Best bitcoin recurring buy in Canada

By Adam - CEO @ Bitcoin Well · 5/6/2024

Recurring buy in Canada

What is a recurring buy? 

Whenever I get asked “when is the best time to buy bitcoin” or “what is the best way to buy bitcoin” my answer is always the same: Often and regularly, through an automated recurring buy. 

A recurring buy, also known as Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA), is an industry preferred method to acquire the most bitcoin possible. Purchasing bitcoin via recurring buy automates your purchases to remove the emotion from bitcoin’s wild price fluctuations, which helps you acquire more bitcoin than you may have otherwise if you were trying to time the market.

There are a few different ways to execute a recurring buy depending on the platform you are using. In Canada, you have many different ways to set up a bitcoin recurring buy:

• From a connected bank 🙅🏻

With a balance 🙅🏻

With a bill payment – no bank connected or balance on platform 😍

Each bitcoin recurring buy offers unique advantages and disadvantages depending on what is important to you. In this article we will break down the different Dollar Cost Averaging schedules, as well as the benefit of buying bitcoin straight to your bitcoin wallet. While I believe that dollar cost averaging bitcoin via bill payment is the best strategy, i'll let you be the judge. 

Frequency determines strategy

Bitcoin recurring buy - daily​

If you are looking to buy bitcoin more frequently (ie: daily) you will likely want to use a custodial exchange and withdraw weekly. This is considered to be better TXID hygiene and will help keep your bitcoin wallet from being “bloated”, which would make it more expensive to send coins later. Beware! Using a custodial exchange has its risks as you do not truly own the coins until you receive them. You will need to login and request a withdrawal, which is annoying and defeats the whole ‘be your own bank’ ethos that cryptocurrency originated from. In addition to risking your bitcoin in the hands of someone else, this strategy is not very “set-it-and-forget-it”, which is an important component to remove emotion and follow a successful dollar cost averaging strategy. Bitcoin purchases through an exchange are more like “setting up your bitcoin buying strategy and TRYING NOT TO FORGET to withdraw your bitcoin”. The importance of remembering to withdraw your bitcoin from an exchange cannot be overstated, as cryptocurrency exchanges often collapse, losing customer deposits along the way. And, to top it off, custodial exchanges may charge an additional fee to have you withdraw your bitcoin. The best way to protect your bitcoin is to keep them off exchanges entirely. 

A daily bitcoin recurring buy would require you to either connect your bank (which is bad for privacy) or hold a balance (which is bad for security). In my opinion, the logistics required to maintain a daily bitcoin recurring buy strategy are cumbersome, while inherently taking on excess risk via a custodial exchange makes the entire effort not worth it when considering the better options: Weekly, biweekly or monthly. Fortunately, there is a better way. 

Bitcoin recurring buy - weekly

This is the sweet spot. A weekly buy is frequent enough to remove emotion and price volatility, but not so frequent that you require custodial bitcoin exchanges, manual withdrawals and fees, all while treating your TXID workload like a part time job. Bitcoin recurring buys should be easy, automatic and self custodied on a wallet only YOU control. Of course you may miss some of bitcoin’s temporary lowest point, but chasing price points on a chart is like chasing waterfalls. But remember, bitcoin isn’t for trading, bitcoin is for saving. When you think about bitcoin, think long term. 

All that to say, a weekly schedule to buy bitcoin is the method that I find to be the best method to diligently save for the future. While you won’t be signing up for a workload worth of UTXOs to manage, a weekly, biweekly or monthly recurring buy schedule will still require occasional UTXO consolidations. By waiting for fees to be low, UTXO consolidations can be done inexpensively and quickly. Be sure to follow @thebitcoinwell on twitter, as we often post about low fees when they occur.  

To set up your weekly recurring bitcoin buy, you can connect your bank to an exchange  (bad for privacy) or hold a balance on an exchange (bad for security). The third option has much less risk, and is also easier. Canadians can set up a weekly bitcoin recurring buy through a bill payment at bitcoinwell.com/app. This would be accomplished by sending a recurring bill payment from your bank to the unique payee details at bitcoinwell.com. 

Here are the simple steps:

• Set a bitcoin address for your recurring buy and receive your unique payee details.
• Login to your online bank and select “recurring bill payment”.
• Input your unique payee details and your payment frequency.
• Set it, sit back and relax as your bitcoin wallet automatically receives deposits.

Automating your bill payment through your online banking enables you to customize your bitcoin payment schedule. Bitcoin Well automatically converts your payments into bitcoin and sends it to your personal bitcoin address. We save you extra bitcoin by helping cover the blockchain fees through our transaction batching system. The best part – for the privacy conscious – is that your bank has no idea you are buying bitcoin! The payment actually goes to our payment provider. Secondly, the non-custodial nature of the transaction makes sure you receive bitcoin directly; which is the safest way to buy bitcoin. 

Bitcoin recurring buy - bi-weekly/monthly

Buying bitcoin less frequently decreases your TXIDs, which decreases the “wallet bloat” you might experience by receiving small, frequent transactions. Personally, I find weekly to be best, but bi-weekly is another good strategy. I don’t think monthly is frequent enough to positively harness bitcoin’s short term volatility, however, 12 additional TXIDs per year would keep your wallet TXIDs lean, enabling improved transaction management in the future. Ultimately, it comes down to your personal preference! 

With Bitcoin Well’s recurring bitcoin buy, managing your bitcoin purchase schedule is easy. Since you do not have to input any bank details onto our platform, you only need to make the payment changes in your online banking app. A benefit to this method is that your bank doesn’t know you are buying bitcoin, helping you withdraw your funds without unnecessary hiccups from your bank. Additionally, with Bitcoin Well there is no need to hold a balance, like you would with a typical exchange. Bitcoin Well automatically converts your bill payment into bitcoin and sends it your way. There is no need to request a withdrawal - withdrawals are automatic. 

Important note: some Canadian banks are funky. 
CIBC, Tangerine or Simplii financial do not have our payment processor added as a payee. As a result, these banks will be unable to benefit from the safest recurring buy in Canada .😔

The important thing is ownership

At the end of the day, whether you buy daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, you should absolutely take ownership of your bitcoin. True Bitcoin ownerships means a record on the blockchain and holding funds in your personal wallet. If you hold your bitcoin in an exchange, you are basically trusting some other company with your savings. You don’t own a record on the blockchain, you own a promise from a company. 

At the surface, bitcoin exchanges look like legacy banking, which are pretty safe - until they aren’t. The further you examine your bitcoin ownership options, the more you learn about how financially exposed you are when you hold bitcoin on an exchange, even more so than when you hold fiat in a bank. However, that is an article for another day. I’ve spoken about the “ctrl-z” nature of fiat before, and in short, it highlights that bitcoin is irreversible by nature. Trusting someone else not to do something stupid with your bitcoin is not a wise decision. 

Anyways, the long and the short of it is you should buy bitcoin on a schedule. If you want to be a pro and remove the emotions that come with price volatility, all while preserving your security and privacy, you need to use bitcoinwell.com.

Stay sovereign! 
🫡Adam