Bitcoin Forum

how much time lapsed after you first came into contact with bitcoin for the first time, until you became convinced it is the future?

1 sec :p

Like 30 seconds.

No joke.

about 5 minutes. and the more i learn, the more i believe in a cryptocurrency future -- and long may that continue.

1 year and still counting :)

I think it was soon as I realized that the double-spend problem was the only real technical obstacle to payments with no central authority and that someone had actually solved it. It probably took me a day or two to reach that understanding.

About three days, during which I had been reading Satoshi's paper about ten times.

But to be fair I was thinking about digital currencies for quite some time before that.  So I was already very open to the concept.

Same.  Once I hard about it, I was buying gfx cards within a month.

It took about a month of researching and trying with a small amount of Btc until I believed that it might be the future.
If it took you 30 seconds, you probably should rethink your decision making process.

1 second. because i had nothing to lose. one of the best decisions i ever made.

Zero seconds. The instant I herd about bitcoin, it just all made perfect sense to me, and I realised how doomed fiat money was, unfortunately for me this was only a few months ago.

Then you didn't make a good decision, you made a random decision and were lucky.

5sec time to read about it :)
yook me 1 year to put my money were my mouth was.

A few days to read a lot and get increasingly interested. The some time to see how other people respond to it. I mean, if I (or me and a small subgroup) are the only ones who care about this, it's not going to actually reach it's potential without adoption. True belief in this grew over time.

Right now I believe it (cryptocurrency) is snowballing sufficiently hard to be very unlikely to be stopped. The genie is out!

When I first read about bitcoin in some geek newspaper in 2010, I realized it must be the most promising idea of the century. However, that time I had no time to play with it. In the middle of 2011 I was surprised when bitcoin, with the help of silkroad, attracted attention of US senators and its price started to skyrocket. I was almost ready to buy some, but, just few days before I sent a wire, "the bubble" bursted and I decided to wait.

When BTC slowly started to grow beyond $2 I finally decided to give it a try and wired $10k to gox. Then I continued buying at $6, $8, $12 and so on.
In April 2013 I had to sell a fraction of my bitcoins to save my business after our money in Cypros bank were stolen by European government.
But later I continued to buy bitcoins. Last time I've bought it at about $600 and now in my pans is spending 50% of my fiat income on BTC.

Years. Saw some obscure Danish tv program about it in 2010 and found it fascinating but had no sense of what it was. Then stumbled upon it again last year, and some friends talked about maybe investing in it, but since I didn't have a lot of money I didn't have the guts to put in even a few hundred bucks.

Then about a month ago I suddenly realised how stupid I had been to be so timid and bought a few when it was around $450 and then again a few when it was around $700.

Even though I have less money now than I had when it was much cheaper, I have so much faith in it and I've decided to put all other non essential expenses on hold just so I can purchase BTC and other crypto coins.

Not a day goes by that I don't facepalm to myself about not investing sooner, but it's getting easier to deal with now since I've started getting into it and feel that although I might not have gotten on the boat with the cheapest ticket, I made it at least :)

A year or two. I've been working on this stuff since I wrote a credit card online web site in 1994, we even did the "charge your card $20 and bank the micropayments on our site" thing. Other people tried to do it, numerous failures.

But hey, back in the late 80's we were all supposed to hook up to the AT&T CONNECT X.25 network. Boy that and that mail gateway thing (MTS? What was it again) really didn't go anywhere....

C

It took a long time...many months of seeing my friends savings increase before I tentatively decided to test the water...even now...though I generally think it is going to be a success I've only invested a very small amount that I wouldn't mind losing.

+1

Few minutes, but didn't take action  >:(

Exactly two weeks ago I came across Bitcoin again and couldn't stop reading since then. Already have some BTC and LTC, a will get more as soon as I learn more

It took me a while actually. When I first started with bitcoin it was a way to make some money. So I started working, and the time passed by. A few months later a friend of mine asked "You know that scam you're working on, that fake currency?" and I got angry and suddenly defended it and the thoughts behind it. At that moment I realized that I had become a true bitcoin believer.

Too long - I could have been a millionaire.

1st in 2009-2010 but didn't think bitocoin would get anywhere other than tokens for games.
2nd time when the run up happened 6 months ago. bought some coins, but not enough.

Started by CPU mining using default client immediately when I heard about bitcoin in 2011, fun game! But it took me almost 15 years to fully understand the scam nature of today's fiat money system, when I finally completed this lengthy research process around some time in 2012, I become a true believer of bitcoin

With the help of bitcoin, I quickly get rid of most of the knowledge from mainstream economy books, and this lead to my true understanding of fiat money system

some weeks/months. you cant be a believer after seconds, thats stupid. you dont know anything about it.

took me about 2 years. I heard about it and thought about it for awhile, but I guess it was the community which convinced me that it was a really special idea.

Wrong.  I had an online shop and an ebay account.  Once I saw the concept of Bitcoin, I was blown away.  I don't need to read the source code - I know a stupendous concept when I see it.

mainstream == Keynesian == retarded

heart: 10 mins
brain: 2.5years

Haha same story here :) My friend sent me link through skype back in 2009-2010. I read it, I even bookmark it! Then in one month or so I came back and read the article again. I also though it will be some kind of game money :D funny.

Took me a few weeks

Interested, about the first sec. I heard about it. Immediately got some coins.

But it took me about 6 Month of experimenting and reading about how it works and what the possibilities are until it really hit me.

~ 3 months

i am more of a decentralization believer than a bitcoin believer. i don't think in 100 years we will have much need for currency of any kind, and i see bitcoin as a step in the right direction. its much better than anything currently in place. i am so tired of all the corrupt old systems.. seeing bright hardworking people struggle for money while the few rich inherit more than they need. seeing really stupid, i mean extrmely stupid rich people who are only rich because somewhere down the line the were related to a guy, pisses me off.

about 6month

found out about it in late 2011.. didn't do anything for 18 months. a fool i am! mainly due to the inconvenience with getting them.

It's more like a gradual process, isn't it? Maybe, like, an S-shaped adoption curve with lots of volatility down the road? ;) (Seriously though.)

it took me two days. when I read about proof of work I was in.

Intrigued when I first read that it was completely decentralized, but it took weeks for me to fully grok the technicals and work through the economic implications/models. Another several months to *really* understand it (this involves quite a bit of thought/research about the nature and history of money, governments, humans, and complex systems).

You guys that insta-believed must be geniuses. :-)

More likely morons. Due diligence is very prudent. Yes in this specific case you might have come ahead without it but that doesn't mean it should be dismissed.

+1, as they say.

I'm sceptical by nature and I don't gamble. It probably took months from I first heard about it until I decided to look into it. Then another several weeks to a month to investigate and decide if it seemed worth going for. Finally bought (peanuts), watched the price development for a few months while continuing to research, and now I am pumping all the money I can into it. All of it, only selling whenever I have some bills to pay.

If I can manage to reach my target number of coins before doing so becomes unrealistic, I should be able to live a decent life without ever having to work again. With the spending plan I have I should quickly recover the initial investment, so even if it crashes I come out ahead.

2 hours after I read about bitcoin, I was transferring 1 month salary to MtGox.
That was a few days after the April crash.

2 years.  I dismissed it to my own peril the first time I heard about it.  But I finally got serious about a year ago and studied it religiously.  Then I bought some last december... best decision I ever made.  Also, I learn more about the prospects of distributed technologies every day.  Immense potential exists.

Heard about it in 2010 through another Forum.

Even installed the miner to mine Bitcoins in 2010.
Stopped because I couldn't play Starcraft 2 or WoW.

Finally convinced and entered the scene again in April 2013. Bought a decent amount of Bitcoins at $60-$65 each. Also turned 2 high end computers into LiteCoin Miners from April - Present.

I have a huge amount of profit if I cash out today even though I came in late. I also have a lot of Litecoins mined from April - Present should I wish to sell.

Only regret is if I would have just left it mining in 2010 I would be beyond rich.

I'm not sure if you are an idiot or a genius.

After few days reading about it, I invested 5000$, in hope to see a positive ROI.
After 6 month to a year, using it, reading every day about BTC.. I finally became convinced of it's true potential in it's future.

I always kept in mind that something could happen and makes btc useless..

Now, for at least 18 month, im now totally convinced of it's resillience and the mainstream adoption that will be reallity within 10 years.  I've never invest more than I can lose overnight.  Maybe I should have, but I still have no regrets at all..

friend told me in 2011, downloaded client, syncing, waiting for few hours, cpu100% wtf, deleted, came back again after the 32 crash

Roughly 3+ years for me and still counting also, meaning I am not convinced of its great future.

However, I must admit that my reason for dismissing it in 2010 was that it was not backed by anything tangible, which I now think is a silly objection (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345722.msg3717333#msg3717333). I didn't get the value of the decentralization until I took a long study of it earlier this year, although it is clear I was aware of the "distributed" benefit as early as 2012. I will try to go find my earliest writings on Bitcoin. I am curious.

Edit: I found some of my prior writings. Here is one from summer 2011, where I had moved on from criticizing Bitcoin for not having tangible value and rather on the Tragedy of the Commons that money is:



Here are some from late 2012 in comments on ZeroHedge.