The popular bitcoin advice is simple: never spend your bitcoin. Spend the dollars, save the sats. I get the instinct. Dollars are designed to lose purchasing power over time, and bitcoin has a fixed supply. If you have both, it feels almost irresponsible to hand over the asset with the better long-term upside.
But opportunity cost does not come from the payment rail. It comes from the expense.
If you buy a $100 dinner, your FIRE plan takes the same hit whether the merchant receives dollars, sats, or a credit card swipe that gets paid off later. You have $100 less that could have gone into your stack, and if that dinner becomes a recurring expense, your FI number rises by roughly 25x the annual amount under the 4% rule.
Spending bitcoin can be fine if you spend and replace. Spending dollars can still be wasteful if the purchase was lifestyle creep wearing a reasonable outfit. The real question is whether the expense deserves a place in the life you are trying to buy back.
Read the full piece: https://firebtc.io/p/spending-bitcoin
But opportunity cost does not come from the payment rail. It comes from the expense.
If you buy a $100 dinner, your FIRE plan takes the same hit whether the merchant receives dollars, sats, or a credit card swipe that gets paid off later. You have $100 less that could have gone into your stack, and if that dinner becomes a recurring expense, your FI number rises by roughly 25x the annual amount under the 4% rule.
Spending bitcoin can be fine if you spend and replace. Spending dollars can still be wasteful if the purchase was lifestyle creep wearing a reasonable outfit. The real question is whether the expense deserves a place in the life you are trying to buy back.
Read the full piece: https://firebtc.io/p/spending-bitcoin
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