Long-Term Bitcoin Investments via Time-Locked Bitcoin Address

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As much as I love Steem, I'm really a Bitcoin guy first and foremost. Not because I think Steem is a bad investment, I just tend to treat Steem more as a utility token first and as an investment second.

I've been into Bitcoin since late 2011 - early 2012 and I doubt I'll ever stop being into Bitcoin. In terms of investment potential, it just trumps pretty much any other coin, due to the advantage it has being the first cryptocurrency to have ever existed.

That's why I'm really into the idea of keeping some of my Bitcoins locked away for a certain amount of time. Usually, I'm pretty "trigger-happy" whenever the price goes up and having my Bitcoin locked keeps me from selling too soon.

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Time-Locks

Not too many people know that Bitcoin has some basic smart-contract features. They allow you to create addresses that keep you from spending your coins before a certain date or block-height.

One of the easiest tutorials for doing this is the following one. I've gotten this tutorial from someone on the Bitcointalk forum and I'll just straight up copy/paste it here, in case it gets deleted there (use Coinb.in):

You can use Coinbin to do that. I had one a few months ago and it's quite easy to create/spend your coins after the chosen period.

To create the Time Locked Address:
1. Go to Coinb.in;
2. New -> Time Locked Address.
3. Enter your address public key (the one you require to sign the transaction and be able to spend the coins);
4. Enter the date-time or blockheight you want to release the coins.
5. Submit and save the Redeem Script (don't lose that or you won't be able to spend your coins in the future);
6. Send the coins you want to keep locked to the Address generated.

After the chosen period, you will be able to spend your coins.
1. Go to Coinb.in;
2. New -> Transaction;
3. Paste your Redeem Script and click Load (it's going to show every input available to be spent);
4. Paste the address you want to send the coins to at the "Address" field and the amount in the "Amount" field. The remaining funds will be used as fee. E.g: If your address has 0.015BTC, you can put 0.014BTC in the
"Amount" field and the fee will be 0.001BTC (0.015 - 0.014);
5. Submit and copy the raw transaction;
6. Go to the "Sign" tab (at Coinb.in);
7. Paste the private key from the address you choose when creating the Time Locked Address.
8. Paste the raw transaction you just created.
9. Submit, copy the signed transaction and push it to the network (you can do it in the Broadcast tab).
10. Transaction sent!

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2415595.0

Just a quick note that I'm the OP of that thread and the person who posted this quick & easy tutorial was Bitcointalk member TryNinja.

Some additional notes though, since this tutorial assumes you already have some knowledge of Bitcoin. I personally use the open-source Electrum wallet to generate my public keys from addresses I already own. I also keep the private key of that address, to use when I redeem my coins after the time-lock has expired.

Do note that you should always use a local version of Coinb.in, since you're entering sensitive information.

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Personal practices and advice

I wouldn't lock your Bitcoin for too long, I personally tend to lock them for a couple of months at most. You never know what the market is going to do and you can always create a new time-lock after you redeem them.

Currently, I have around 5 different time-locked wallets, my most valuable one contains just under 1 BTC and will only be available in 3 months from now. Since we're probably looking at a bull market for the next couple of months, I'm pretty glad that I locked them away like this.

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Disclaimer

This post should not be regarded as financial advice, heck, it's more technical advice in the first place. I hope you're not stupid enough to blindly follow one guy's opinion, if you are, you probably shouldn't be investing in cryptocurrency in the first place...