Gifting Bitcoin — The Ultimate Orange Pill

1. Gifting Bitcoin Is a Great Way to Intro­duce People to Bitcoin

2. Bitcoin Makes a Great Gift Because It Keeps on Giving

3. Previous Methods of Gifting Bitcoin Had Their Limits

4. Swan Has a New Approach to Gifting Bitcoin that Overcomes These Challenges

As many people discover, convincing a friend or family member to buy Bitcoin can be challenging. Sometimes it feels like no matter how compelling of an argument you make, certain people are just not ready to take these neces­sary steps that will put their wealth in their own hands.

There are many reasons why a loved one might not feel comfort­able making their first Bitcoin purchase. Often they don’t under­stand what it is or why it’s impor­tant, or maybe they don’t know how to buy it, and the process intim­i­dates them.

It’s common for Bitcoiners to feel like Morpheus from The Matrix when trying to convince a loved one to take the “orange pill.”

As in the movie, we need to recog­nize that some people are simply not ready to reach out and swallow the pill themselves. The good news is, there’s a way around waiting for them to make the decision; you can do it for them…by gifting them Bitcoin.

Over the years, the best methods to gift someone Bitcoin have evolved. Recently, Swan intro­duced Swan Gifting, which we believe is the easiest and safest way to gift Bitcoin today.

Gifting a loved one bitcoin is one of the most effec­tive ways to facil­i­tate their owner­ship of bitcoin. Rarely will anyone reject a gift. In fact, they will often thank you for it. 

And, with infla­tion at the highest levels seen in decades, there has never been a better time to gift someone some Bitcoin. Your loved one’s savings are at risk of eroding away rapidly from infla­tion. Most people don’t realize that although the amount of money in their savings account hasn’t changed, its purchasing power has. 

Consider, for example, An example of this concept is the increasing prices of food and bever­ages at sports events or concerts. The amount of nachos or soda hasn’t changed; the dollar’s purchasing power has. 

One dollar today does not buy as much at the conces­sion stand as it used to. Infla­tion has eroded the purchasing power of those dollars.

This is an impor­tant area where Bitcoin can help. Unlike dollars, bitcoin is money that holds its value over time. It’s a revolu­tionary savings technology that allows individ­uals to save for the future with money that cannot be inflated. In fact, bitcoin is likely to increase in purchasing power due to its network effect and scarcity. Histor­i­cally, Bitcoin’s average 5-year compounded annual growth rate is 107%! 

Let’s face it, many gifts seem to find their way to trash eventu­ally. But Bitcoin is a gift that truly keeps giving. 

Let’s take a look at some popular gifts over the last 5 years and see how much purchasing power your friend or family member would have today if you gifted them some Bitcoin instead. 

The moral of this story is that by gifting your friends and family Bitcoin, you are giving them a gift with the poten­tial to give them every­thing they want and more as it pays off later through Bitcoin’s price appreciation.

Whereas you would be hard-pressed to find someone still using the same iPhone you gifted them in 2017, your Bitcoin gift would still be valuable that they would cherish today and beyond. By gifting them Bitcoin, you can give your loved ones something that may make a meaningful differ­ence in their futures.

There are several common ways to gift Bitcoin. As a useful warning, it is impor­tant to note that if you are gifting it to someone who does not yet appre­ciate its poten­tial value, they might lose it or forget about it. You will want to be mindful of this fact and choose a method appro­priate for the recipient’s appre­ci­a­tion of Bitcoin at the time you give the gift.

In earlier days, gifting people with paper wallets was quite popular. A paper wallet stores private keys on a piece of paper like the ones shown below. 

These came with a whole host of risks.

First, there were many instances where people lost funds due to mishan­dling the private keys on the paper wallet. Also, paper wallets have privacy concerns both upon creation and because they promote address reuse. Lastly, since the paper wallet is made of paper, it is rather fragile and suscep­tible to damage or being lost by the gift receiver. 

As time passed, paper wallets were phased out for more durable and secure hardware wallets such as Coldcard or Trezor.

Hardware wallets are another way to gift Bitcoin by sending the Bitcoin to a hardware wallet and then gifting the person the wallet with the Bitcoin stored on it. 

This method of gifting is an improve­ment from a paper wallet but still comes with its own setbacks. First, the wallets themselves cost money and could be consid­ered a gift in their own right. Wallets can be an expen­sive addition to a gift on top of the Bitcoin itself. 

In addition to the cost, most begin­ners do not under­stand how to interact with these wallets and would require instruc­tion on how to access their gifted bitcoin properly. There is the risk that the receiver will lose the wallet or mismanage the private keys due to inexperience. 

Most impor­tantly, if the gift giver sets up the wallet themselves, they have knowl­edge of the seed phrase associ­ated with the wallet. 

In other words, the giver could access the gifted Bitcoin at any point in the future. Now if you are gifting a person some Bitcoin, you likely care about the person and would there­fore not be incen­tivized to steal from them but still, not exactly an ideal situation. 

In general, we recom­mend using these hardware wallets to take self-custody. Still, there is a learning curve, cost, and other factors associ­ated with them that make them less than ideal for gifting purposes.

Another way to gift is with a type of hardware wallet called an Opendime. 

Here at Swan, we love to gift people Opendimes loaded with some Bitcoin. They are a way to gift Bitcoin on a USB-like stick without ever knowing their private key or seed phase.

It is the first Bitcoin bearer instru­ment that allows someone to gift Bitcoin in physical form. When the gift receiver is ready to spend their Bitcoin, they can access the private key by breaking a seal on the device itself (denoted by the white circle). 

Although Opendimes are a great gifting option, they still have some drawbacks. Opendimes themselves cost money and could be an expen­sive addition to a small gift. On top of that, because the private keys can only be unsealed on the device itself, if the gift receiver loses the Opendime, then the Bitcoin is lost with it too. An inexpe­ri­enced person without proper educa­tion may not under­stand how to use it, or they may mishandle or lose the small device.

Recently, the Swan team decided to evolve the way people gift Bitcoin. Swan Gifts is a new way to gift Bitcoin. It is a gift of bitcoin that comes with a customer support team attached and without the costs and risks involved in previous gifting methods. 

When you gift Bitcoin through Swan, you are not just giving them Bitcoin; you are also gifting them a personal Bitcoin assis­tant that will be there to answer their questions, educate them, and guide them on the right path towards taking self-custody of their Bitcoin. 

Swan will hand-hold your loved ones through the onboarding process, educate them on proper security practices to protect them against scammers or hacks and point them toward the right educa­tional resources. 

You no longer need to worry about teaching someone all the ins and outs when gifting Bitcoin. You can outsource all of their questions to the educa­tion team at Swan. 

In addition to the concierge benefits, there are zero costs or wait times associ­ated with gifting through Swan Gifts. Simply get the email address of the recip­ient, and you can send Bitcoin to them within minutes.

One last thing — if you send a gift through Swan and are also a member of our Swan Force Referral Program, you will be credited with the referral and receive 25% of all their fees for 1 year. Not too shabby. 

The main reason that gifting Bitcoin is such a powerful way to orange pill someone is because what you are really gifting them is “skin in the game.” 

“Where your money goes, your mind follows.” 

 — Robert Breedlove

When someone has “skin in the game, ” they are invested person­ally. Now that some of their net worth is tied to Bitcoin, they are much more likely to stay up to date with the industry and take the neces­sary time to learn about it. 

Nothing will excite someone more about Bitcoin than seeing their purchasing power increase as Bitcoin adopts continue to grow.

Gifting Bitcoin should aim to get them to under­stand and get excited about it. Gifting Bitcoin is actually just a “Trojan Horse” to get your loved ones to finally start educating themselves about it. 

Bitcoiners know what happens after someone becomes knowl­edge­able about Bitcoin.

We are in this together. We’ve already sent thousands of gifts through Swan, and tons of those gift receivers are now buying more Bitcoin and setting up Bitcoin Savings Plans. 

The question now is not whether or not to gift Bitcoin, but to whom will you send it?

In addition to gifting Bitcoin to friends and family, if you’d like to buy Bitcoin for yourself we’re giving away $10 for doing so!