Bitcoin Forum

Was it in the 100s or 1000s? I tried googling without any luck.

Also, a quote I saw a lot after the recent talk by everyone's favourite: “Fuck Raspberry Pis, if you can't afford a $20,000 node to help the network, piss off.”

Watched the whole thing and what was actually said: “Quite frankly, I don't care about Raspberry Pis. If you have been in Bitcoin since 2009 and you can't afford a $20,000 node to help this network, piss off.”

So, what would that mean? How much would that help in terms of decentralization and the network in general if everybody that was into bitcoin in 2009 had a $20,000 node?

How would more people with a 20,000 usd node help with decentralization?

Nodes don't need to be a small server farm to run.. More cheap nodes would be better for decentralization than a few high end ones.

It's just another question that can't be answered definitively.

In 2009 I'd think that you're talking about less than 100 people.  You can view the old mailing list (https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/bitcoin-list/).

In November 2009, satoshi started this forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5.).  Notice how many posts there were on the new forum thread that were actually from the time?  It's only two.

Even going into the 2010 threads which satoshi posted in, you're talking about less than 100 different users posting in them.  There were very few people until Bitcoin's first bit of mainstream publicity from Wikileaks and PC world.

It was probably around 3,000-4,000 and now it should be around millions at least all around the world. But this couldn't change that situation. We wanna get involved with the bitcoin and we don't have money. What should we do? Nothing? Or pay $20,000 ? Very stupid, unfortunately.

Maybe a  few 100s. Boy! $5 would gave gotten me $4.4 million. I need to go back in time

Buy one now and just sit on it for 5 years. In 5 years look back and you will see NOW as the good old days. Like the one's who put down 5 dollars in '09.

I don't know how people like you can simply think that Bitcoin will just follow this insane incline up and up, I just can't see it happening in the least.

Anyway. When you go to Bitcoins wiki page, you can see that they don't really even have 2009 listed anywhere to be looking for information, it's in the 'pre-history' area which would probably mean that only a couple hundred people knew about Bitcoin and were involved in it.

Not too many people involved, made a select few a ton of money -- sounds like a penny stock that caught FIRE.

I agree that likely there were under 1,000 by the end of 2009. 2010 & 2011 are when it first started getting traction and made tons of millionaire who could still mine on their laptops/GPUs and make a Bitcoin a day or more.

Heck, even in 2012 the average person could have invested part of their weekly McDonald's paycheck and would now be a millionaire.

Same thing could be said in 2013. Bitcoin was still in the $10-20 range at this point.

I think this recent drop all the way to $200 before rising back up to over $2,000 is the last time average people will be able to buy any decent amount of Bitcoin. I wish I could go back in time to when it dropped to $200 not long ago and would invest everything I had. Hindsight is 20/20...

Very less one of them is surely the owner satoshi but till now we have only one proof who has made millions from bitcoin as a early holder. His identity is again a mystery but it is still good to hear all the early holders who took all those risks which no one would take at that time are now millionaires. My guess would be max 30 people who were really early investors

Haha, you should have a time machine to go back in time.  ;D
Anyways, I think in 2009 there isn't many people where into bitcoin community. I think few of them like satoshis and theymos, Maybe they are under 1000 persons.
I hoped that i been here in this time, so maybe in this time i can collect a lot of bitcoins and i will be too rich now, but i am not lucky too much. I think even i will be here in 2009, I didn't know that bitcoin will be like it be nowadays, and maybe i quite the community.

Of course i would do the same if i knew that bitcoin prices would increase like this, maybe i would save and never spend the bitcoin i have on the gambling table. I know bitcoin from 2015 but by that time the bitcoin price is still $ 424 but at that time i didnt have any knowledge about the trade, until i wasted it through gambling, it would be so sorry if I knew bitcoin price would be as high as Now that could Reach the $ price 2131 and currently price of bitcoin has declined.

Oh I am not in, in that year. I really like to have a bitcoin and if I will turn back time and if I just known bitcoin as early as I could I will earn it and wait until today, maybe if many people known bitcoin for that year and earn a lot for sure a lot of us are all rich.

So what did he mean by helping the network, or is there really no substance to the claim?


Appreciate the reply with links and all! I have a follow-up question, made me think about the number of users versus number of nodes. Made a new post about it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2024134.0

i really don't know how many people were into bitcoin in 2009 but my guess is approximately 100 or more because bitcoin itself is not yet known by many people. in that time, i think people still asking what is bitcoin, what is function of bitcoin for us and else. and after its launched, maybe the question is how much money i can earn from bitcoin, why the price is not increase high and else.

There may be very few people joining bitcoin at the time, but I am so sure, that they are great people and dare to take risks. Well, now they must have become important people for bitcoin development.  :)

People who are in bitcoin in 2009 ? . throwback last eight years ago . Well I think last eight years ago there are just almost hundred people who do it or maybe lower than hundred. By that time, not all country already adopted an advance technology so they ( and I am one of them ) do not know alot in internet. They are just starting to explore what could be the internet.

Way back 2009 i think only few people knows about bitcoin even in crypto currency but they are the one who are lucky enough they are now one of the riches people or billionaire because the value of bitcoin was already multiply in 1m times. And we proved that in our selves.

It is not that easy to know how many people knew about bitcoin way back in 2009 but there are a few members in the cryptography mailing list where Satoshi published the white paper of bitcoin and many were interested and some were skeptical during that time,i do understand from where you are quoting these things,but statistically speaking it is the truth ,if you are not able to afford $20000 then you were not into bitcoin in the early stages. ;)

Even if we knew exactly how many people were in bitcoin in 2009/2010, most of them would have left the bitcoin thinking them as a piece of garbage and they could not think of the value it is now. Maybe they are regret that why they did not collect them when it was of zero value almost.

In 2009, I thought there were very few people who knew Bicoin, when it was Bitcoin, that nothing was going to happen, only a few people noticed it, I thought there were not 1000 people. If you were in Bitcoin and kept it till now, I'm sure you are a billionaire

As you mentioned 100 or more. Absolutely no because when bitcoin came to the market it has introduce to the people like their ads and so on. So many people were interesting and buying bitcoins. Investing in bitcoin and the best things was that bitcoin has changed the life style of withdrawal foreign money in a local country.

I think less than 500 were the people who used bitcoin in 2009. Because the price of bitcoin was too small. And I do know that bitcoins' price, and i also know that there were only few people who bought bitcoin when the price's was too low. If I knew bitcoin before I probably bought many at that time.

Yeah probably. Few people only knows how to earn bitcoins that time. They only know the fiat. But bitcoins they arent be aware to that and they are not yet unto it. They doesnt have any investment on it. And they will not even knows the there will many money in bitcoins if only we know how to handle it.

There are only very roughly 150 transactions for all of 2009, not counting mined blocks. Things didn't pick up until spring of 2010 when it went over 1000 total transactions.

I haven't investigated what happened to all those coins that were mined for the first year and a half. The block hashes only have 8 leading zeros for about the whole year! It stayed at its lowest difficulty for so long.

Until you spend the coins, especially if you try to do it suddenly.

I think there are only few people who are into bitcoin last 2009 because bitcoin was just started at that time and there are only few people who knew about it. And bitcoin's value that time was very low and usually people is not attracted to something that has less value.

Well, i remember in 2009 then i download the wallet for window, and w8... w8 because i dont have information, i dont know "how to do" lol
In 2009 i think "well, why this wallet is empty? wtf", and since after 1/2 month i delete.

Now i cry. Just a little bit of info more...

In 2009 there are still few people who know about bitcoin because the price is very low, and many people are still not interested.

yes it is clear that in the very beginning the user of bitcoin were very low.  although there is no such mechanism through which we can find out the actual users of bitcoin but i thin as at that time bitcoin was very low therefore the users of bitcoin were also very low. but i think that with the passage of time the users of bitcoin start increasing and now bitcoin users can be find out through out the world.

that's for sure because at that time they were not so concerned about bitcoin for such a low price ;)

It is more like a vast majority of people who knew about bitcoin back in 2009 simply didn't grasp how powerful and game changing this idea is.
I heard stories of people who collected dozens/hundreds or even thousands of Bitcoin back then and simply forget about their coins and delete the wallet or change/upgrade their PC.
Seriously, I would probably kill myself knowing that I lost millions of dollar worth asset because I deleted my wallet or something...

Bitcoin was invented in 2009 by Satoshi and founder of this forum back in the days with few software engineers and cryptographers, which means there were few people involved in the bitcoin community because it was under development stage.

During that period not everybody was interest in bitcoin because people think it's the project that has no future, but nevertheless Satoshi and his team keep on updating bitcoin core and the blockchain network.

Back then very few people can afford to pay for bitcoin mining hardware (like Raspberry Pi) and dedicate their time to learn about bitcoin mining and bitcoin in-general. So, there were actually few hundreds people involved in bitcoin 2009.   

People are interested on these digital currency because it is the first one. We all now how people want something when you say it is new and first of its kind. They advertise bitcoin in many ways, they even bought a pizza for a thousand bitcoin. Then the users and investors piqued their interest in these digital currency. The reason why it get so high price in just some years that it almost out run gold. If I am not mistaken that is MtGox 5 years ago that bitcoin dumped the highest.

I've never seen any reliable data on this either, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist--hell, we can't even tell how many people are using bitcoin now.  Such is the semi-anonymous nature of the beast here.

But all the ones who were into bitcoin back then were the pioneers, the real winners if they held onto any of it.  I bet not many did.  That guy who bought a 10K btc pizza still blows my mind.  My guess is probably hundreds of people, if that, were involved in bitcoin in 2009.

One thing is sure that not many people were around in the bitcoin system during the early stages and especially during 2009 ,you could really count a few person who satoshi had contacted in the earlier stages and those who were there are millionaires now without a doubt.

Probably so much that I do not know how many bitcointalk play in 2009 and I do not know much about bitcointalk.

There would be very few people who would be aware about bitcoins at that time as bitcoin started to gain popularity after that and even at that time there would be very few members on this forum and I personally came to know about bitcoins in the year 2015.

I think less than 500 people are using Bitcoin in 2009, thats normal because it is not popular in this date and its price is not high, and also still not having good potential. But with time Bitcoin becomes the first used crypto currency with the biggest community

As at 2009, I'm sure only a few people would be involved in bitcoin. it just spread to many countries recently like 2011 upward.

I believe there were less than 100 people for the whole 2009 and less than 300 for the first half of 2010.

Since this is my first post here on bitcointalk, I would like to take this opportunity to leave my story about Bitcoin 8)

I first heard about bitcoin in a strike of fortune: I was surfing the Web in the Winter of 2009 and got into an uncommon "newspaper-like" website - possibly one of the first mentions about Bitcoin on the Web. I don't remember the exact day but I remember it was during the period just before or after I left my job (2009/02/28). The text was short with about 100~150 words and I remember it started with a title like "A peer-to-peer digital cash system". The text was basically introducing Bitcoin and it ended with a message like "Will Bitcoin be successful? We have to wait and see" - something like this.

Then, I realized the value of 'whatever that thing is' is zero - "no one attributed any value to this 'thing'." "If this is zero, it can't get any lower in the future but only go up. It can eventually 'explode' when people catches on this although not in the near future. It needs time to mature to be successful." - I remember thinking like this.

I remember by then that I Googled and went into bitcoin.org and downloaded the software v0.1.2 or v0.1.3. The website had minimal design by then (it was like a Notepad text) and in order to run the software, the user only needed to do 3 simple steps. The last one was running BITCOIN.EXE.

So, that's what I did. As soon as I ran the application to generate coins, my notebook fan (a 2-year old Sony Vaio) started to 'scream' like I've never seen before. I admit that I have a paranoia when I see EXE files downloaded from unknown sources. Deep in my mind, I associate this type of files from dubious sources with trojan horses. So, what did I do? In the next minute or so, I removed the program from my computer.

Well, my curiosity about Bitcoin did not end on this day. I'm a guy who complains 'everyday' about how the vast majority of us spend a lifetime working to earn money to deposit in banks that use it to invest into something for their own. And the worst thing is they don't take responsibility if they lose our money like they did in 2007 or 2008. So, in the following years, from time to time, I googled 'bitcoin' to know how was bitcoin doing and I was happy to see it growing slowly like a little child. I believed so much in Bitcoin that I even wrote as top priority on my sticky notes on my desktop that I must buy bitcoins. I wrote this note around 2013 and in the beginning of 2016, I received a phone call from my partner who asked me what I was doing. He called me exactly when I was researching about how to buy bitcoins and he replied "What is that? Stop wasting time on silly things. It is time for us to make money!". I don't know why, it somehow convinced me that I had other priorities in the company, so I gave up creating an account on an exchange and I deleted the top priority note. This was the last time I had Bitcoin on my mind...

... Until November 2017... when my colleague from a full-time job that I had to join a year before (because in my company I was not earning regularly and not enough to rent an apartment), said "My friend has been annoying me to buying some coin!" - and my mind immediately associated that coin she was unable to spell correctly to Bitcoin! Oh no! It took me 8 years to finally own a bitcoin, albeit a fraction of it because I jumped into the ship, ferociously, right after that 'Eureka!' in late November 2017. I was furious with myself thinking how is it possible that I took so long to finally have the 'thing' that I have believed since the beginning? The rest of the story, you can already guess: when I saw it reaching almost 20k USD, I diversified my portfolio of less than a bitcoin into altcoins (I never heard of other cryptos until this time) and now I'm losing about 90% of what I've invested.

Moral of the story: the character of an individual determines his destiny. In my case, it was not a matter of believing in Bitcoin; it was a matter of willing to be wealthy and overcoming the fear of having possibly installed a trojan horse in my computer. For our lives to make sense, it is fundamental that we know who we really are and gain conscience of what we are lacking or doing wrong in order to overcome our constrains to achieve our goals in our lifetime.

It's hard to calculate but I think their are little bit people who trying to know bitcoin at for their very first time to know it until now the so many people are investing in bitcoin.

Me too, on that year I never knew bitcoin like you if I could turn back the time and I met bitcoin maybe now I am one richest person, and most people are become more successful. But I am so thankful now even I am late knowing bitcoin I earn big profit now in my investment.

I dont think the number was more than 100. They were a small bunch of people who did very well in crafting an idea. Slowly support started coming and people started recognizing the uniqueness of Bitcoin.

Less than 1000 people I think

I researched it once when i am newbie in bitcoin and i found out tha there were only 70-90 people who knows and has bitcoin in their account. These were very lucky that they know already bitcoin maybe they are connected to the creator. I know we all want is to go back tha time when it was.

but now you have to face the fact that you can't enter on that year. if everyone knows that in 2009 that Bitcoin is a good asset in the future then everyone in this world have has become rich. before it, I too had thought the same as you but that not will be might happen.

Only a handful of people were interested in using Bitcoin at the time of the year 2009. As the Internet was new, Bitcoin did not have a lot of influence and value.

At first bitcoiner was only a little because there was nothing special about it. and i think the addition of bitcoiner is the biggest in 2017, where prices are soaring fantastic, and many people want to get money easily

Exactly, that is what I was also thinking about. I believe the number would be far smaller, probably less than 1000. In every venture, it is not easy for people to accept it with ease when something new is introduced in any society and this has always been the case in many parts of the world.

I have no idea how many people were into bitcoin in 2009 but my guess is probably 100 or more because it is the first one.i concept already bitcoin maybe they are many people connected to the creator.

The "lowest userid in 2010" that's not been deleted was AgoraMutual (userid 21) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=21).
So it's safe to assume that no more than 20 people were members of this forum in 2009.
(In fact, I recall that among those first 20 users were at least 3 that were not "real people" but rather an admin account and two "test users", AFAIR).
Of course, there were probably a few more people "into Bitcoin" than just the members of this forum, but its also safe to assume that the forum community was a large share of all active Bitcoins users.
It follows that in 2009, the whole Bitcoin community was comprised of hardly more than one hundred, maybe with some stretch of the imagination a few hundred people. Give or take.

My personal guess would be less than 100.

Nobody was in it but just those who are called "geeks" and computer nerds who had the chance to get those, and nobody had taught that it would be much expensive nowadays.

I don't know about this but what I know that year was the initial effort of bitcoin and was born out of it and I am sure that only a few have used it so it is no more than now in my opinion

I do not know this question that I know about this is the beginning of the beginning of bitcoin and that is what I realize and what I think is definitely a bitcoin user at that time a little because the beginning of the beginning has not been known at this time all over the world

For sure not a lot of people took it seriously back then. Honestly if i heard about btc around that time i woouldn't even give it a second look. If only we could've been more open then but hey, that's just how things go. Bitcoin's current prive takes us back to early 2017 before it made a run for it's peak. Hope people learned their lessons now 😜

It is very hard to give a definite number regarding this. But it would be 1/10th of the current number.

Can not predict, because people know the internet at that time is very minimal and limited. To learn the computer must take turns and that too must be in an internet cafe, but it is not unexpected that bitcoin can grow well and have extraordinary advantages.

We can get an idea about how many users for bitcoin in 2009 by digging our forum's history.There were only 9 people were registered in thos forum 2009 which shows that no one really using bitcoins at the time and it will be very low amount of people who owns it for something at that time.

If we only wishes were roses, all men would have loved to go back in 2009 to gather more Bitcoin but believe you mean, some folks wouldn't still believe in it still.

I really wish I have known btc that time.

I can offer what very few or coins people got a chance then, because there was no demand for bitcoin and nobody really knew that this great coin das such a huge percentage.

yes indeed people's beliefs are different, but we see a lot of people who regret after they consider bitcoin is trivial. in 2009, only a few people joined and as time went on bitcoin grew and more and more people were using it.

I started hearing about bitcoin in 2010, but I really didn't know what it was about and I was also busy with the university so I couldn't give then enough care or interest, only now that I'm giving it a real use I understand the benefits and utilities that blockchain can provide us.

I think in the year 2009 where the bitcoin started I guess there few people who know it and we all know that from the start the price of bitcoin is very low and too cheap where you can buy millions of bitcoin. If you see the number of people from 2009 to 2018 you can really see the big different and I think in the coming years it will become more or double.

I heard somewhere in 2011 when bitcoin price was 0.1 USD than someone from silicon valley USA invested into bitcoin and grabbed most of shares.
You could imagine silicon valley people had found potential of bitcoin in 8 years ago.

It's very difficult to track the footprint of bitcoin users in 2009, it could be 100 people or even more. But one thing is certain, because they we can now enjoy bitcoin which has undergone many stages of development.

Maybe many people have lucky by joined bitcoin at 2009 and got much profit with lower price of bitcoin under $100 in 2009, I will doing the same thing if know bitcoin and altcoin at 2009 and buy bitcoin more, hold for long time.

Only in October 2009, BTC received the first course. And he was speculative. At this stage, the fans were the only ones who owned cryptography fans and he had practically no value. On March 30, 2010, a user at SmokeTooMuch on the BitcoinTalk forum launched an auction for the sale of 10,000 bitcoins with a starting price of $ 50. No one wanted to buy a cue ball.

I don't think there is a lot. My brother knew about it in 2011 but he doesn't know how to get it. And some of the people who knew about bitcoin didn't trust bitcoin because of some issues like security and some actually believed that it is worthless.

I suppose, if you really want to get this information, you will succeed in it. Meanwhile, there is no reason to know about the number of people, who worked with Bitcoin in 2009. It is important that now millions do it.

I am investing since 2012 and then I don't think that we were a lot, but in early 2018 the crypto world was just insane. Crypto was just everywhere.

It was precisely the beginning of mass adoption when it began in 2012 where prices skyrocketed so high to $1200. in 2009 I actually started an online business like PTC, blogs, and so on. but I haven't heard of bitcoin in that year, it looks like bitcoin in that year hasn't had many users, so there is still minimal information about bitcoin..

I didn’t know bitcoin until 2014, I don’t know who could have better knowledge about bitcoin other than the developer themselves, btw 2009 I was addicted into something else, definitely won’t be  interested in something so ridiculous like bitcoin.

I think your brother are lazy not knowing how to get them and I think he is regretting he did not buy one.

A lot of people bought Bitcoin at its early stages and do not know the capability of it pumping, making a lot of people rich because of how popular will it be in the future. I knew Bitcoin in 2010 but I did not bother buying them since I did not know it is for sale, I am just watching a news about it being accepted in pubs. If I am just capable of standing on my own feet at that time, I might be rich by now.

An interesting statistic would be to know how many downloads happened on that year of the bitcoin binaries, which I think were at first posted on the mailing list, somewhere on sourceforge, and im not sure when the bitcoin.org site started or if it was posted anywhere else.

With that you would get a guesstimate, excluding people downloading the same binaries once, or the same people downloading different updates, but you could extrapolate something useful.

I don't see no other way. I don't think there's a log of amount of nodes of 2009, that would be ideal tho.

I think that not as many as now and as many as in the future. To my mind. btc will become the main currency and this will influence the flow of money all over the world. All people will see its benefits

Am very sure quite a few people would be into bitcoin that year, because virtually all of them won't just believe in what they're investing into. Why because: bitcoin is just coming them with no bearing then, few or no people would believe it has a future and potential then untill when it started booming and become commodity for everybody to have.

I don't think so maybe at first the value is low cause we didn't know if they hit or not in the market but suddenly in little time it become popular cause the value is unpredictable.

I am one of the jealous human beings who regret not investing into Bitcoin when the prices are around $5.00/btc. Though I am still quite thankful that I somehow get to know it and now I am working to get more Bitcoin. Now I am looking for worthy altcoin I can invest into and patiently wait for the pump.

Depends on the area lol  I sure am a lot of it are used in gamling and in betting before but as of now it's taken the world by storm 8)

in 2009 people had a lot of bitcoin but most of them had exchanged the bitcoins they had, this information I had read on the news. there are also people exchanging their bitcoins with just a slice of pizza. because they don't understand if bitcoin prices will rise in 2017

Very few people have given up, but some can still see myself such people I consider as fathers in this forum.
 I really thank them from my heart for everything if someone reads this post

even many people do not care about the value of BTC, at that time, the public experienced a monetary crisis, so they chose gold as a place to save their assets from the global crisis.

and at that time, BTC did not have good popularity. so, I think, only a few people care about BTC.