When I was in my shitcoin-transition phase, I'd moved away from of all the major scammy bullshit, but was still collecting two coins, nano and banano. These were (to quickly oversimplify, since it's not the point of this) coins that were kind of like Lightning, but without a L1 beneath it or any proof of work. So yeah, cheap to send and noncustodial, but with nothing holding them up. But it was fun at first to acquire them in ways similar to some Sat stacking (faucets, games, etc)

Of course, that didn't last, and the final straw for me was realizing that I was spending time each day going to a faucet clicking and going through a captcha to identify which animals are foxes or whatever bullshit they're asking me to, and getting 0.024 of a ban, which as of today appears to be 0.000179352 of a USD, which is maybe a fourth of a sat^[1].

That's a lot of work for less than nothing, and I moved on.

Now, after getting burned with my initial pushes into BTC (thanks, ZBD), I slowly got back into things, focusing on a slow but steady dca process at first before looking into stacking sats via Lightning.

Now, when it comes to stacking sats, I've found there are a few different ways that work well for me. SN is (obviously) the best; you make good content, you get rewarded, and people here are generous. It's active, but well worth it (not least because it's also both fun and informative). Other active methods with high upside include gigs or sites like Bitcoin Transcripts or selling items online. I'm not at a point of doing any of those yet, but of course they're on the table.

There's also the sites that offer ways to purchase or get rewards. When the wife wanted access to Paramount+, I was able to purchase a gift card at Bitrefill and then sign up through Satsback to get something back after the purchase as well.

There are also passive ways to get sats. I have Smiles on my phones and walk a lot; I use Fountain to listen to the podcasts I already enjoy, and some sats will just magically appear for me. I even have the Thundr games that I can play to pass time on a commute. These involve almost no extra work (other than cashing out), so even if they pay slowly, they don't waste my time.

But then there's the stuff that's like the banano faucet. I posted last week in the salon about the Lightning Stores faucet that gives me a whopping 1 sat for going through a similar process (and even yells at me for being greedy enough to want a sat each day). That's a lot more work than it feels like it's worth. And then there are sites like Freebitcoin, that give me a sat (maybe a handful if I'm incredibly lucky) every hour, if I'm patient enough to keep coming back, but don't pay via Lightning and take forever to build up a stash one can actually access. Sats4Likes seems like another one asking a lot for very little.

And so I think a lot about a phrase coined by Robert Burton^[2]: Penny Wise, Pound Foolish. The gist of it is that spending time focusing on saving or accumulating pennies at the cost of long-term pounds (or dollars, or whatever fiat you're using) is not smart, but an easy trap to fall into. You buy a cheaper space heater, but it uses twice as much energy, so the $10 you save is lost in three months, and you keep losing more. Or you buy the cheaper paper towels, not realizing you go through twice as many of them as you would if you were using better ones. And so on.

But it also applies to just using your time to focus on getting pennies (small tasks, or selling something on Ebay today for a low price instead of being patient and wait for it to sell for more next week). Obviously this ties into time preference.

The thing is, with pennies, passing them up means there's still the opportunity for more pennies, because as we know, pennies are endless, and the government (whichever one) will keep making more.

So I'm trying to examine my habits with sats. On the one hand, places like Freebitcoin or that 1 sat faucet feel like complete wastes of my time. Even if I'm not actively using that time for stacking better, I could be using it for a zillion other things (reading, exercise, time with family) that are valuable to me.

On the other hand, sats, unlike pennies, are not unlimited. After 2.1 quadrillion of them have been made, that's it. It's a finite resource, and like many folks I'm trying to make sure I have enough for when it becomes the acknowledged economic resource for everyone. Today, at least, it seems that there are plenty of times when I'll pick something other than going after a few sats, but I wonder if I'll have a point in the future where I truly regret no going after every single one.

1. Almost certainly less, since the process of finding an exchange that'll take it and swap it is tough, and I'd lose a bunch in the process from fees, etc. ↩

2. Not Benjamin Franklin, even though he's often given credit here. ↩