Welcome to Bitcoin Wallets & Self-Custody
Course 1 explained how Bitcoin works. This course is about holding it yourself. By the end you’ll know how to choose and set up a hardware wallet, write down and test its backup, move bitcoin from an exchange onto it, and recognise the scams aimed at people who hold their own keys. You’ll also have a plan: a phone wallet for everyday Lightning payments, a desktop wallet for managing your coins, and cold storage for your savings.
Who this course is for
Anyone who owns bitcoin, or is about to, and wants to hold it safely. You need no technical background: each term is explained the first time it appears. If blocks, transactions and addresses are new to you, start with Course 1: Bitcoin Fundamentals.
What you’ll learn
- Keys and recovery words: what a wallet really stores, why holding your own keys matters, and how a seed phrase backs up a whole wallet.
- Your device and your backup: how hardware wallets work, how to choose one and where to buy it, how to set it up step by step, and how to store your words so they survive fire, flood and theft.
- Using it safely: reading address types and what to do when a restore shows zero, your first withdrawal from an exchange, the scams that empty self-custody wallets, Electrum as a desktop wallet, and Lightning wallets for small payments.
- Your wallet plan: a final review that turns it all into three tiers and a self-custody checklist, with a ten-question quiz.
How to take it
Take the lessons in order, since each builds on the ones before. The first five need only your attention; from the setup lesson on, you’ll want a hardware wallet in hand and a small amount of bitcoin for test payments. Every lesson ends with a short Check Your Understanding quiz. Multisig, inheritance planning and defending against physical threats follow in Course 5.
