Built by someone
who’s been on the trail.
Hi. I’m Wade. I’ve been following Bitcoin since 2012. Not as a trader, not as a technologist — as someone who kept watching the ecosystem grow through every crash, every scandal, and every obituary, and kept thinking the underlying idea was still intact.
How I got here
First heard about Bitcoin from a friend who was mining it. Didn’t understand it. Filed it away.
That same friend handed me a paper wallet — a tiny amount, maybe $20 worth at the time, as a curiosity more than an investment. “Put this somewhere and forget about it for ten years,” he said. I couldn’t forget about Bitcoin though. I kept following it from a distance, trying to understand what it actually was. Read the whitepaper a few times. Something clicked about the problem it was trying to solve — not the price, the problem.
Started following the people who were thinking seriously about Bitcoin long before it was mainstream: Caitlin Long, Max Keiser, Lyn Alden, Nik Bhatia, Nick Szabo, Simon Dixon, Tim Draper. Read everything. Watched everything. Built a real foundation in the monetary case for Bitcoin.
Found Gary Gensler’s course Blockchain and Money — originally taught at MIT in 2018, released free online in 2020. That gave me the clearest grounding I’d found: monetary history, how Bitcoin actually works at a technical level, why the design decisions were made. Worth watching even today.
Watched Mt. Gox. The ICO boom. Diem/Libra. DeFi. MicroStrategy’s entry. FTX. Silvergate. Bitcoin declared dead more times than I can count. Explored altcoins for a while. Came back to Bitcoin. Studied GBTC as a vehicle before the spot ETFs existed. Watched institutional adoption happen slowly, then suddenly.
I’m not a coder or a developer. My background is business, finance, and international business. I’ve built Shopify stores, created an app, written a book about IRAs. Entrepreneurial by nature, not always by outcome.
What kept me in Bitcoin through everything wasn’t the price — it was watching the ecosystem keep building while everyone was busy writing its obituary. If you understand what you own, you can handle the volatility. If you’re following the price, you’ll probably get shaken out.
Why I built Bitcoin Path
Over the years I’ve talked to a lot of people about Bitcoin. The pattern is almost always the same. They get interested when the hype is on. They start researching. Within days they’re drowning — conflicting opinions, technical jargon, trading advice, altcoin noise, YouTube rabbit holes that lead nowhere useful. Most give up before they find their footing.
The frustrating part is it doesn’t have to be that way. Most of the confusion comes from one problem: people are handed the same generic information regardless of why they got interested in the first place. Someone worried about inflation needs completely different guidance than someone who wants to add Bitcoin to an investment portfolio. A total beginner needs a different path than someone who already owns Bitcoin but doesn’t know what to do with it.
I built this because I kept thinking — if someone had handed me a clear, personalised starting point when I got in, I’d have saved years of wasted time, avoided some expensive mistakes, and understood what I owned much sooner.
What I noticed over the years is that people come to Bitcoin for genuinely different reasons:
Generic Bitcoin education doesn’t serve any of these people well because it treats them all the same. Bitcoin Path is my attempt to fix that — a quiz that figures out who you are first, then gives you a personalized path through the journey. Not everything about Bitcoin. Just what matters for where you are.
What I’d tell someone starting out
Trading is exciting but genuinely hard to be successful at. Altcoins were interesting but mostly expensive lessons. The people I’ve seen do well long-term are the ones who took the time to understand the real problem Bitcoin solves — not just its price history.
When you understand why it was built, the volatility becomes manageable. You’re not watching a number go up and down. You’re watching an early-stage monetary network develop. That’s a different thing entirely, and it changes how you hold through the noise.
The people who get shaken out in bear markets almost always got in for the price. The people who stay understand what they own.
What this site is and isn’t
Bitcoin Path is an educational resource. The quiz, the trail guides, the comparison pages, the book samples, Coach Satoshi — all of it is designed to help you think clearly about your options, not to tell you what to do with your money.
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. I only link to products I’d genuinely recommend to someone I was helping personally.
Nothing here is financial advice. I have a background in business and finance and have been studying Bitcoin for over a decade — but I’m not a licensed financial advisor. For decisions involving real money, please talk to a qualified professional who knows your specific situation.
Know Where You Are.
Know Your Next Step.
Five questions, 60 seconds. The quiz figures out where you are with Bitcoin and gives you a personalized next step.
🧭 Find My Bitcoin Path