Newton & ShakePay Combo (Most Efficient Combo)

Here are a few points which may or may not be helpful to you from my perspective regarding buying this alternative asset class in regards to maximizing the accumulation of Bitcoin while minimizing fees as Canadians:

1. Personally, I only buy on the Newton app since they currently have the lowest purchasing fees out of all of the available exchanges in Canada. Newton's average spread varies from 0.50% to 0.60% which is 2-3 times cheaper than most of the other available exchanges that are available to us as Canadians. I also use the ShakePay app to earn free Bitcoin on a daily basis by physically shaking my phone once a day. Trust me, I know that sounds ridiculous, stupid, and suspicious, but ShakePay is a legitimate company based out of Montréal which is regulated by both FINTRAC and AMF while it is also legally licensed as a Money Service Business. I never actually buy from ShakePay because of their high purchasing spreads (which is approximately 1.75%) and I simply use them for the free daily accumulation of Bitcoin. Anyone who uses ShakePay can attest to this and easily confirm.

2. Since I actually want to own the underlying asset, I withdraw my Bitcoin from both of those exchanges (which costs nothing because they currently do not have any withdraw fees) and I put my assets into a cold storage wallet. In Canada, this is currently the cheapest method of accumulating Bitcoin and truly owning the assets by storing them "offline" in a cold storage wallet. Currently, there are sign-up bonuses for both companies (Newton $25, ShakePay $30) and I can give you referral codes if you are interested in using them in combination as a means of maximizing efficiency and reducing fees with respect to procuring Bitcoin as I do. Interestingly, if you already have accounts with both Newton and Shakepay, but you have never used a referral code, you can still get the bonus money from both companies and unlock the ShakingSats feature of ShakePay to earn free Bitcoin. All you have to do is e-mail their customer service teams and they will manually add the referral codes for you. Time wise, ShakePay usually takes care of this issue within 24 hours due to their notoriously high level of customer service quality while Newton usually takes 2-3 business days.

3. If you want tax free capital gains, you can buy QBTC.U (USD) or QBTC.TO (CAD) in your TFSA. It is certainly expensive in terms of its premium and management fees (1.95%); however, if you are long/bullish in Bitcoin as an alternative asset class, then perhaps it does not really matter. With that said, you do not truly own Bitcoin with QBTC because QBTC is a fund; and therefore, you own shares of the fund and not Bitcoin itself. As the saying goes and as you may have heard if you have done your due diligence: "not your keys, not your Bitcoin". As such, you run and operate with all of the associated risks of leaving your coins on an exchange which is why I choose to own the real thing and use a cold storage wallet to take my Bitcoin off of every exchange that I use (Newton and Shakepay).

4. If you are current in financial news, you would know what happened with the exchange and Canadian company named Quadriga. In short, many investors did not truly own their Bitcoin with them since Quadriga sold "entitlements to receive crypto assets or fiat currency from Quadriga" while Quadriga held the "keys" to the real Bitcoin and investors lost around 135 million dollars CAD, but up to 250 million dollars CAD according to Wikipedia while GlobalNews published it at 220 million dollars CAD. This is easily verifiable information and a famous story as well as a perfect example about "not your keys, not your Bitcoin".

5. Unfortunately, with both QBTC and WealthSimple Crypto, you cannot take your Bitcoin off of their exchanges because, again, you do not truly own Bitcoin with them. Rather, you own shares of the fund whereas those organizations truly own the asset since they have the "keys". They are the ones who own the real asset (Bitcoin) and simply run the fund with the Bitcoin backing that fund as they make money through their ridiculously overpriced spread/fees (WealthSimple Crypto's spread is around 1.5-2.0% if not higher).

6. With those two options outlined above, there is no reason why you cannot do both (i.e. truly own actual Bitcoin in a cold storage wallet and own shares of the QBTC fund in a TFSA). Just realize that with the first option of truly owning the asset (Bitcoin), it is subject to capital appreciation tax whenever you trigger a taxable event such as selling, buying, and/or converting crypto-to-crypto. As such, you need to be prudent in your bookkeeping behavior and calculate your "adjusted cost base" for each transaction. There is no legal requirement forcing you to calculate your "adjusted cost base" for each transaction, but it just saves you a lot of headaches later on when you need to pay taxes. This is no different than investing in traditional equities in a taxable account after you have maxed out your TFSA, RRSP, RESP, etc.

7. Before you invest in anything regardless of the asset class, make sure you understand what you are putting your money towards, understand your risk tolerance, understand the proper asset allocation percentages for your risk tolerance, and formulate a clear plan of what you want to achieve. For me, the biggest investment is not really the Bitcoin itself, but rather, it is in the underlying technology and innovation of the blockchain infrastructure which serves as a massive global public ledger leading to the decentralization of this digital currency as well as its invincibility and independence from overbearing governing bodies whereby the Bitcoin unit itself simply has a monetary value relative to fiat currency. Disclaimer: I am super long Bitcoin.

Best of luck to you all! Long live Newton!