Bitcoin Forum

I'd like to ask the users here about how you got started in bitcoins and how you acquire bitcoins.

So the two questions are:

1. When you started, did you MINE or did you BUY bitcons?

2. If you are a regular user of bitcoins currently, do you MINE or do you BUY bitcoins?


To start off the discussion, I can only answer question 1. I mined bitcoins when I started. Then I bought and sold bitcoins through an exchange.
I cannot answer question 2 because I'm no longer a regular user of bitcions.

EDIT: Let me clarify question #1. If you did some sort of service and got paid in bitcoin, you essentially bought it. Even if it was a faucet, you still needed to do something to get paid. That is, the bitcoins were not given to you without any conditions. Would you have done the service for free if they didn't pay you in bitcoins? For any service, doing tasks, or advertising for someone, you would normally get paid in fiat. If you wanted bitcoins instead, you would have to buy it through an exchange. So in essence, you skipped the exchange, and got bitcoins directly. In the end, you still bought it.

I had the same thinking. And I was started like you first.

I started by Mining with my CPU, earning like 0.01 in a week, so I gave up. Came back later to 0.01 per month.
Now I own a large amount of Bitcoins, and I really regret not getting into it back then in the day. I tried to set up a mining rig, but I was too late. I tried to catch up on the arms race, and I failed again. GAWMiners delivered late, and I was away from home, on a vacation for 2 months.

Made my first bitcoin here on the forums selling Silver and gold.

Then expanded into graphics, video games, and then swooped back into bitcoins...

Wish i woulda held on to all my old bitcoins when they were worthless...

( Have over 40btc sitting on some sealclub poker site and no way of getting it back. Can't remember my login name, my old wallet address, nothing... )

i was too late for joining the mining party. i bought my first coins in 2014 after reading about it. and i'm still buying like $50 worth of bitcoin each month.

kek a little of both.  I have more bitcoins than anyone on this shitty forum.

Both.  I think a lot of us here have mined and bought.  There is no reason to just do one.

Which do I enjoy more? Definitely mining.

When I know about bitcoin, it's already the end of 2013, the hash rate is creazy high, and Cpu or GPU miner is totally out of date, so it leave me no choice, after several month, I buy several bitcoin.

I mined
http://s2.postimg.org/pf93ba7xx/158902.jpg

I never mine/ Buy btc.
Earned by some referralls, visiting faucets and games ;)

Mined a long time ago. Now I buy and trade.

Check the doomsday posters, the Bitcoin is going to zero faggots.

Those are the salty faggots who sold all their bitcoins in single or double digits

They'll soon kill themselves after bitocin skyrockets

Yellen and Kikesky will have a good tear too: Kikes like them are still trying to figure out how to control Bitcoin like the control USD


protip:  you filthy fucking kikes can't control bitcoin.  Your mothers disgusting filthy cunt runs a bitcoin node and that's all that is needed for Bitcoin to prosper.

Give it up kikes.

https://i.imgur.com/VQoYTzz.jpg


True Economic Freedom From Kike Influence.

Whoa...this thread took a turn...

Firstly I mined it! After the difficulty increases, I cannot make a profit from it! Now I buy and spend it.

I started out mining with GPU then had to buy a few BTC to purchase a couple of BFL 50's - which basically screwed me out of many bitcoin.  During the time it took for delivery of the BFL 50's, KNC was able to design, produce and ship me a Saturn.  I actually made most of my coin with that device- I just shut it down this week.
 

When I started collecting Bitcoins in 2012, I had a brief stint with mining. It took me many days to get my configuration right. Tried CPU as well as GPU mining. But I became frustrated and gave up after a few days, as my daily earnings were in the range of BTC0.0000001 - BTC0.0000002.

After a few months, I tried Litecoin mining. This was more rewarding, as I was able to mine as much as 0.1 LTC per day. But lost interest in it a few days later, and gave up mining all together.  ;D

No, it did not. Not if you have the guy on ignore, which you should.

Anyhow, back when I joined I was excited and confused at the same time. It took me a while to figure out my plan (even months). After I've figured it all out, I bought my miners (assembled them, GPU miners). In the meantime I also joined a signature campaign. I've mined a lot before the spike in '13 and also bought some later when it crashed.

i like to buy it or earn it from any service

 Thanks for the tip, I forgot about the ignore function.  It's much easier to follow now.
Did you repurpose your GPU miners for altcoins?  I mined via middlecoin.com for a while with my GPUs as well which converted the mined coins into Bitcoin and deposited them to your Bitcoin address daily.  It was profitable for a little while ;)

Traded it :D

All of the above... tried mining, got in too late and electricity cost killed any profit I could have made... I then tried cloud mining, when it was still fasionable, but it turned out that ROI on cloud mining was a myth.

I since tried everything else ... "Ponzi's / buying & trading / faucets / Signature campaigns / Gambling / Rendering services and selling good / investments etc. etc.." ....You experiment until you find the one working for you.  ;D

I am just enjoying the ride, hoping for the perfect wave.  ::)

i started with mining, gpu mining to be precise(1 7950, bought for gamining not for mining, but it returned to me 1 btc in two months, not bad)

i prefer to mine sincerely, because with mining you can increase your total sum of bitcoin with buying not, unless you trade, but trading isn't for me and i find it more risky too

When i first started in bitcoin i bought them. Mining was (and still is) way to complicated for me lol. Maybe one day i will learn about mining and purchase myself some mining hardware :)

When I started, I started with mining, with the help of a close friend. For me the investment is much more gradually that way, you just pay more electricity in a year.  I didn´t have the funds to invest at once. Also I´m not in it strictly for profit, my believe is that the current financial and economic system is rotten to the core, bitcoin can be an katelsator for a new system, decentral!!

I started with one 7970 GPU a few years ago and I mined my first coins. Now, I both buy and cloud mine my coins. I sold my rigs but I would still like to have a few GPUs, just for fun, to mine some alts. I ll probably get a few of these soon.

I did not buy or mine my bitcoins. I earned most of them by doing drawings for other people, getting paid in Bitcoin, thus contributing in the good use of the coin, namely to provide a service and start an economy based on bitcoin. Too many people only buy and trade, as if bitcoin is not a coin, but a collectors item. It will take a long while before people will let go of this idea of holding and selling just for the profit. Only then bitcoin will flourish.

If you like a drawing, here's my thread in the services section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1016226.msg11025408 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1016226.msg11025408)  8)

When I am started I mined it but it was more expensive, later I have bought a couple of bitcoins.



Now the "bitcoin mining" is very insane (you can mine only if you have free electricity and hardware at good price). If I want bitcoin I buy it or try to offer a service and ask to be paid in bitcoin.

To be honest, I started off my ventures in this world by means of receiving payouts from freebitco.in (if anyone still remembers it). When I first received the coins in my wallet, I was so hyped that I planned on buying it, and so my journey continued. I bought some coins way back February of 2014. It was not much, but i still managed to do something about it, especially the pump of a coin they called Blackcoin. That was the first successful trade I executed in my whole life. It multiplied my holdings to some extent that I can manage to buy a new cheap laptop back in the days. I never mined because I don't have the means to do so, but I tried cloudmining ni cex.io and just got some little profit, not from mining but from trading ghs in their platform.

I started getting BTC through faucets and then began mining through gpu cards.
It did not faired well for a long time with my mining due to electricity cost and concentrated my mining through litecoins and other altcoins. Just traded my altcoins with bitcoins on some exchanges and that's how I get hold of my very own BTC.

I started with mining just for fun to see how it works. I used CPU, GPU and Cloud mining too. When difficulty raised up I bought my first USB ASIC, then couple of Bitmain`s S1. Run them for three month and then sell with descent profit. Bought new Bitmain`s ASICs and again. I stopped mining by end of 2014.

My BTC are from Mining and Business with miners.

i bought it....never mined it

I've reported only 1 post and it looks like he's gone. Hopefully they've banned him, if not then there is something wrong with the staff.

Anyhow back to the topic. When I had found out about Bitcoin I've tested CPU mining on a pool. I have to confess, I didn't really have an idea of what was going on. I saw the balance slowly climbing up over the days, but my understanding was not there yet. A few months after I've accumulated enough knowledge and my plans were there. I bought out the equipment and set up my miners to mine Bitcoin for a few days to test it.
I knew that mining altcoins was much profitable back then and switched after those days had passed. I've mined CGB and 2 more coins. I can't remember their names.
My estimation resulted in ~10 months ROI. I've actually achieved ROI about 3-4 months after my investment.

I have tried to mine with the resources I had, but without success. I had to buy my coins in order to get them.

I bought my first coins in early 2013 and have experienced the SilkRoad close down, the +$1000 peak, etc. It was a turbulent year for sure  :D

I tried mining more than 2 years ago, but it was already too late for hobbyists. I gave up after 24 hours, it was just useless. I then tried faucets for a while, but that didn't prove to be an effective way to get BTC, so there was no other choice but to buy, and that's what I did.

It was too late 2 years ago? Did you try mining with a Pentium 4 or something? Yes the difficulty was a few millions, but mining was quite possible if you knew what you were doing.
If you wanted to earn some cash you only had to invest a few thousand not more.

diff was around 7M to be precise, i remember it because it was around the time i started mining, with one gpu you could do 1 btc every two months(i got some luck with p2pool)

but we should remember that bitcoin was worth less than 100 at that time

Both of them.  Mining and buying.

Started off on faucets like any noob, just to see what a Bitcoins "look like".  Started mining, joined slush's pool, played around with CG miner, got fucked by Black Arrow pre order, ordered an Antminer S1 instead, and off I dove into the mining biz.

Soon after, made my first person to person exchange on LocalBitcoins, then opened a Coinbase account, and started messing around on BTC-E and Crypsty for my trading fix.

Now, I'm retired from the mining scene and active trading scene.  I just do it Grandma style, BUY AND HODL.

1) I started with mining altcoins.. then exchanged them for BTC.
2) I never mined BTC, only buy them monthly. Unfortunately mining is not affordable business for me.

I started pretty late so my only option was to buy and then at the same time earn some by providing services. I did consider trying my luck on cloud mining services but after reading so much negative stories, in the end, it still goes back to getting my supply from exchangers.

I never have researched how to start a mining operation  because the general consensus I have read about is that it is not profitable unless you invest 100,00$ or more. So I have only been a buyer.

You should have put one more option. Sell... I haven't purchased a bitcoin since it went above 10 dollars, but I certainly did sell a lot at the all time high. My only regret is that I didn't sell all of them at that time. I mined probably 80 percent of all my coins. Mined like a mad man with a bunch of FPGA singles when they first came out, the singles were extremely profitable until the summer of 13.

Buying mine. Sadly, I found out about bitcoin far too late in the game to mine for profit. :'(

Me

That's perfectly fine for a hobby. A hobby is not something that you're supposed to be earning money with. That really depended on the GPU.
I bought 6 GPUs for starters and enjoyed watching them work.
Maintaining them was horrible and fun at the same time.

When i first started, I bought some coins in order to buy some mining hardware. But I soon found out that mining was very unprofitable already. I'm mainly buying coins today.

That is the sad truth. For me it is the same. Mining was already unprofitable when I first get to know about bitcoin. And since then it is time of big mining farms only and not individual miners... The only way is to buy it and I gotta say it is still great investment.

Rather amusing you just ignore the guy.  If you are here one would figure you would understand his point of view....

Jekyll Island..

Privatised banking..

Zionism being an acceptable thing..




On topic.. Both.

On should mine to protect the network else you are just a pleb.

For me, bitcoins was a good learning experience. I actually made a few bucks overall when I got out.  I had a small farm of 10 Antminer S1's that I set up in my garage. I used the pencil mod to increase the efficiency because the cost of electricity was too high. And also running it at full voltage created too much heat.  In the end, I turned off all the miners and sold a few on Ebay and everything else to a guy locally on Craigslist. I took a loss on the hardware, but the bitcoins I mined during that time made up for it. When I sold my bitcoins, it was exchanging at about $650/btc. I suppose I'm one of the lucky ones that didn't lose a ton of money trying to get in the mining business too late. I learned a lot and I'm still very interested in bitcoins, although I'm not holding any bitcoins and don't plan on buying any. Mining now is completely out of the question because of the incredibly high difficulty and the cost of electricity. Any mining rig I set up now is going to cost me money as soon as it's turned on.

One more thing I wanted to add.

MINING IS ADDICTIVE!!!  It's fun watching your machines make money. And when everything is working like it's supposed to, you want more machines to make more money.

I started out with 1 Antminer S1. Then bought 2 more. Then bought 3 more. And then 4 more. I wanted to keep buying more but I soon realized that mining is getting to the point of being unprofitable. Then I started looking at more efficient machines like the S4, Spondoolies, Terahash, etc. Final decision was to get out quick before I'm stuck with hardware that I can't even give away.

I started with a given bitcoin. And when I say given, it was transferred to me without any services rendered.
Maybe that is the best way to introduce bitcoin to someone, give it away.

1. I mined a few btc using a rig i built myself and i stored it in my garage. was a hassle to deal with the machine since i had to monitor it regularly but seeing how successful it became, i don't regret mining and selling them at the peak of $1000.
2. I would certainly buy it now since my job now doesn't grant me much time to take care of my rigs and electrical bills has increased since then.

I mostly earn my bitcoins  doing small to medium tasks. I also trade in altcoin market  once in a while.

when i started bitcoin i bought them for other ecurrencies and at current price i think buying bitcoin is profitable then mining

So does anyone here mine any more? I stopped about a year ago. I know that most people have turned off their rigs because of the cost of electricity is far more than the value of bitcoins mined.
That means only the mega-large farms and a few small home miners who get free electricity due to some rental arrangement are the last miners.

Is that an accurate assumption?

When I started, I had mine bitcoin but suffered heavy losses. So now I buy and trade

I bought my first BTC when it was 70usd and never mined, i did and still mine some alts.

I first started with Bitcoin by earning them with faucets, which was back in late 2013. When I had acquired some more knowledge on mining, I started to mine. It didn't work too well, as I got virtually nothing.

Buying as much as I can, using my salary monthly (dollar cost average). It's the way to go, the rest of the ways to make BTC aren't stable enough and do not deliver me the results I want, which is to build a big stack for very long term.

I bought a load of bitcoins when they were fairly cheap to buy 2 first gen avalons (batch 2). Mined 7-8BTC a day and made a tidy profit. The last of my mined coins were lost in mtgox and to blackarrow...

I'm not started it with mine or but, I started it with Earn it. I Earned my first BTCitcoin with faucet, and it's a very small amount ;D. But I'm still happy with that, because it's my first time to have a BTCitcoin.
And now, I'm still earn it buy doing a job and earn little in faucet.

are you really sure you earn a bitcoin from faucet but it seems impossible to get bitcoin from any faucet. how much referrals you there?
i am buying bitcoin not mining because mining is much costly than current price.

Well i mined some satoshis on my laptop and when it got hot i fried an egg sandwich on it for lunch.  After lunch i rang the bank to buy me some bitcoin.

I mined them on my laptop, got around 0.02 per day with the shitty gpu. Then I gave up and didn't buy when prices were sub 20$.

I can't answer either of them, cause my first bitcoin came as a payment for my freelance writing, and the amount was not that significant to use it afterwards.

I earn it working and giving services,
in the past I was a miner but mining is not profitable any more
and actually I have never bought bitcoin with my fiat, all I have has been earned working,trading, or gambling

Mined it. HD4870 getting one a day at the time.

When I first got into it I started mining it, but decided that a couple BTC a month on my home PC wasn't worth the hassle at the time. Now I currently buy bitcoins.

I bought mine, im happy with it, no matter the price :).
HODL!  :D

I earn it from signature campaings and by small works but I had not bought any btc till now

I started with some good faucets like freebitcoin and got nearly 0.004 BTC in nearly 2-3 week.
Then one day I found a gambling site I thought I would be great to be here but unfortunately I lost all my wearings the and again started gaining some coins from faucets and this time I found the site luckyb.it I played there for a while and again lost all my coins but this time I found that they gives free bit coins in their chat so I started chat in their chat box and one day when I got enough coins to start mining I pulled all my coins into mining rig and from there I got enough payments to enjoy gambling.

 But seriously mining coins now when the difficulty is so high is not profitable for those who don't owns hardware I think at this time trading will be best for all who wants to start their career in Bitcoin. Seriously I never purchased a single bit of Bitcoin but from trading my all earning I have nearly 0.25 bit coins right now in my wallet.

I am too, I started with some faucets on April 2014. At that time, I can earn 20-100 sat per dispense per 30 minutes or captcha . (Eg: LandofBitcoin) Everyday, I can earn maximum 40K sat for more than 08-12 hours. I have almost no free time in those days. Because my unemployment , I try hard to make money. My family is very poor. Even until now I still did not know how to mine Bitcoin. My English is not good. It is difficult for me to understand well.
these days it is very arduous to me.

I can only suggest you to build up your forum account and then apply to some forum sig campaign.

These days it really doesn't make any sense anymore to mine your coins. It really is better to buy them off an exchange and to put them in cold storage afterwards. It is also very dangerous to buy cloud mining contracts, most of the operators have failed many people didn't even see nearly as much as their investment.

I totally agree with you. About cloud contracts, you've to be really Lucky to get a profit. Think about 'why should someone rent out hashrate when they can use it by theirself (and make profit)'. Sure, to cover initial costs etc etc. In the end, it is really hard to ROI these days.

1. When I started, I bought BTC. However, I started mining altcoins and I was Lucky to mine some altcoins which gained value over time (and traded some of them for BTC).
2. Now i'm indeed a user of Bitcoin. I don't mine anymore, nothing. I don't even look at previous mining contracts either. I still use BTC to buy some items, but I have to buy Bitcoins to do that,.

I have mined altcoins and selled into bitcoins, and  I bought a small amount when I began in the world,and I must  say I hold it without selling

Which altcoins did you mine? If you don't have specialized ASICs used for mining SHA256 coins it still makes more sense to mine an altcoin using your computer, that's true. Still, I'm not a very big fan of altcoins, they only distract from Bitcoin. They're good for trying out some new features, but that's about it.

1, When i started in bitcoin i started by 'selling' product and gained bitcoin, so i basically brought but at a nice price.

2, I have since slowed down using bitcoin as much as i previously did although i do use it as my personal bank that know one in  my local area understands what i have and where i have it. 'priceless' but i don't have as much as i once did.

Bitcoin is so good at hiding funds you don't want the world knowing you have, amazing stuff.

I have earned working and giving services,I have found in bitcoin what I could not found in any other way working from home

And I hold it for long! and I use it in sites I like

I guess I technically bought it, I sold some TF2 items for it when I first got them.

And currently I gamble with them I guess! Both in the market and on gambling sites! I should be more responsible...

Started mining with GPU, went to serious mining when ASIC came out, then difficulty got too high so I bailed and sold my miners.
Now I'm back into mining, but not mining enough to use in trade, everything I mine goes to cold storage.

I buy BTC with Circle and Coinbase to trade with.

I would say it is still profitable to mine, but not much. You're basically turning your money from the electricity bill into Bitcoin. Don't expect ROI for several months. It's certainly fun though.

Days of ROI taking 3 weeks are over.

When I started, I get bitcoin from faucet and tried to buy some Bitcoin to be invested. Now I get Bitcoin from trading and also from the signature campaign

this has been very helpful, the issue of when you start whether to Mine or Buy has been a problem but i have learnt something here now

I earned the bitcoin doing freelance writing. I haven't actually bought any, but I'm holding them for the long term.

1. buy, I started my bitcoin investment in March of 2013, at that time, mining rigs cost a lot of money, avalon mining rigs were ridiculous expensive in 2013. It cost over 3000 USD. BFL mining rigs were scam and didn't ship machines at all.

2. still buy, mining is too difficult, can't get the principal back, especially difficulty is extremely high and mining rigs are extremely expensive. I could mine a tiny amount of btc.

In conclusion, I never mine btc, it is a tough job, I am an investor, that's why I buy btc instead of mining.

1. When I started, I tried to mine but I can't. My low-end computer can't mine a block.
2. I earn Bitcoin from doing online tasks. One example of my task is.. writing this post (let's be open). I dont buy Bitcoin.

Like fryarminer I started mining with GPU. I never swapped to ASIC mining. I tried to, however, I got scammed (and lost a big part of my BTC) and the ASIC was never developed. The owner / developer is gone since.

I mining multiple coins, especially DigitalCoin. I was quite Lucky mining some new coins like "AppleCoin", which made me a nice amount of BTC when it became suddently very popular in China. In the end of my mining life, I used some multipools. Nowadays I don't mine anymore.

1. When you started, did you MINE or did you BUY bitcons?

Buy

2. If you are a regular user of bitcoins currently, do you MINE or do you BUY bitcoins?

Buy.

Mining vs current price always was bad for my situation

Buy.

I only wish I knew about bitcoin & began to mine in the early days.

I have done both mine and buy i never got here as early as i would have liked but still happy with what i have gained so far.

You could also earn bitcoins by doing tasks for someone else or running a business. It doesn't necessarily have to be between those two choices. Gambling and investing are also other ways to get BTC but you need some BTC to start off with.

As for me, I attempted to mine with my laptop back in 2011 but even back then, I only made about ~60,000 satoshis or so for two days worth of effort. It sounds like a pretty good figure today as far as mining on consumer hardware goes but remember that BTC was worth about 50 times less back then and ASICs weren't around.

I lost interest in BTC from 2011 until 2013. Since then, I either bought via LocalBitcoins or earned from my signature campaign, although it's been a while since I bought any coins. Never really touched mining again unless you count USB miners which I bought for fun.


Those first batch Avalons were also highly profitable.

Unfortunately pc mining was already extinct when I joined the community in 2013, I bought my first Bitcoin with PayPal through Virwox.com. I used their service for quite a while. These days I'm still not a miner but I do use BTC to shop online wherever I can and I buy all my BTC from Circle. I really wish I'd bothered to read up on Bitcoin back in 2010, when I first heard about it :(

I think we all have got that feeling about 2010. I've heard about Bitcoin too at that time, but I was not interested because I didn't understand the fundamentals. I think it is my biggest mistake ever that I did not spend some hours reading about BTC at that time, as I would probably have bought some coins over then (and would have sold some around the ATH).

I believe a profitable mining requires a way too big investment, that's why I rather buy it.
Correct me if I am wrong.

It does. Besides that, as the value of BTC decreased a lot, it's quite hard to ROI by buying huge mining equiptment. Maybe you're Lucky when you buy these devices in bulk (and in that case you have an huge investment indeed). Buying BTC directly is in my opinion the better choice. Maybe together with some short-term trading you can increase your amount of BTC (if you're lucky) or meet the decreasing value of the coin.

Some mining can be profitable though. For example when you've got a nice Scrypt hashrate and you jump on a very new coin (which has just launched) in the hope it becomes succesfull one day / becomes worth something one day.

Why so many people now buy bitcoin rather than mine it? Mining is one of the best invest in this bitcoin altough it is so slow for now but still we can mine and get btc from it and if you guys always buying bitcoin when will you get your own bitcoin? I dont think you guy got some profit because you can't earn back after you lost it

If everyone mined and nobody bought, there would be no value in bitcoin.

Mining is very expensive.
Both the equipment & electricity bills.

I solo mined it at first. It was profitable in that times and soon we had a team based on BTC mining too. Besides mining I have seen the chance in trading as well so I started and soon became major trader within some communities. These days I focus on BTC related developments as investor and / or developer since my studies are related anyway. One fun fact is I still am together with the same friends we started BTC mining in the old times but now we are a developer team and focus on projects. That's how I've done my things. Now, although You still could make profit with smart mining related investments, I wouldn't suggest starting solo mining as it became very expensive. If you need BTC fast and simply, I recommend buying these days.

Why shouldn't people go and buy Bitcoins!? It really doesn't matter if you mined the Bitcoins yourself or whether you bought them. If you're mining in a pool, you don't even get the Bitcoins you've mined - you most likely haven't even found a block, you just made sure a certain range of hashes didn't contain a valid block-solving-hash.

Its also very difficult to profit. Its hard to get a single miner and break even. You need bulk quantities + cheap electricity to make a go of it nowadays!

I started of mining it when you could mine from a computer, then i took a break and come back and brought to stock up even more then i come back again and yes i stocked up some more lol I probably brought more than i mined..

Yup, a fact many people forget to take into account is the amount of electricity mining Bitcoins consumes. That's also the reason why most mining farms (who mine in an extremely big scale) are located in areas with cheap - or even free(!!!) - electricity! Those areas include Mongolia, for example :D

When I joined bitcoin world (2014), it was way too late for CPU/GPU mining, so I bought them. I still buy because I don't have ASICs and don't have confidence about profitability of mining.

I mined last year and prior but that only did so much for me, so buying ensued over time plus this sig campaign and I've gotten what I think is decent and prosperous for the next rally this summer and beyond. If you're new, don't mine at all cuz it's not gonna pay you back enough in btc, just buy and hold. I can't stress enough how simple and reliable that just buying coins is, you can't go wrong unless you know a thing or two about trading to expand your pouch. If you don't know about trading, just chill and buy your stuff and let it ride. I just wish I believed in this message of operation when I was building mine early on.

It just the same like you buying things then. If you are buying bitcoin with all of your money why dont you just do trading altough bitcoin price is too volatile but at least you wont spend your own currency to buy it. Its just like using your invested money to be invested again. Yes nowadays so many blocks to solved thats why so many people suggested me for buying but it just wasting you own fiat money

If you look at it that way, you have to spend your own currency either on buying equiptment or on BTC directly. However, it is hard to ROI when you buy equiptment (especially if you have high electricity costs). 

Sure, your direct investment in BTC can end up being less than 100%; being worth less than you Original invested (in your own currency). However, you still remain the same amount of BTC then.

But still buying something that is volatile is risky and it really hard to the ROI too but it is lower that buying equipment right? Actually invested in my own currency seems to get some profit too altough its not higher than btc but its much safer than volatile bitcoin. And how am I still remain same amount if I end up less than 100%?

When I joined the bitcoin community, I tried to mine but nahh it's very expensive in my part.

Looked into mining, but then just did some faucets and eventually just bought some.

In my opinions faucets are quite a waste of time. If I am wrong and someone has a way to actually make some nice money with faucets, contact me ;).
Investing a few bucks into BTC and start short term trading or something makes you way more BTC in less time.

To be honest, I've tried a few faucets too at the very beginning of my 'bitcoin life'. However, that was only a few times (during a few days) until I received my first (dust) payment. Then I realized I was really wasting time.

At first I mine some bitcoin and go to faucet as well! Then be confident with bitcoin then buy it!

First satoshi came from faucets. The amounts I mined are too small to ever withdraw.
Then I moved to altcoins. I mined, I traded, I've put some away.

Now I get most of the satoshi from services (translations, signature campaigns). I also bought some.
I am too small to consider myself a bitcoin regular.

both
and taking payments in it too

I just want to answer the first number,

when I started,
I "Mined" bitcoin from faucets and giveaway,
and after I get some coin,
I invested it on cloud mining, so I can get coin while doing nothing....

I don't quite get the first part of your sentence... I still think buying Bitcoin is a safer thing than mining Bitcoin, because mining BTC exposes you to an even higher risk than just buying BTC. What do you mean by "nowadays so many blocks to solved"!? The amount of blocks being solved isn't changing over time (except for variance. It's 144 blocks per day on average, so it could be 130 per day, or even 200 per day on occasion).

You aren't really "mining" coins when you are using faucets or giveaways. Mining only refers to the process of solving hashes in order to find a valid hash that makes you eligible for adding a new block to the block chain.

I mean buying bitcoin is for your the early fund that you need to do trading so after you already got back your early money back better just use the profit to trading or doing whatever you want to do so you still get profit by using your own profit, so its nothing to lose

I started with mining just a few months ago.  I keep everything I mine, when I need to buy something with BTC I buy that BTC and then spend it right away.  Hopefully all that I mine will be worth something significant some day.

i used to mine btc with cloud mining on cex.io though it wasnt profitable at all and thats why i dont mine bitcoin

yes, i start by the same way, my god, faucets..... what the hell....

and yes i never mined, havent money to buy hw, so... btw i think that actually is better to buy and hold BTC than to try to mine it.

Mined Litecoin Late 2012 early 2013. The Chart told me what to do, was best step in the door with my super slow GPU at the time!

I got started by buying, now have some coming with cloud mining (inb4 "lol cloudmining")

Got into bitcoins too late to mine. I recall hearing about them in 2013 but never bothered to look into it. Of course I regret it  :-[ I did however buy 50 bitcoins mid 2013.

Both of them, mine it and sometimes buy it.

Buy, and also earn it.

I've never attempted Bitcoin mining, I did some alt mining briefly about a year ago, but I personally wouldn't bother.

i mostly buy bitcoins because when i tried to mine it, it was very hard and i had no luck on finding a block

when i started with bitcoin solo mining was at its end of days, so i never tried mining.
as far as cloudmining goes, i never trusted any service nor found any of them being profitable. in any case i just played around in CEX.IO with small amounts and mostly traded hash rather than mining :D

my coins come from whatever i could buy with money and the rest is earned through different works like signature campaign, faucets and nowadays trading.

When I first started Bitcoin I only mined it which I wish I did buy some now looking at the price. the price might of dropped recently but I could of still made a profit even today. I now mine about 20% of my monthly income.

I did not buy it, i did not mine it, i work for it i designed some of the logos that are being used merchant here in bitcointalk

I don't think you can mine BTC profitably since early 2013, unless

[1] You were a foundry.
[2] Had free power.

1. When you started, did you MINE or did you BUY bitcons?
A: I started in late 2013 and it was too late to mine BTC with GPU at that time and I didn't want to invest in expensive ASIC hardware, so I started mining alt-coins and converting them to Bitcoins. That way you can say I didn't buy them, I didn't even mine them but I traded them.

2. If you are a regular user of bitcoins currently, do you MINE or do you BUY bitcoins?
A: If by 'regular user' you mean someone who still continues to acquire more Bitcoins, then yes I am a regular user. But now I have stopped mining (even alt-coin mining). I acquire Bitcoins by:
   - Paid Signature Campaigns
   - Trading alt-coins for profit

1) I bought coins. I would not dare to invest in hardware to mine Bitcoin before I getting some knowledge at least how to move and sell them.

2)neither. I earn them by one mean or another

both ;)

I only buy Bitcoins and that I do both for profit to sell them later at high prices and to buy some some stuff with them.I am interested in mining but the equipment for this are too expensive and especially I am non-tech person,dont have any idea how to start that.Buying is best no worry and no hurry just some profit always.

I never BOUGHT or Mined Bitcoin when I joined BTC. I entered in the Bitcoin when first time I traded my STR {Earned from free giveaway} to BTC, Which was 2 BTC App in early 2014.
I never Mined BTC or Buying BTC in these days But trading some BTC and earning from the Sig campaigns here.

Mined all mine and still mining today.

Mining for a while now (low returns as I only hobby mine) and I've sold off all non-profiting equipment.  I'm left with an Antminer S3 that makes a little bit more than I pay in electricity per day and the rest of the BTC I purchase from an exchange.  I still find it strange that the exchange limits me to such a small amount per week for purchasing.  8)

Where do you live and what kind of hardware are you working with? Because to make profits you need a quite amount of decent gear and a nice low electricity bill, like that Barnacules youtube guy.

I started by buying 0.1B to get familiar with the concept. Afterwards I tried mining it, and soon realized I should switch to altcoins, which I did for a couple of months. Now, whenever I want more bitcoins, I buy them. Much easier ;)

I buy Bitcoin according to my needs.I usually convert my savings in Bitcoin as this is going to very valuable soon.I also make it by different ways like by participating in giveaways or testing beta services.

I won it in poker, and it started growing from there. After I accumulated some Bitcoin, I bought some asic mining rigs and mined for a while. Now I just lease them out. Much more money that way.

Lets see...

I mined about 0.000001 and then I "bought" bitcoin.
I mined altcoins on launch and then traded them later for bitcoin. They were fun times, but now I just use my signature campaign to pay me. Mostly because altcoins have no innovation anymore. :(

This post earns me 0.0013 btc. Its a pretty good rate.

I won it at Gambling games ;)

How much did you start with and how much did you walk away with?

I remember I used to gamble dogecoin but I ended up losing it.

Bought i tried the cloudmining shit but didnt go well

I think that did really depend on when you bought your hashrate (at what price).

Nowadays I think buying cloud mining hashrate isn't really profitable anymore (or the price has to be really low). But months ago there were some possibilities to get a nice ROI. (Referring to in example the ZenCloud cloudmining).

I think mining bitcoin is not profitable any more for personal, so i buy some bitcoin not mining.

I had no choice but to buy because when I arrived in btc the price for miners was and still is to expensive for me to even think about, plus not profitable enough. I managed to buy enough that I can trade and make some extra over this time managed to make profit so I have more than I started with and I am not hear to become rich from btc I already have a day job, just a hobbie for me.

I bought BTC.

Yes this is like a sidejob but you can still earn it by saving some of your salary to invest in it so you can get both, from your real job and from your investment in bitcoin. There is nothing to lose here and you can earn from both side but you still need to see their market to control the price so you wont get any loss

I bought worth $5 BTC and invested it. After days goes by I already have now $100 but it's hard to earn it.

would you care to share what did you invest your $5 worth of bitcoin in and also how long did it take you to reach $100 ?

At the initial stage i would prefer to buy the bitcoins rather than mining it as i would love to increase my wallet by having maximum number of bitcoins and then in future as i have enough capital in my hand i would start mining it and that would be the best to do.

I bought bitcoins and then started growing it. I haven't been to mining yet but lets in future would start mining. But at present the only thing want to do is to keep on growing my bitcoins so in future if the prices climbs up then would sell it earn good profit from it.

When I entered into BTC the only option I had was to buy it and I bought btc and started to grow and at present I have good amount of btc in my wallet and looking for some more investments in btc as this is the right time to invest as the prices have gone down.

most likely altcoin "investments". these can explode in price from time to time. if not, then i also want to know how you made $100 with only 5 bucks.

$5 worth of btc could be grown even up to a hundred dollars. :) The most logical investment there is would probably be the altcoin trading scene. There are coins that shoots up prices up to a thousand times in a short span of time, and it is likely to be a pump coin. However, it would be too dangerous to get in once a coin started boosting up in price rapidly because you don't know whether the pump will stop or not.

But that is just a newbie talk and why did you guys believe it he doing in from altcoin? I guess he get it from ponzi because the payment is good but the chance of getting scammed is thousand %, may be he is one of the lucky guy to make it out there

I think it is really possible from altcoin trade indeed, although you need some luck. By succesfull daytrading / short term trading you can make some extra bucks easily. You just need some luck that you invest in the right coin (at the right moment). You might be lucky enought to stake some altcoins that are getting pumped soon or later (and then you need to be lucky enough to sell it at the right moment.  I've made some money and lost some money on altcoin trading - in the end you should take a profit as soon as it's a nice profit (and don't wait for an huge increase in value - as you will probably end up with nothing).

I guess that alt trading is not based on luck, it is based of information gathering, the more information you can get the more profit you will get because you know whether this alt coin is worth to pump or not. Information of altcoin is the right thing to get if you want to start earning from altcoin. Luck is just about 5-10%

When I heard about bitcoin for the first time I bought few bitcoins and started to grow my bitcoins in the best possible way as I was not aware about the mining at that stage of time but today I am also into mining and earning good profit so I hope this continue for a long period of time.

I never mined 0.0001 , I have a simple graphic card (Nvidia 9100 ; 2.5 gb) ,
and i don't know why its slow , so i just bought bitcoin or earn it .

Bitcoin Boy .

I would buy it and then should start trading as trading can earn you a good profit so trading at a right time will make it more interesting and profitable presently, would definitely go for buying and trade it when prices goes high or just keep it and wait for the future to sell it off.

You should go to Barnacle's Youtube to see what kind of gear you need to make decent gains monthly as a single entity (not part of a mining project, and not hiring cloud services).

Mining with a graphic card hasn't been viable for a long time. You are better off just buying your bitcoin.. You will lose money on energy if you mine with gpu ;)

A great deal depends on liquidity though. In theory you could have gained hundreds of BTC on certain alts, but if you'd tried to actually claim them on the market in most cases you'd be lucky to get 5% out before squashing the whole thing flat.

There are a lot of paper gains out there.

Buy! its practically impossible to mine now.

Another late arriver here and never really got the chance to mine it because all I heard was how it is not profitable to mine, I listened and just brought and traded instead. To this date I have cashed out my orignal investment because I needed the funds in fiat which was a shame but needs a must and all. On the bright side I still have more than I started with after trading and a few extra bits, now I just freeroll and don't care about the price as much as I may have had I not cashed my orignal investment out.

All those mega-mining farms (especially those in China) are making it extremely unprofitable for smaller and medium-sized players to mine Bitcoins. Anyway, it will be interesting to know whether these farms are immediately selling their coins (i.e converting them to fiat) or not. If they are hoarding a part of the coins which they are mining, then it can create problems later.

If you're the biggest miner you've got the biggest bills and probably the biggest OTC deals too. I'd vote more for selling than hoarding.

I'd guess that Chinese miners don't have much in the way of vision. There's no particular reason to have any if you know your government will never let it flourish beyond pointless market wanking. 

Neither mining nor buying,i earn my coins doing faucet,following Sign comp and trading,thats all

Yes its true that mining for now is late because payout from solving blocks can't cover the cost of electricity, thats why many people is choosing buying than mining altough buying need some good budget so it would be like pumping bitcoin. But I am still wondering why there are still miners out there that advertise their mines like cloud mining or something like that

Exactly that's why I don't prefer to mine cause I need mining hardware like ASIC that what can
be profitable else I just bought them ready  ;) .

Bitcoin Boy .

1. buy, I started my bitcoin investment in March of 2013, at that time, mining rigs cost a lot of money, avalon mining rigs were ridiculous expensive in 2013. It cost over 3000 USD. BFL mining rigs were scam and didn't ship machines at all.

2. still buy, mining is too difficult, can't get the principal back, especially difficulty is extremely high and mining rigs are extremely expensive. I could mine a tiny amount of btc.

In conclusion, I never mine btc, it is a tough job, I am an investor, that's why I buy btc instead of mining.

I think you can buy a lot because you got some money to spare for your bitcoin. I dont think everyone is just the same as you, they just need to find a really good ways to earn their bitcoin not from buying. And for now that way is hard to look for

although i doubt if he meant days literary but it is not possible to make 5 bucks into 100 in days by trading, unless you have a crystal ball to tell you the future.
with gambling, though it is possible! but rare

It is possible for you to grow your investment in the altcoin scene by a thousand % in a span of a month, and that is only achievable if you picked the "right" coins and the right time on entering the scene. I highly doubt that he made those within days, but it is possible. There are coins that shoot up hundreds of percentage rise in a course of 30 minutes, and if you're lucky and clever, you could make a good profit from it.

Hmm... I don't know... I have heard about mining rig manufacturers using their customers' mining rigs to mine Bitcoin. They will delay the shipping by 3-4 months, and during that time, they will mine Bitcoins for their own use. In this case, the capital expenses are near zero. And if the electricity is reasonably priced, then the mining operation will be in a great deal of profit.

It has been profitable for a short while, although mining with such Nvideo cards was not the way to go. AMD / ATI graphics cards were able to do the job, but then you still needed to mine the right coins to make some nice money.



Yes, you're right on that. Most of the current altcoin markets which are highly viotile, do have such low amounts of BTC (in total) going around that simply buying it with some 0,x BTC would increase the price even more, but you're unable to sell the coins at a nice price (as you would allmost "crash" the whole altcoin if you own much coins in relation to the current amount of coins going around).

OK, let me ask you something then:
How did you mine it?
With what kind of miner?
How did you buy the miner?
With fiat or btc?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ylVOLvoiY

This is how you run a personal bitcoin mining operation that still gives you positive returns.