Topic: Gifting Bitcoin to a friend (Read 447 times)

It's not that I don't think he doesn't want to learn about Bitcoin or that he isn't capable of understanding it. He is the kind of guy that likes shortcuts. He will take the faster and easier route instead of the more complicated one. Many times, that's not a bad approach, but with Bitcoin it is. The easier and more user-friendly and convenient way to store and interact with crypto can cause people to lose their savings and have them stolen or lost.

I have tried to introduce a few friends to the technology for years, but I can't say I've had a lot of success. A few seemed interested, but when we got to the point of either investing or performing a service in exchange for Bitcoin, suddenly that interest waned. Then when they hear about the price increases and possibilities crypto offers, they tell me I was right. I want to change that record and try it one more time with him.       

This may be a stupid question from my side, but I have been following the development of the thread and you seem to be rather sure that Bitcoin (and the derivative knowledge in how to interact with it) isn't something that your friend values / is very interested in learning. If you're so sure about that, why are you even considering giving him a gift whose nature is BTC? I fully understand the gesture and your eagerness to give him a unique gift that probably none of his friends will give him, but I can't seem to see the reasoning behind it considering your stance regarding his interest on it.
I think that, if we could categorize the answers so far, they would fall in either of these categories:

• Get him a hardware wallet, load it with coins and just give it to him. There are a lot of good alternatives out there - look here[1] for example - and let him find (eventually) the "way" to unlock his BTC. Granted, if he values your gift, and from the look of it, he won't risk it that easily nor he'll fall into common scams providing he'll do his research first.
• OPENDIME still looks a feasible option (from my point of view)
• Create a wallet (offline) and give him the seed words + instructions. While he may not be very interested in learning about BTC (for now at least), I'm sure he will value whatever gift you give him and for sure will treat it with the same amount of respect that's shared between you two. Perhaps catching up on him from time to time just to see how his "quest" for "crypto knowledge" is doing?
  
  

Whatever you end up choosing, I'm sure he'll enjoy the gift (plus company!). People tend to over-complicate sometimes (myself included) when the best gift is always our presence within the ones that care about us. And congrats to him! Buying a house is a great step in a relationship / life goal!

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[1]https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-open-source-hardware-wallets-5288971

Having a noncustododial wallet is not a hard approach and even binance still requires learning.

A gift suppose to be a surprise, this would be the approach I will use. If the seed phrase or private key is given to your friend, all that matters most is to keep it safe, it is completely offline, nothing like online attack and he is safe without online access for that period regarding the seed phrase or private key by protecting it offline.

Then after gifting, teaching can follow in my opinion, telling him the worth of the coin will make your friend not to be careless about it, and telling him about online security. To make use of a wallet can not be so hard for him when the time comes, you can even tell him to get in touch with you if he needs help about it after apparently teach him few necessary information he needs to know.

I am not really worried that Binance will disappear overnight, but I understand what LoyceV was talking about. It's the regulatory frameworks that centralized exchanges like Binance have to comply with that worry me more than an exit scam or disastrous hacking incident. But no matter what happens, it wouldn't be the first time.

Most replies hint at that it's best to learn the proper ways to go about the seed and private keys. I wanted to spare my friend from that since he hasn't expressed a desire to ever learn it. I will probably just do it for him, and then it's up to him whether or not he wants to learn the ways of Bitcoin. 

I guess it would still depend on the persons perspective whether or not they want to go the easy route or learn. The best thing is still knowledge and safe approach.

Private keys and control of your own wallet are forever for sure. I want to think that they wouldn't go anywhere, being the top #1, but it's always safe to be sure when HODL-ing.

I will probably go for one of the below solutions:

• Create a brand new wallet with seed from my Ledger device. Send some BTC to it and give them the seed.
• Generate a private key with bitaddress in an offline environment or by booting a Live OS from USB. I will fund the address and print out the necessary info or give it to them as QR codes.

Don't assume that it's black and white-- that someone is interested or not interested.  Things come in shades. People can be interested without totally falling down the bitcoin rabbit hole and immediately learning enough to securely manage your gift.

I was assuming your hope is that they hold onto them, if you just think they should sell them-- then the thing to do is just walk them through creating an exchange account at an exchange you think they should trust then moving the coins directly to their address there.

As far as trusting you-- well trusting the person giving them a gift over that gift is a bit different than anyone else.  I doubt it encourages anyone to trust in situations where it isn't appropriate, quite the opposite: I think giving people a private key is a great opportunity to discuss and educate about security.

I think that's where we all, the Bitcoiners, rely on. To this wrong attitude towards it during an early epoch. It is mainly seen positively; we take our opportunity to increase our future accumulation status while the majority of the people out there are unaware of the radical changes that will occur.

It is disappointing, though, if it's a close friend of yours or a relative. Still, that's the reason we're heading on a highly hierarchical economy.

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My answer to Pmalek is that if your friend is highly likely to lose them or not appreciate them, don't. While it sounds cool, it isn't.

That's simply not possible. If you use a third party for doing this, you move the risk there. If you'd create a blackbox printer that prints a private key and puts it inside a sealed envelope, it's still totally based on trusting you.
I've given funded paper wallet to several people, and always warned them not to add more funds and never to trust anyone with their private keys. They still have the paper wallets, and I only give it to people who trust me.

Could you make it something slightly related to their new home? A (Bech32) vanity address would be a start, but also stored inside something special (to them)?

This sounds like a great idea for a new topic

I wouldn't do this, Binance can make it expire or add other conditions whenever they want. Or Binance could just totally disappear at some point.
Private keys are forever!

Yes, any amount now on Binance that you will purchase now is required KYC and you will perform identity verification.  Maybe other exchanges too but there's a limit before or a maximum limit that shouldn't exceed before they will ask users to undergo KYC.

I saw a thread of a list Gift cards providers, it might be good if you will try the no-limit option there since you don't want to perform KYC verification.

Regarding your friend, IMO, isn't ideal to give a gift that they didn't know or didn't familiar with, I mean a zero knowledge of what they receive and it seems it could be there will be a chance or possibility that it could be lost on their hand.  However, if you will include a video tutorial on the gift that you gave to them on basic information towards how Bitcoin will use and how to keep it safe might be a good idea if you will force yourself to give something that they didn't know yet.

You can't be a prophet to know exactly what other people want, even they don't know that themselves, and that is not the point of gifts, it's attention you get from person that gave you some gift.
I think that everyone received some stupid gifts in their life, but there is a saying in many countries - don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I personally wouldn't give Bitcoin to anyone who is not willing to first learn about it or show some interest, but I know some people who left Bitcoin for their kids as inheritance, even if they didn't show any interest before, and that is a gift.
If you know that something is valuable you will probably appreciate the gift you received more, but I could also appreciate something that has no material or economic value.
Max Kaiser for example gave away a lot of Bitcoin to other people before and they lost it all, but he is not depressed about it because once you give away something it's not yours anymore.

You are missing my point, I think. It doesn't matter if it is bitcoin or sailing or parachuting or cooking or web design or whatever. If you give someone a gift of something that they have expressed absolutely zero interest in previously, then chances are they are going to smile, thank you for it, then ignore it and wonder about if you really know them well and why you gave them such a strange gift.

There was a post I read a while back on Reddit from a guy who left advertisements for free bitcoin along with instructions and private keys/QR codes around his town, on noticeboards, on flyers, etc., and after several weeks not a single one of the wallets had been swept. I have tried gifting bitcoin to friends with zero interest in it and even telling them I want to give them free money if they spend 10 minutes with me to set up a wallet isn't enough to entice them. If people aren't interested then they aren't interested, and they aren't going to spend the time learning about it regardless of how easy we think that learning process is.

Wtf dude... I was just comparing learning process for Bitcoin that is much easier than learning other random stuff I mentioned, I didn't really mean you would receive a space ship or a nuclear submarine 

Probably not. Given that I've shown no interest ever in learning to sail a boat, I'd mostly wonder why the hell they bought me a boat and politely decline because I have better things to do with my time than learn a skill I'm not interested in and will almost certainly never use. Just because we all see bitcoin as the future does not mean everyone else does, and you can't force something on someone who is not ready for it.

The reason I don't like this is because it teaches them from day 1 to trust a third party (you). If they are not interested enough in bitcoin to sweep the bitcoin you gift them, then why gift them bitcoin at all? If they are interested enough to set up their own wallet and sweep the bitcoin, then surely helping them to set up a wallet securely and then sending them bitcoin directly is a better option.

I would, but every person is different. They are used to doing things one way and if that way works, they don't want to change. It's as simple as that. Ask around in your neighborhood if people would use Bitcoin if you showed them how it works and how to use it. Some would, others are stubborn and would probably just chase you away.

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I didn't really expect that there was a service or way to achieve what I suggested in OP when I started this discussion. But I hoped I was wrong. It could be an interesting project for someone to play around with in the future.   

I think it's best to give coins to non-bitcoiners by moving them to a new securely created private keys, store the key on some physical medium, and give it to them with instructions on safe keeping. (also making it clear that its not secure unless they sweep it).

Because it's a gift they're likely not too worried about you robbing them, and so they'll likely leave it alone until they understand Bitcoin better.  This is good because they're also likely to lose their keys or get their online systems hacked.  If they lose the key you gave them you could retain a backup (offline, lest your own hack causes its loss!) and give it back to them again.

If you receive airplane, helicopter or a boat as a surprise gift from someone, would you go with the process of learning to drive them if he provides you with paid instructions, learning lessons and license?
I would say that procedure for learning about Bitcoin is much more simple, and I never said that you should force him to do anything, instructions are there and he doesn't have to do anything if he doesn't want.
If someone is not interested in learning about Bitcoin than he probably isn't ready to receive and keep it yet.

Look, I don't disagree, But I don't want to force my opinions on him or ask him to learn how to do something that he maybe doesn't want to. I thought Bitcoin would be a great housewarming gift and something he would never expect. It's also meant to be a surprise.

He is a smart lad and he isn't gullible. He would never fall for the obvious scams. I would of course tell him to check with me for every step he decides to take with his coins. Whether that includes selling them on an exchange, moving them to a different wallet, re-investing into something else, etc.

I have to admit that I forgot about the Opendime and didn't consider that option. Thanks!

I didn't know Binance offers gift cards. The only problem is that new accounts have to undergo KYC now. So he would have to perform identity verification. Since I don't like doing that myself, I don't want to suggest that he does. Do you know any other exchange where you could purchase a gift card that doesn't require KYC?

I don't think I will. He knows about Bitcoin's value. At one point he even considered mining it. He is a gamer and always has good computers and GPUs. He thought he could put them to good use mining Bitcoin but unfortunately I shattered his dreams.   

We live and work in different cities. I haven't seen him in almost 2 months and his housewarming party will be the first time we get together after a while. 

A more straightforward but riskier option would be to print a QR code of the private key and another for the address using Bitaddress (which you make), load them with coins, and give the paper to your friend.

Then he creates a wallet on his phone by scanning the papers whenever he wants to spend bitcoin, and then immediately delete it afterwards.

As long as the papers are stored securely there is little risk of robbery, unless of course he decides to never delete the wallet out of convenience! (Warm him about how dangerous that is to theft, it's like walking around with big bundles of cash in your pockets).

In other words, you'll be giving them a product, without the manuals in it! IMO, you might just annoy them with that kind of gift.

You can still achieve that by inviting them over to assist in creating those in a safe environment, then simply look away when it's time for the seeds to appear ^{[instruct them to write it down in a safe place]}, and lastly, delete all traces of the wallet from your side.