Bitcoin in exchange is a good way to grow the economy. Depending on what you offer, you might see a lot of bitcoin payments coming your way—or hardly any at all. Even in the latter case, just by offering Bitcoin payment as an option you will likely encourage some of your regular clients to investigate the topic.

While many large corporations are accepting Bitcoin these days, every small or medium business that gets involved helps too. The broader and deeper the options for spending bitcoins become, the better for the overall economy and the more user adoption will be encouraged.

As a buyer, when making a purchase, particularly over the internet, inquire whether you can pay with Bitcoin. If enough people request it as a payment option, the individual or company will likely consider supporting it.

Some merchants tend to be wary of Bitcoin due to its volatility; however several payment services automatically convert Bitcoin to fiat upon receipt, thereby minimizing volatility. BTCpay, CoinGate, and CoinPayments are some good payment services to recommend to businesses. They all make it easy to accept Bitcoin via a payment portal which plugs into websites.

Run a Bitcoin Full Node

Full nodes are just regular Bitcoin wallets, such as Bitcoin Core, which download and stay synchronized with the entire Bitcoin blockchain (or enough of it to be useful). Full nodes support the Bitcoin network in three significant ways:

Firstly, they provide a copy of their stored blockchain data to any other wallet which requests it, including “light wallets,” which would otherwise be unable to function. Full nodes automatically connect with other full nodes over the Bitcoin network, to share information on past and current transactions. In this way, the blockchain (or historical record of confirmed transactions) and mempool (or current pending transactions yet to be mined into a block) are shared between all online wallets.

Secondly, full nodes validate pending transactions against their record of the blockchain. When a new transaction is a broadcast, a full node will consult its copy of the blockchain to verify that the sending address owns the coins it’s trying to send and that it has cryptographically demonstrated ownership over those coins.

Thirdly, full nodes will ensure that new blocks meet the rules of Bitcoin, as defined in their code. If a miner attempts to send out an invalid block, say a block which creates a few million Bitcoin out of nothing for the miner’s benefit, full nodes will reject that block ensuring that the miner gets forked off from the valid blockchain. Full nodes thus act as a balance against the power of miners.

Running a full node is also beneficial to you, as you can setup any Bitcoin wallets you’re using to receive and broadcast data from your own, trusted node. This increases the security and privacy of any light wallets you may be using.

If you have computing resources you’d like to dedicate to Bitcoin, check out this detailed guide to running a full node. For best results, you need a fast internet connection and device with at least 2 gigs of RAM and 200 gigs of hard drive space. As a benefit of running a full node, you can be as sure as possible that you’re receiving a correct view of the blockchain.

If you’d like to run a full node but it sounds too complex, you can buy a Bitcoin full node instead. There are a variety of devices available, all designed to get your node up and running with a minimum of problems. See here for a review of 7 different full node hardware devices.Review or Contribute Code and develop projects

If you have coding skills, you can lend a hand to the development of all kinds of interesting Bitcoin projects. Bitcoin Core and related projects like Lightning are under constant development from some of the most respected coders in the world, so having your code committed to such projects is a significant achievement.

Even if you’re new to coding, working on a meaningful project which interests you is probably the best way to learn and stay motivated to improve. Open source projects are always welcoming to volunteers, and more experienced coders are usually happy to mentor newcomers, particularly when the work is related to projects they care about.

And if you’re more creative, or if you have coding, leadership, business, design, marketing, or other relevant skills, you can consider founding or joining a Bitcoin-related project!

Review or Contribute Code and develop projects

And if you’re more creative, or if you have coding, leadership, business, design, marketing, or other relevant skills, you can consider founding or joining a Bitcoin-related project!

Spread Positive and Well-Informed Coverage

Most of us have at least one social media account these days. By occasionally dropping a Bitcoin fact, story, or meme into our feed, we can bring greater attention to the subject of Bitcoin.

When spreading Bitcoin content, try to ensure that it’s both comprehensible and relevant to those who follow you. As there tends to be a lot of baseless rumor and FUD (“Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt,” the crypto version of fake news) floating about the crypto space, endeavor to only spread stories which you know to be true, or an opinion which is fair and backed up by the facts. As for memes, funny ones tend to do best!