Net Worth crossed $1mm. Now what? [NA,SA,EU]

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My biggest concern about Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Walmart is their history of abusing workers.

Bitcoin uses magnitudes less energy than the financial industry companies, it doesn't use any additional energy as it scales-up, and most of that is renewable energy. So bitcoin is definitely the ethical option for the environment when it comes to non-physical money (despite the disinformation on the net about this).

I prefer to put my money in credit unions (non-profit banks in the US) that do not invest in war, animal exploitation, or fossil fuels. Most credit unions loan out their money to their local community to support small business. That, bitcoin, and buying stocks in other ethical companies has been my approach to ethical investing.

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Bitcoin uses magnitudes less energy than the financial industry companies

No, Bitcoin uses 100,000 times the energy per transaction compared to credit cards.

61 Bitcoin Energy Consumption Statistics (2024)

Are you wondering how much energy does bitcoin use? Bitcoin mining consumes roughly 0.5% of all energy consumption worldwide.

(buybitcoinworldwide.com)

It absolutely does use more energy as it scales.

It is currently using 2% of all electricity in the US.

Tracking electricity consumption from U.S. cryptocurrency mining operations - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Energy Information Administration - EIA - Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government

(www.eia.gov)

The carbon emissions from Bitcoin mining are significant.

UN Study Reveals the Hidden Environmental Impacts of Bitcoin: Carbon is Not the Only Harmful By-product

Global Bitcoin mining is highly dependent on fossil fuels, with worrying impacts on water and land in addition to a significant carbon footprint.

United Nations University (unu.edu)

"To offset this footprint, 3.9 billion trees should be planted, covering an area almost equal to the area of the Netherlands, Switzerland, or Denmark or 7% of the Amazon rainforest."

"During this time period, Bitcoin's water footprint was similar to the amount of water required to fill over 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, enough to meet the current domestic water needs of more than 300 million people in rural sub-Saharan Africa."

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What’s up with banks rejecting you

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This is misinformation.

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If I had to guess, the requirement for no phone number and TOTP preclude OP from a lot of the big institutions in the US. I know none of my banks offer TOTP, only SMS. I'd be really interested in seeing the hundred banks which don't require a phone number.

My guess is OP has found some smaller credit unions which do support the requirements, but they may be more risk adverse, and the Bitcoin earnings may look like illegal gains? Also some credit unions only allow certain members, such as NFCU which is only available for military service members and their family.

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From the sound of it, OP sold BTC but hasn't transferred the proceeds off the exchange since they are getting bank accounts in order. If this money is in Coinbase for example, either as USDC or in a USD Wallet, that is not FDIC insured at all. This is significantly riskier than going over the $250k limit at bank with FDIC. The priority should be to get the money off the exchange ASAP, especially as there's maximum daily/weekly/monthly withdrawal amounts, so it will take time. As others have mentioned, you can just open 4-5 accounts with the same institution if the FDIC limit is a concern, but the main concern should be getting the money out of the exchange and then figure out where to keep the money long term later.

Also, be sure to set aside $148,950 for the long term capital gain taxes for April.

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You sold the Bitcoin, you're free of the HODL mentality, and can think rationally again. You don't need to dismiss information because it is critical of cryptocurrency and is counter to your financial interests anymore.

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Do you also think smoking tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer? Or that burning fossil fuels doesn't cause climate change?

I am the one thinking rationally. You seem to be incapable of detecting junk science published by big corporations.

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It's the same government and university research institutions that say tobacco causes lung cancer that also says Bitcoin uses more energy per transaction than a credit card.

You trust their findings that tobacco causes lung cancer yet you don't trust their findings on crypto.

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Congrats on your windfall. How are your annual expenses so low?? If someone else has been providing housing/food for you for 10 years and/or paid for your education, maybe paying them back for that would be a start.

Your situation may be unique and an online retirement calculator which showed you an $800,000 retirement value might be misleading considering your current spending. Since one of your goals is to own a condo in the city, the annual taxes and maintenance alone could be $5k depending on the city and housing prices. Also you probably don't want most of the money in the condo, so you may have a mortgage as well. Perhaps you can map out your goals for the money and additional costs that will entail, and then either adjust your goals or your retirement amount.

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The key to your misunderstanding is the "per transaction" part. It's a common misconception.

Now look at how much energy the whole financial industry uses. Put it on a line graph next to bitcoin's energy usage. You can almost not even see the blip of bitcoin's energy usage compared to the harm that the financial industry is causing.

Then learn how the energy does not increase as the transactions increases. This is a fact. The difficulty increases. It's mathematical. Read the white paper.

Then maybe you can finally see the lie perpetuated by the financial industry, which is a disaster to our environment compared to the greener alternative of bitcoin.

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energy does not increase as the transactions increases

This is correct, the difficulty doesn't increase proportional to the number of transactions directly, but instead to ensure that blocks are mined every 10 minutes on average. This means that if there are a million miners and a single transaction in a block, the difficulty will be very high, requiring a lot of compute, for just a single transaction. Sure this is unlikely, but illustrates how mining can be disproportionately intensive for a low volume of transactions.

The reason the carbon emissions per transaction is a useful metric is to put into context the environmental impact that would happen if a significant amount of current banking transactions happening now were moved over to using Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency that uses proof of work to mine blocks. This was the intention behind the creation of Bitcoin as outlined in the whitepaper, so it's reasonable to model the environmental impact of continuing to use proof of work for Bitcoin mining at the scale of the financial industry which is where some people want to see Bitcoin be in the future.