Disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate or referral links. If you open an account or buy something through one, we, or a partner who holds the referral account, may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not change what we recommend. How this site is funded.
Bitcoin Basics is free to read. To pay for it, we take part in affiliate and referral programs. This page explains what that means, in plain terms, as the US Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement guidelines ask.
What an affiliate link is
Some links on this site, specifically the ones that take you to exchanges and other services, are affiliate or referral links. If you click one and open an account or make a purchase, the company may pay a commission or a referral bonus. Usually that goes to us. For a few exchanges that only serve Canadian residents, the referral account belongs to a partner in Canada who works with us, and the bonus goes to them; the page says which. You pay nothing extra; the price you get is the same as if you had gone to the company directly. In some cases the referral also gets you a sign-up bonus, and where it does, we say so on the page.
Amazon links
Some of our product links, for hardware wallets, security keys, metal seed backups and books, go to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Where a maker warns against buying through a marketplace, or does not sell there at all, we link to the maker instead, whatever that costs us.
We do not display Amazon prices. Any price you see on this site is the maker’s own price from the maker’s own store, with the month we checked it, and it will drift. Check the current price wherever you buy.
What it does not change
- Our reviews. We write the same review whether or not a company pays us, and every review lists the service’s downsides alongside its strengths.
- Our ordering. Where we compare services, the order reflects our judgment of what suits a US beginner, not who pays the most.
- Who we cover. We only link to services that are regulated in the United States and that we would be comfortable using ourselves. A company cannot buy its way onto this site.
How to tell
Every affiliate link on this site goes through an address that starts with bitcoinbasics.com/go/ before redirecting you to the company. If a link goes there, it is an affiliate link. Links that go straight to another website are not. Pages that contain an affiliate link also carry a short disclosure box at the top.
Current partners
Right now, the links on this site that pay us if you sign up are those to 21 Lessons (Gigi), Billfodl, Bitcoin Well, Bitkey, Broken Money (Lyn Alden), CoinZoom, Cryptocurrency Alerting, Cryptotag, Exolix, Grokking Bitcoin (Kalle Rosenbaum), Inventing Bitcoin (Yan Pritzker), Kraken, Ledger, LocalCoinSwap, Mastering Bitcoin (Antonopoulos & Harding), Tangem, The Bitcoin Standard (Saifedean Ammous), The Little Bitcoin Book, Trezor and YubiKey (Yubico). Some of these pay a commission in dollars; others are customer referral programs that pay in bitcoin, in rewards points, or in the company’s own token, and each review says which. Separately, our other offers page carries referral links for services unrelated to bitcoin that we use ourselves: Starlink. Links to every other company we mention are plain links that earn us nothing, including companies whose affiliate programs we have applied to but not yet been accepted by. This paragraph is generated from the links themselves, so it is always current.
Not advice
Whether or not a link pays us, nothing on this site is financial, investment, or tax advice. Please do your own research before choosing any service or sending it money.
Questions
If anything about our affiliate relationships is unclear, email d [at] duane.com and we will answer.