Get him to buy a Trezor*.  If it's more than play money he's talking about it's not a high price to pay for peace of mind without needing to delve into the depths of the pros and cons, complex processes and precautions involved with the mass of on/off line options there are out there.

I'm definitely with cypherdoc on this one.   The idea that it may 'not [be] important for [a newbie] to learn about bitcoin wallet security' from the very get go is surely asking for tears further down the line.  One of the main points I talk about in any introduction to Bitcoin (usually whilst waiting for a Piper paper wallet to print off that they pressed the button on that I'm going to send 25 mBTC to) is the importance of understanding the challenge of both keeping a private key from hackers and of keeping it such as we don't lose it (forget passwords etc) ourselves.  I usually also use Andreas Antonopolus's story about humans from when someone first wanted to keep a squirrel he'd killed till the following day learned to keep physical stuff safe (hiding stuff is even in the squirrel's DNA) whereas we're useless at backups and security on the whole even though we know we should be more diligent because it's just so new to us.

I don't think owning small amounts of bitcoin on unsecure or make-do wallet solutions encourages someone to learn about security.  There are too many other exciting things about bitcoin to be reading up on.  I believe losing bitcoins is what prompts us to learn more and do better.  If it's just token amounts that's brilliant but more often people don't step up the security as more value is put on a wallet (or the holding increases in value) and that's a precarious position to be in.


Emphatic yes from me!  Even with my careful explanations people sometimes ask as they leave: 'So if I don't spend this for some time or if I lose it you get the bitcoins back do you?'  Those of us familiar with the Bitcoin paradigm and the uncrackability of strong cryptography in general are so used to it it is easy to forget how alien a concept it is to most that a lost or stolen passphrase/private key is the end of their bitcoins.

* or a Piper Wallet printer

I sent this link to a friend in Canada before, which requires the person to have an RBC account. I'm not sure if he followed these instructions but he did end up with a coinbase account.

https://coinforum.ca/discussion/678/buy-and-sell-bitcoin-with-your-rbc-bank-account

Let him set up a proper exchange account (esp if he wants best prices w trading in mind) and point out, as I've done to interested newbs, that all the pia KYC is helping to keep the price down by discouraging casual and impulse buys. It is his price advantage that there are hoops to jump through. Bitcoin is trading at a discount because it is non trivial to acquire.

Urm... Just set him up with a wallet and sell him some coins?

fallling, please get to work.

I'm not done yet accumulating  more bitcoin in the low 470's.

thank you.

I think he's too busy accumulating.

complex series of higher lows after 9 mo bear mkt. good enough for me:

Interesting ZH article about the permanently high plateau that is the S&P. The site is down for maintenance so I can't link it but one quote got me thinking: "one glance at a chart of the S&P 500 tells us that stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. How can we identify a permanently high plateau? One sign is price never touches the 50-week moving average (MA), much less the 200-week MA: prices just keep marching higher in a volatility-free permanently rising plateau."

The VIX, consumer confidence, unemployment, exchange rates, interest rates et al are all massaged into something their own mothers wouldn't recognize. So if you want to gauge the economy in meaningful terms, you have to look at raw numbers for power consumption, container traffic through the suez or panama canal etc. In the world of BTC, what is an equivalent? What should we be looking at to see if sentiment is positive or negative that is still relatively un-manipulated? I'm not sure if I'm asking the right question but once analytics takes over any market, it seems the stats are distorted such that getting a clear picture is very difficult.

coiling. we're gonna get another pop off.

the Bitstamp Bears are gonna get hurt.