In 2015 I bought my first bitcoin, the price was ~$350. In the decade since, I’ve learned that “hodling” is easier said than done (shocker). And I’m not just talking about the danger of panic-selling @ a loss. My pitfall was the temptation to collect gains before the price had truly soared.
I know, I know. Hindsight is 20/20. Pretty useless and dumb to play the shoulda/woulda game.
Still. Even the most self-disciplined trader who bought at $350 would have a hard time turning down the opportunity to sell at $1k…then $10k …. then $40k … then $60k … and so forth for years on end. Even the few that HAVE managed to do so are still fraught with the stress of waking up everyday weighing the ever looming “should I sell now?” question.
Thus, my idea to simply time-lock my bitcoin. I found there’s a native feature built into the bitcoin script language called Checklocktimeverify. It lets you create a bitcoin address that can’t be spent until a future date of your choice.
But I was shocked to find that there was literally no simple-to-use tool that makes this feature easily accessible. To be frank, it was kind of a bitch to do manually. The average bitcoin user does not want to write code into terminal, make sure there are no typos that would make the coin permanently inaccessible, broadcast the transaction, sign it, etc etc. Lotta hoops to jump through just to lock some bitcoin.
So, TLDR, I decided to build it. It’s fully functional, easy-to-use, and yes — I used it to time-lock ~half a BTC until February 2036. 10 years seemed like a nice round number. If you’d like proof, feel free to check https://blockstream.info/address/3JVHQt5HGzx6u7xCN29XkkCddJuHzYcHqg …won’t be seeing any spends there over the next decade!
So, time will tell…this could be easily one of the best or worst financial decisions of my life. Either way, I made sure not to invest more than I was willing to lose. Regardless of the 2036 price, I’m at peace knowing that for the next decade, I have nothing to do but sit back and wait to see which it is. One thing that won’t be plaguing me is temptation and “next move anxiety.”
Anyway, I figured there might be others out there who’d like to take advantage of Checklocktimeverify without the hassle of the coding. So I went ahead and published coincapsule.org . Like I said, easy to use … you can literally create your time-locked address in a minute or two.
Feel free to poke around, read the FAQ, and maybe even create your own time-locked address for yourself. Depending on if this is something people like and want, who knows … maybe I’ll add features down the road and even put it on the app store etc. But for now, just figured I’d share it with the community and see how it resonates.
Welcoming any questions, constructive criticism, etc etc
submitted by /u/wsmfp420
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