First Steps for Holding, Using Bitcoin for Agorism

Walk the Talk of the Parallel Economy

This is the fourth installment of a series prepared for the Alberta independence movement.

- Financial Resilience for Alberta Sovereigntists

- How to Fundraise amid Censorship

- How to Shield Yourself from Lawfare

In November 2022, the Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX—once valued at about $32 billion—became insolvent, froze withdrawals, and filed for bankruptcy. An estimated 9 million users were locked out of the accounts they believed they controlled. Investigators later found an $8 billion gap in customer funds.

This episode illustrates why the bitcoin community claims: “Not your keys, not your coins.” If a third party stores the private keys to access your crypto, it ultimately holds your funds. Whether those intermediaries are banks, payment platforms, or crypto exchanges, individuals depend on institutions that can commit fraud, fail, restrict access, or suspend accounts.

Decades before bitcoin was released, Friedrich Hayek—Nobel laureate and Austrian economist—warned about the dangers of centralized control over money. In his book, Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined (1976), Hayek argued that governments should not monopolize currency and proposed competing private monetary systems. Competition, he believed, would limit power abuses and encourage more stable currencies.

Bitcoin can be understood as the first large-scale technological attempt to realize that idea. It allows individuals to hold and transfer value without requiring permission from banks, payment processors, or centralized exchanges.

However, many bitcoin users still interact with it primarily through custodial platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, or other exchanges. These centralized services are convenient entry points, but they remain heavily regulated and part of the same institutional framework that bitcoin was designed to bypass.

For those interested in building or participating in a parallel or agorist economy—the gray market—the next step is learning how to use bitcoin independently. This guide focuses on the first practical steps to move funds into self-custody, secure the keys that protect them, and begin using bitcoin as a tool for economic exchange.

Step One: Take Custody of Your Bitcoin