Bitcoin Forum

After a debate with a Romanian centralized exchange owner, which was trying to impress me with the huge advantages of centralized exchanges, while I was trying to point out the opposite, I decided to open this poll. The idea came up during our discussion, which you can read here: Ce v-ati dori de la un exchange centralizat? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5245568.0) (which translated in English means "What would you expect from a centralized exchange?"). Unfortunately, the topic is in English, but you can understand the debate if you'll use Google Translate.

I'm thinking to keep the poll opened for about a month but, if there will be too few answers, I'll keep it opened for a longer amount of time.

Please avoid signature spam, I don't want to be forced to delete irrelevant posts.

I was a novice then and I thought there could be big gain from faucets, not knowing they are all not profitable, I registered on cointiply and freebico and made just a single withdrawal on both and left both faucets.

As for mining, I have never earned on it before.

Let me just cut my story short, I have not earned from centralized exchanges before, I use binance and hitbtc and I am currently losing almost $50 on both sites. I do not think they should be listed at all.

You suppose to include signature and bounty campaigns, or forums and publishing sites.

If I remember well, my first bitcoin came from the signature campaign.
It happened a long time ago, so I'm not entirely sure anymore  ;D ;D
Maybe even faucets :)

I voted for "Others"

Back in the days, shitposting and replying to any thread that is related to any "Airdrop" activities is my primary motive why I join this community. Fortunately, after signing and shitposting to hundreds of ICO and Scam threads, I manage to find and received a legit airdrop worth @200 USD equivalent to bitcoins. After receiving that amount I was happy but then I realized that this kinds of acts ain't helping me to progress and learn.

I got my first BTC from faucet way back 2016 and it was the hardest job I've ever done in the industry of crypto where I managed to earn $1 in a week, yes it was that low in a week. considering it was my first time trying to earn with the multiple faucets that you can find on the internet at that time. I thought that's the only way you can earn BTC for free except cloud mining. I didn't land to this site at that time because all I was searching is how to earn BTC for free. But that's just another experience for me to grow in this industry if I never have such experience, I won't get my chance to explore more further about BTC.

I got mine from tons of bitcoin faucets including the legendary freebitco.in I remember I can collect atleast 0.1usd per day at this faucet sites Im doing this while working in office the whole day lol.

Virwox...
I still remember getting payed using paypal for small jobs, and i used virwox to buy linden dollars (at least, that's the name of the digital "token" i remember) on virwox, then exchange those linden dollars to BTC.

It took them several days to approve my account, they charged a deposit fee (iirc), and exchange fee for eur <--> linden dollars, an exchange fee for linden dollars <--> btc and to top it off, a withdrawal fee for BTC.
Also, at any point in the process, it was impossible to trade or withdraw the full amount... So you had to leave some eur, some linden dollars and some btc on virwox.
At least, that's how i remember it.

If memory serves me right, i exchanged like €400 and i finally got €340 in BTC in my wallet... But at that point i think that was allmost a full BTC...

How times are changing. Eventough they ripped me off, i should have converted my full paypal balance, if i did that, by now i would have had enough money to buy a small house...

I got my first 0.005 BTC from a faucet in 2012, but then I traded them for Dogecoin in 2014 and left the doges on an exchange that pulled exit scam later on. Then in 2016 I found a small job on this forum thus beggining my real BTC journey, because since then I started taking BTC seriously.

I think it's reasonable that nowadays more people with Bitcoin through exchanges rather than earning it, because earning opportunities became more scarce while awareness of Bitcoin as an investment option only grew in the recent years, and even mainstream media report big BTC movements.


Can you make a short summary of the stance of that exchange owner on how centralized exchanges are important for obtaining your first BTC? I don't trust google translate.

I'll try :) The context was that in Romania the law regarding crypto earnings was modified this year, during the pandemic. Our govern managed to solve all the nation's problem thus it had nothing better to do in March than changing that law (you may laugh here). The law was changed in a manner that the exchanges are licensed to operate only if they are selling their users for 0.02BTC willing to offer the state all the customers' private information. Practically, making an easy job for the govern to catch the traders. Before, it was needed a decision from a Court of Law, but with this change the things became more simple for the govern.

In this context, the exchange owner gave inside the topic a few details about the change of the law and he also asked what expectations the users can have from a centralized exchange. He also tried to convince us that his exchange uses high security techniques. Besides, he also asked the reasons for this hate against centralized exchanges, because he said that he feels like the users' hate is actually headed towards the exchange owners. He mentioned here that not the exchange owners make the laws and that they have to obey to the laws. Furthermore, he alleged that he is a huge fan of Bitcoin, that centralized exchanges give a huge help to Bitcoin by making it more popular and that if the centralized exchanges wouldn't have made Bitcoin so popular, it would have been sold only on forums and between friends.

I tried to dismantle all his statements, because I felt they were erroneous. I am a notorious fan of privacy and of control over my own funds and I tried in several times to open people's eyes about the dangers associated with centralized exchanges. A topic of mine on this matter can be found here: Governs are coming for the traders! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5202758).

1. Regarding "why people hate centralized exchanges", I said the following: you, among other thousands of exchange owners, try to change the quintessence of Bitcoin, being only determined by greed, as you try to centralize something that was meant to be decentralized. You contribute to ruining Satoshi's work! You could have chosen to sell cucumbers, to run a farm or a factory. But instead you chose to destroy Bitcoin and users' privacy, which is an abomination. If we take this example: a doctor cloning human beings. This would be an abomination, because the man was conceived to be unique on this world, not to be cloned. That would be something against the nature. The same is true for centralized exchanges: because of the owners' greed, they are trying to do this abomination to Bitcoin, breaking its spirit. This is the reason for the hate towards exchanges and also towards the owners. If you would have sold newspapers there was no hate towards you. But for doing this abomination, you have to take this hate. You don't make the laws indeed, the govern makes them. But you chose to act in this field and to follow these laws, which force you to give your users on govern's hands! It was your decision, not someone else's.

2. Regarding "he is a Bitcoin fan and the exchanges actually help Bitcoin by making it more popular": I said that is is not a Bitcoin fan, otherwise he would not try to destroy it. He is a man drove by greed, trying to make a living from centralizing Bitcoin. And I gave him a few examples, using his words, in parallel with Satoshi's words. And I said that I accept that exchanges were useful in the past, when they were not asking for KYC / AML, but not anymore. Now they are dangerous for the users.

The following is a sort of quote from the other topic, translated by me in English, for you:


At question 3 I asked him about the security systems of the exchange. How can he ensure the user that the exchange is not vulnerable to hackers, if so many exchanges were hacked already, including Binance, the biggest one (not to mention Mt. Gox lol). I told him: "what do you think that CZ would have told the users if he was asked a while ago <<Hey CZ, ma man! Is your exchange safe?>>" - obviously, he would have tried to ensure his users that Binance is secure. Oh well, it wasn't. Then I asked: honestly, can you say that your exchange is more secure than Binance? Or than Cryptopia, Bithumb, Poloniex and all the other hacked exchanges? Lol.

I also asked him how he can comment the sentence "no private keys no funds" and why would a sane person choose to place his private keys on the hands of the exchange, knowing that his funds may be gone or knowing that his personal information would arrive on the govern's desk in the next day after registering with the exchange. Still related to that and to the hate headed towards exchanges, I asked him: if you were a Mt. Gox client, would you look at Karpeles / Mt. Gox with sympathy? You ask the reasons of this hate. If you would have lost your own money, how would you feel? And here I also mentioned exchanges' hypocrisy, as none of them try to attract the clients with real facts, such as: "Come to us! We'll sell your name to the govern in no time!" / "Come to us! We may get hacked and you'll remain without any money, but be our client!" // "Come to us! We may do an exit scam, but be our client!" // "Come to us! We may freeze your account for no reason, but be our client!" and so on.

If you need his answers, let me know. They are mostly irrelevant, as it is obvious that he is trying to defend his business. Nobody running a business would ruin his work through his own words. What's certain is that he was curious how people obtained fist BTC / satoshis, being convinced it was through centralized exchanges. And if it was so, on his opinion, it would be another reason for considering these exchanges a huge help to Bitcoin. I doubted that people got first satoshis from centralized exchanges and from here we got to this topic :)

I think most came into possession of their first satoshi through faucets, and so it was in my case. But if we compare the time 5-6 years ago and today, a lot has changed not only when it comes to faucets, but also in the minds of people who have accepted the advice that faucets are a waste of time and that it is still much better to buy Bitcoin.

We all know that today crypto trading is going almost entirely towards full KYC/AML, and that all big players will have to accept it sooner or later. As you can conclude, the owner of that crypto exchange is just defending his business based on the conditions imposed on him by the government. There are only two options, obey the law and continue doing business or put the key in the lock and let someone else work according to the law.

Personally, I do not agree with the direction in which Bitcoin is going when it comes to the centralization of funds, because it is a shocking fact that Coinbase has in its possession approximately 1 million BTC. Well, it's beyond any logic that stems from the very idea of the creator of Bitcoin that everyone should be their own bank. And as things stand for now, we failed that test.

It may be OT, but as far as I understand looking at the world, people seem to have an incredible propensity to take advantage and destroy everything they touch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happens with Bitcoin. The idea is great, technology allows it to exist, but still people are the biggest obstacle to our success.

Quite a controversial opinion, but while I'd personally like to stay away from centralized exchanges as much as possible, centralized exchanges have their place in this world. It's simply going to be the first sort of "introduction" of people to bitcoin. I think it would be quite unrealistic to expect the masses to immediately start using non-custodial exchanges such as Bisq unless the person has a Bitcoiner friend to help him/her navigate into this "foreign" industry. People have been spoiled by great UI/UX of modern services such as PayPal/CashApp/Coinbase that it would be difficult for most to suddenly handle private keys and such.

Anyway, to answer the poll, I started with faucets as I had no money back then.

I bought mine from a coinbase if i recall correctly and still keep buying more from time to time. I never understood why should i waste time on faucets, even if they would be a lot in the future, i can just buy way more and save a lot of time (that's also valuable).

Mine was mainly faucets and through "free offers" (like those websites you could earn points for viewing a quick YouTube ad and then redeem stuff with points). If I count all the money I got back then from just this, it'd most likely account to more than $1k today.

Things have changed though, mostly because of the price but I wouldn't necessarily say that faucets are a big waste of time today like @Lucius said above.

Faucets gave very small payments back when I used to claim them too and I probably earned only like 500k satoshis overall in a matter of weeks but today that's $50 and in 5 years it could be $500! It all depends on what's going to happen in the future but there are obviously better ways to earn a satoshi than having to complete 100 captchas every 5 minutes.

It all goes down to your expectations and how well you research ways to earn BTC before rushing in to get that little satoshi in your FaucetBox. In the end, although you'd earn less, long-time faucet earnings could be worth it in a matter of years too! :)

True. But unlike Bisq, Komodo's Atomic DEX (this is for crypto-to-crypto exchanging only!) doesn't require much of a knowledge besides knowing the basic stuff about using a wallet, which is very newbie-friendly! They're also launching a desktop version now and I really have a good feeling about it. All you basically need to know is how to receive & send some coins and the exchange part is very simple: you say how much BTC you want to sell and how much XCoin you want to receive and that's it :)

So in the end, as a newbie without much of an experience you could buy BTC from a KYC-less ATM or through Bisq and then use Atomic DEX to swap between some of the most popular cryptos out there - they even have some stablecoins.

i voted for 'centralized exchanges'

bought my first Bitcoins in spring 2011 on the legendary mt.gox exchange ;D - a big part of the BTC is still on this exchange...  :P ::)

Sounds good. Introducing people to other cryptocurrencies is probably the last thing I would do though. Knowing that most people I personally don't know a single crap about investing, I wouldn't want to bait them into investing in high risk assets. I'd personally stick to initially recommending reputable centralized exchanges, and slowly get them to learn non-custodial exchanges once they get a grip on how wallets work.

I sold an steam account and the only method the buyer could pay me was bitcoin . I am still sad that I did not keep that bitcoins till now

It's still got too low volume (and very bad offers sometimes) to rely on it, but it could turn out to be a great BTC <-> stablecoin exchange. The thing is, most people choose comfort over utility and safety anyways - otherwise, there wouldn't be millions of BTC sitting in centralized exchanges as I'm writing this post.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if moving from centralized exchanges to a decentralized one where you're exchanging BTC into a stablecoin is the best thing one can do, lol. The only advantage in this case is that you're holding your stablecoins in your own wallet instead of someone else's. Kind of a double-edged sword when you think about it.

I'm thinking more of Bisq and Hodl Hodl style of non-custodial exchange, rather than the Binance "DEX" type; whereas people could transact in a non-custodial manner, and pay with(and receive) fiat instead of stablecoins. I don't like stablecoins either, besides probably using them for short-term trades.

I voted for Others

One of the very first own gets of my Satoshi is on the cryptocurrency wallet because here in the Philippines we have the cryptocurrency wallet coins.ph that allowed converting your money into cryptocurrency and by that, you can now have BTC, etc, xrp and bch and especially I choose the use of the btc that's why I have my very first own cryptocurrency. The reason behind this is because I just want to have an investment only because I'm getting curious before some of the people get a lot of earnings with the use of this coin. Until now the same process buy dip then hodl

Very hard to remember, but I strongly believe I had bought bitcoin peer to peer from local seller. At the beginning I wasn't much interested on bitcoin nor I had used it. During revshare session so many people used bitcoin and buy sell. First time I have created coinbase account due to escrow reason since so many scammers popups locally. So some guys only trust me and ask me to make deal for them with resellers. On the other hand resellers also trust me. So I create coinbase because peer to peer transaction is free and instant. So after make couple of deal I thought why I am not using bitcoin and likely that's how I bought some bitcoin but I can't remember date exactly. So day by day I learn more about bitcoin and start use it.

I voted for centralized exchange although I think I started out with some faucets too but I was unable to withdraw them so they don't count.

At the time, I only knew of coinsph (a custodial wallet that also allows users to convert fiat to crypto) as the platform to buy bitcoin in our country. Honestly, I didn't even know what a decentralized exchange is when I was a newbie. My first encounter with DEX was etherdelta which we all knew it's limited to ethereum.

To this day, I think CEX remains the first exchange newbies tend to buy bitcoin from. Of course we can argue that a lot of things/developments has happened since then but I believe most newbies still prefer convenience over anything else.

 

I voted for the faucet because from the previous times I know already that there is a cryptocurrency existed and gives a good market income to those people who hold this coin but the main problem is I don't have any capability to buy those coins and i does not have a good wallet, by the time goes by I discovered the use of the faucet by that they are giving me a lot of satoshis it is just a daily redeem and roll a wheel and random gift that will give you a satoshi and direct to your coinbase wallet, on that day I realize I need to find a really good wallet and a source where do I need to get satoshi by that I'm not being dependent on faucet and airdrops instead I use this satoshi for a payment to all of my services.

When I first got interested in buying Mt Gox was still the prime recommendation as the place to buy.

I knew absolutely nothing about Bitcoin but after five minutes of googling I discovered it's - in Japan so would take weeks to get money there, it's been hacked before, they showed people's passwords in the browser, the CEO sits on a beach ball and looks like a mong, there's zero regulation.

THIS is Bitcoin's premier league operation?

I discarded the idea instantly and went straight to Localbitcoins where a trader took care of me.

I can see most answers here are through the faucet, but mine is different since I got mine through peer-to-peer trade. Well, there's no much story behind it but since a friend of mine is the one who introduced bitcoin and cryptocurrency to me, I obtain my first bitcoin through him. He taught me some basic things I need to know about crypto and blockchain and I research it to be more familiarized. Then one day, we had a small conversation and that's when I got my first bitcoin. Though it's not a big amount of BTC since it's my first time. But after gaining much interest and some basic knowledge, I started buying more BTC using coins.ph, after that, I can't clearly remember everything but after a year, now I am here.

Majority voted for faucet, and so was I  ;D.

It was back when I saw a thread from facebook regarding deepweb stuff, and I always stumble upon this Bitcoin thing. Dunno if it was sort of coincidence when a friend of mine told me something about the same concern as well, and he encourage me to read more about 'em 'cause his making fortune out of it. And yeah, curiosity bothers me and I search how to earn, and freebitcoi.in that is now a signature campaign here were the most website I came across with. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to transfer it 'cause I don't even know everything else except bitcoin. Not until, that friend of mine got a spare time to teach me more about this industry.

Any other member caring to share about his first satoshis and vote in the poll? :) About me I can say that I started somewhere in 2015 with a few faucets and in time I managed to collect 0.1 BTC from them. It took me months, but I managed to earn this nice amount.

My first Bitcoin was through Investment and after that through Signature campaigns. Now every week I am getting paid in Bitcoin. The amount is not bad considering the present USD value of Bitcoin. But, who wants to sell it as my goal is to earn Bitcoin and HODL it till it reaches the moon.

I received my first satoshis on faucets, it's the best and popular way to earn satoshis / Bitcoin,  after receiving my 6th or 8th payout I moved on to participate in marketing and bounty campaign, you cannot stick yourself to faucets for a long period of time.
You will soon realize that opportunities are everywhere for those who want free coins, there are so many legit airdrops back then, it was the time that every project coming in are legit and good.

I got my first experience with Bitcoin back in 2011. I read an article about it and immediately bought a miner equipment but I did not get it work. Then I figured out that there are faucets I've never heard about before and from there I got my first 0.1xxxx Bitcoin (don't remember the exact amount anymore). Later I bought my first Bitcoin on eBay at a price of $32 :D

I don't think it's controversial at all, most people are using centralized exchanges, with majority viewing them as a normal thing, and a more experienced minority of bitcoiners viewing them as a necessary evil. And not all exchanges are equal, there are some smaller or local ones that don't have KYC, at least for people who deal with small amounts, and they are generally more pro-customer, with good support and user experienced.

I chose the option of 'payment for a provided service,' I hope that option covers signature campaigns? Because that's how i received my first bitcoin. Users who earned their first satoshi/btc through faucets are leading in this poll, but I've never done faucets, i think the reason is, by the time i started nurturing my interest in bitcoin (2018) faucets and also airdrop were no longer as profitable as they used to be. Will I be correct to say "most users who earned their first btc/satoshi through faucets prolly heard of bitcoin before 2018"?

Well, if you consider the satoshi that you'll received faucet but still in the wallet on the site of the faucet then my answer is from faucet but if not then the first I obtain a btc/satoshi is from signature campaign. Before I know bitcointalk forum I only know freebitco.in which is my friend introduced.

Mine was Peer-to-peer trade with another person it was introduced to me the first time and I was so curious that I don't know how it really work so I bought $10 worth of Bitcoin back 6 years ago, I find it so unique because there is no third party involve in the trade a real online peer to peer.

I bought mine on a centralized exchange but it wasn't a lot. I joined the forum and begun to get paid in bitcoin, take part in giveaways, claim airdrops.
That first purchase though was on an exchange because I had no BTC and wanted to start trading.

I admit that I didn't even know that holding coins on an exchange makes you vulnerable. When I came to the space I thought exchanges are more like banks or paypal and believed them to be safe.

mid 2011. mined my 1st coin with an ATI HD4850 as a test and sent to my core (qt at the time?) wallet. it worked, obviously.

Thank you all to those who expressed their opinions so far. For all the others: there are still 10 days remaining until the poll will be closed. Feel free to answer the poll until July 17th, 2020. Let's see more opinions about how you obtained your first BTC / satoshis!

I was able to get my first currency through one of the signature campaigns that were present in a games forum, and my first profit from this forum was $ 25 and I was very happy at the time.

My friend told me about BTC in 2016. I was working and living abroad in Ireland and I was blessed to be able to work from home for Apple. So I had a lot of time to spare.

I didn't react, because I had no knowledge about it prior so I brushed it of. Few months later I was laying in bed with fever for Christmas and could barely get up, so I started reading about BTC and crypto in general.

This turned into a hyperfocus rabbit hole and I was spending my days sleeping and reading about BTC and crypto in general like a madman and my reality turned into being a crypto spoonge.

After a week I was a bit better so I discovered mining and was obsessed trying to understand how it works and since I didn't really understand a lot I decided to try to mine some BTC. After less then a day I learned that I can't mine BTC on my laptop :(

I started to look for alternative so I can at least see how mining works so friend told me to try to mine ETH. I didn't know much about it, but I followed some people, ended in XVG community lol, learned about XVG and started mining XVG. My ASUS was burning with 80 degrees, I wasn't really mining anything significant, but hey I was looking at numbers, processes, my dear poor Asus temps and it was very exciting.

While I was mining for 5-6 days non-stop and learning the process I managed to mine some XVG and learn tons of new information , but got scared that I will ruin my Asus so with sadness in my young crypto soul, I stopped mining operations and my Asus cried with tears of joy  ;D

After my month long madness I was sober again and I knew I can only buy BTC, only way to get it. At that moment my friend ask me would I be willing to moderate Telegram for some crypto project, they pay in BTC.

I didn't know what Telegram was, but since I was working as tech support I immediately accepted, jumped in and rest is history.

I'm still working from home, but not for Apple anymore, I work for myself with few of my friends :D

Same here, dude! I also earned my first btc/satoshi in a signature campaign. And as far as I remember, that was just last year. Though I don't receive huge amount weekly, my almost 10 months of participating there allowed me to earn ample amount of money which I was able to use to help my partner in his financial needs during his review for his licensure exam.

And at the moment, I continue to earn btc/sats from a sig campaign as well. I'm just glad this has helped me a lot in some of my financial needs.

My first bitcoin earned was through faucet. It may be small but thats how I got it. Im using our country's leading wallet for bitcoin to receive it. At that time I barely knew anythinf about forum, then my friend told me about this forum that I can earn through airdrop. Then I ask what this airdrop means and thats all started then follow up by bounty campaigns etc. I know my first landing here is through giveaway and I didnt see the forum as useful as now.

But like everyone's realization Ive changed and see it as a discussion place for learning now. The earnings are just perks of it. I still laugh when I realized how earning BTC is so hard for me through faucet. Anyway since there is an option for that, my votes goes to that.

At first, I earned some BTC through Bounty but thanks to most of the Bounty scams it's not possible but later I earned BTC by participating within the signature campaign But from now thereon has taken an extended time to earn BTC to accumulate one's own qualifications and skills. Now I even have earned BTC by trading alongside signature promotion and have achieved tons of success ready to invest for the longer term.

I earn my first btc in games which is not par of the list you are suggesting so I can't vote .

My first earn bitcoin if I remember correctly it a game that you only do is to predict the market price and they will reward you equivalent to USD depend on the points  you earn every week.

Then I won that and widraw  my money using btc.

Thank you all for expressing your experience inside this topic! It's been very interesting to see how you received your first satoshis / BTC and I am happy to see that so many forum users answered this poll.

Today it's time to close the poll and the topic, as I stated in the OP. The results are relevant, as so many answered the poll, thus there is no need to still keep it open. Thank you all once again!