Frequently Asked Questions
My aim with this site is to contribute to a bitcoin circular economy. The original vision behind bitcoin was as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system with no financial intermediaries, and when you think about it, why does any other party need to be involved with a transaction between me and you? I am providing a service (math tutoring), and you give me money (bitcoin) in exchange for that service. That’s it. I don’t need to know your address, your credit card details, or even your full name, all of which are routinely hacked and stolen on websites everyday around the world. You don’t need to trust me to protect your payment info, because you aren’t giving me any.
You don’t need to have any bitcoin to pay with it! If you are 18 or older and in the US, you can use an app like Strike to pay in bitcoin directly from a USD balance. So you never need to be exposed to bitcoin price volatility if you don’t want to be. Please see this page if you are interested in learning more.
I understand your frustration. In my experience, teaching a class of 20+ students online does not work well, no matter what cool teaching software you might be trying to use. However, my experience is that one-on-one online tutoring actually works very well for math subjects. The problem with an online class with many concurrent students is that attaining useful feedback from students is difficult for the teacher. Smaller “breakout rooms” are a common attempt to mitigate this problem. However, the teacher then needs to circulate through the rooms one at a time, leaving the others unattended. In a live class environment, the teacher can use subtle clues such as confused facial expressions or sighs of exasperation to gauge student engagement and understanding.
This is not a problem in a one-on-one tutoring environment. We can both hear each other, and potentially see each other if you would like a video call, and questions/concerns can be brought up and addressed at any moment. Moreover, a digital whiteboard is a very powerful tool for writing math equations or figures. I consider myself to have excellent handwriting when it comes to math, and with a proper tablet such as the one I have, my digital whiteboard handwriting is every bit as good as my blackboard handwriting. I don’t need to erase content in order to make room for more writing: I can simply add a new page. I can also share the content of my whiteboard with you at the end of the meeting if you would like it as a reference for further study on your own time. In addition I can also use software such as Mathematica to plot figures or solutions to equations for you, and we can look at and annotate over them together. These can be shared as well if desired. If you have online homework/e-text, we can look at the content together using screen sharing, and I can annotate directly on the assignment so that we are both (quite literally) on the same page.
If you don’t already have some bitcoin, I would recommend following the guide here on how to use Strike to send lightning payments. You can also buy bitcoin on Strike and withdraw to your own wallet as explained below.
If you already have some bitcoin in an exchange account or your own personal wallet, I recommend Breez wallet for lightning network payments. Breez is a noncustodial lightning wallet, which means that only you have the ability to spend the bitcoin in it. Breez does manage some of the intricacies (i.e., channel management) of the lightning network for you, but they cannot steal any of your bitcoin if they went rogue or a government agency tried to force them to freeze your funds. Once you download Breez, all that’s left to do is deposit some bitcoin from another on-chain bitcoin wallet or exchange account and you are ready to start sending bitcoin lightning payments!
One thing to keep in mind when funding your Breez wallet is that the initial funding transaction and channel setup can take some time. The funding transaction is an on-chain bitcoin payment, which takes 10 minutes to confirm on average. Breez wallet then needs to make another on-chain bitcoin transaction using your funding transaction to set up your lightning network channel for you. So you can expect to wait 20 minutes on average before being able to make any lightning payments. For the purposes of paying me for tutoring, I would recommend funding your Breez wallet in advance of our tutoring session with enough bitcoin to cover the expected tutoring expenses, plus a slight excess to account for potential price volatility.
Some other mobile lightning network wallet options are: Wallet of Satoshi, Muun, Phoenix, Simple Bitcoin Wallet, Blue Wallet, and many more. Make sure you do your research on what the tradeoffs are for each implementation. In particular some, like Wallet of Satoshi, are custodial wallets, which means that they hold the keys to your bitcoin wallet.
I mainly use Zoom for audio/video calls, along with OpenBoard for writing math formulas. I use the One by Wacom tablet for writing math formulas on OpenBoard or annotating on your shared screen.
There’s not much that I can do, besides discontinuing any further tutoring with you. I believe that I can tell early on in the meeting what your intentions are, and in my experience students earnestly trying to learn will be 100% willing to pay for my tutoring service.
I self-host my own bitcoin and Core Lightning node at my home on a network isolated Ubuntu machine. I use Ride The Lightning to generate a lightning payment invoice on whatever machine I am tutoring on. I use a watch-only Sparrow wallet to generate a bitcoin payment address for you if you prefer to pay on-chain.
Hey, I get it. You know where bitcoin is heading, so I don’t blame you for being hesitant to part with any of it. But keep in mind that any fiat purchase you make is a missed opportunity for a bitcoin investment. So whether you spend $20 on a tutoring session, or put that $20 into bitcoin and then later send it to me (when the price has likely appreciated, meaning you keep the difference), it’s really all the same. Bitcoin is money: spend money when you need to, and save it when you don’t.
No, I do not wish to receive any other cryptocurrencies. Other cryptocurrencies are, in a sense, reintroducing a barter system, where due to a lack of coincidence of wants, you have a “money” that I don’t personally desire. You can either pay me in bitcoin from a USD balance as explained here, or you can use various non-KYC crypto exchanges to make the swap for you. Visit kycnot.me to see some options that allow you to instantly exchange your cryptocurrency for bitcoin on the lightning network. Some popular services that I have heard good things about include: sideshift.ai, Boltz, and FixedFloat. Keep in mind that you will need to pay network transfer fees for whatever cryptocurrency you are exchanging, as well as a fee to the swap service. Specific instructions and terms will be listed on the respective websites.
Wyzant charges exorbitant fees for both tutors and students. In fact, a tutor only receives 75% of the amount that they charge for each session. Moreover, the student is required to pay a 9% service fee on top of the base rate the tutor charges directly to Wyzant for each session. This means that a student on Wyzant ends up paying over 45% more (!) in fees than if the student had paid the tutor in a peer-to-peer fashion with bitcoin. For example, if a tutor values their time in a certain subject at $40/hour, the tutor will need to charge the student $53.33/hour, and the student will need to pay $58.13/hour to Wyzant, in order for the tutor to receive the $40/hour that they expect. This is an immense amount of payment friction in what should be a straightforward transaction. I don’t mean to just pick on Wyzant: from my research, all other online tutoring platforms are similar or even worse.
Sure! Just let me know in your message to request a tutoring session that you would like to denominate the tutoring rate in satoshis instead. We will be able to work something out.