Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

Today there are a thousand and one ways to obtain bitcoin, CEX, PtoP exchanges etc ... I read that the concept of seed and BIP39 was proposed later. This is all a bit confusing to me.

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

Thank you

It's always been easy, or at least not hard, or complicated at all.

How we got them?
We bought/exchanged them from people who owned some, like right here in this forums marketplace-section, in exchange for some pizza for examle, the irc-channel was also a place to meet fellow bitcoiners,
or we just mined them ourselves, which in 2010 was quite easy even on low-end-CPUs.

How we kept them?
Bitcoin QT, the wallet known today as Bitcoin Core, was the only wallet around in 2010.
In late 2011 Electrum came around and lots of others followed.

We had no seeds back then, but a backup of our wallet.dat-files, or even just the private keys did the same,
seeds are just more convenient to handle.

You pointed out a great question but i think the previous member has already answered your query. But, i think many member used to create their own wallet address using their computing power and then they use that same Wallets which is aforementioned to send and receive BTC.

I also sometimes think, why the adoption rate was lower back in days because it was so difficult to use and keep the BTC in your wallets and on any exchanges (like MT GOX) but as of now many exchanges and Wallets have User friendly interface which every buddy understand easily and liked too.

Just like in your last Topic you just created, where you share your experience like how newbies prefer to use CEXs just because they sometimes do not like the technological terms included in Hardware wallets or in DEXs (as most of the DEXs have no User Friendly Interface). The point is, what if the current people who find current apps and technologies still hard to learn due to their interfaces then how would these people will survive or able to use the same technology back in 2010?

Well, thank God to all developer who came into market with such software like SVP wallets and User friendly, CEXS and DEXs.

A BIP is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal and they are implemented to improve the Bitcoin network. BIP39 was implemented around 2013.
There are many BIPs which were implemented later on after the creation of Bitcoin.

In the really early days there were no exchanges and people for Bitcoin by mining them, this could have been eaisly done using a mobile device. And it was possible to transfer bitcoins from wallet to wallet before BIP39.

If I have to guess How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept, it was simple that most of them preferred to mine and keep it in their wallets which were installed in their systems that were supposed to mine. Every Mining tutorial asked users to install a Bitcoin Wallet and that Bitcoin wallet was used to store the Bitcoins which they received after mining. Some of the users which joined a bit later had to buy it from an exchange called Mt.Gox which literally ran away with the user funds. So I guess those who mined themselves are bit safer and might have more chance of holding them since 2011-12.

No, it wasn't so difficult to use,
Bitcoin Core is basically still the same as Bitcoin QT,  it hasn't changed much in terms of user friendlyness.

Sure, there's a lot more Wallets today and some of them might be more user friendly than others,
but that doesn't mean it was difficult to use in the early days, using it was always as easy as using email. Do you think email is difficult to use?

The difficult part in bitcoin was never its usage, but to understand it, what it is, how it works,..
to wrap your head around it, that's the hard part and that didn't change at all.


Mobile device? When did anyone actually use a mobile device to mine bitcoin?
As a proof-of-concept ....maybe, like that guy that mined with a pencil and a piece of paper.

In 2010 "mining" was just an optional setting within the Bitcoin QT wallet that you could activate.
If you did, your CPU mined blocks working in the background.

Some smart people tried (and succeeded) to optimize that process and wrote their own mining software, which was faster than Bitcoin QT.
If I remember correctly the first public GPU-mining-software came out around october 2010, GPUs were a LOT faster than CPUs so people started to use those.
Then in 2011 came FPGAs, not that much faster than GPUs but a lot more energy-efficient
and in 2013 the ASIC-era began.

I've never heard of mobile mining devices,
every "app" that tricked people into "bitcoin mining" was a scam.

I did not join the Bitcoin space too early, and by the time I joined Bitcoin, there was no better way to earn Bitcoin unless you were buying from CEX or via P2P. My first Bitcoin was bought in around 2019/2020, and I bought the bitcoin on a centralised exchange with my Debit card. I can't remember the name correctly of the CEX, but still back in 2020, I also bought some Bitcoin on Binance.

Before centralized exchanges, I assume these are the most common ways.

• Faucets
• Mining
• Buying/selling through forums

I started out by purchasing a little amount of bitcoin through CEX and later transferred it to my personal wallet.
That being said, You are mistaken in thinking that Bitcoin is only for people who are computer literate because Bitcoin was created for anyone who is willing to take advantage of the opportunity it presents. However, one crucial aspect of Bitcoin is that it requires reading and understanding its fundamental components, including its concept, how to use an exchange or wallet, and how to safely store the cryptocurrency.

Many early Bitcoins with private keys ended up on hard drives after mining, and some of them got lost and thrown in trash.
I remember several stories from people who lost a fortune like this, and they tried to organize and pay other people to help them find old drives with bitcoin.
James Howells lost 8000 BTC back in 2013 and I think he is till looking for his old drive:
https://fortune.com/2022/08/01/he-lost-8000-bitcoin-launching-11-million-dollar-campaign-newport-james-howells-landfill-trash/

Invention of seed phrases changed things a lot, thanks to Trezor developers, and it's now much easier to backup things on paper or metal plates.

IMO, it comes from mining and might also from the faucet which is very common at the early stage of Bitcoin.
Because as I heard, mining was relatively easy and could be done using regular CPUs or GPUs that were commonly found in personal computers.  But now, mining became more competitive, leading to the development of specialized mining hardware (ASICs) that has higher computational power and energy efficiency.

I assume that early miners typically stored their Bitcoins in software wallets or paper wallets, employing offline backups and secure storage practices.  But now, we have a hardware wallet that offers more security than any software wallet.

When did get easier?
It might be when CEX arrived like Mt. Gox. 
These platforms acted as intermediaries, allowing users to trade fiat currency for Bitcoins and vice versa.  It was made easier without even having knowledge of mining.

A first and biggest Bitcoin faucet ever is from a senior Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen.

Get 5 free bitcoins from freebitcoins.appspot.com (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=183.0) in June 2010.

Solve the captcha and claim 5 BTC. https://web.archive.org/web/20100703032414/https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

First topics in Marketplace
World's FIRST Bitcoin Lottery! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159.0)
Purchase Proxy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=243.0)

I remember when Xapo was still popular and I was still a beginner by that time. IIRC, I was still not yet part of the forum but then I've seen faucets were almost everywhere.

So, it's too easy to do it like you just copy your bitcoin address and paste it on those faucet websites and repetitively doing it for so many times after a few minutes. I've got a lot of time during that time because I was hype of what I've known.

But this was later on 2015 IIRC.

It was like life was too simple before and a few exchanges in existence and miners that have a lot of Bitcoins were likely to give it away.

I am new into bitcoin but from the little information that I have gathered so far,in the early days bitcoin was gotten through mining because mining was easy and one can mine directly from his phone. Another way is through faucet. In my country then how one do sell his bitcoin use to be through watsapp group,where people exchange crypto for our local currency. Although, sometimes you might get scammed and your coins is gone. It wasn't easy then to sell your bitcoin due to lack of trust but if you have a trusted person,it is no problem. CEx came in later and made life very easy for buying and selling of bitcoin.

Based on what I've learned from old threads on this forum, I believe the opposite to be true. It seems that things were much simpler back then compared to today. The Bitcoin Qt software served as both a wallet and a mining tool, all addresses started with "1," and the main security concern was safeguarding your wallet.dat file and private keys. In the early days, there were no altcoins (except for a few), SPV wallets (until Electrum came along), seed phrases, or SegWit addresses,... and scams were also far less common than they are now, mainly due to the smaller size and tight-knit nature of the early Bitcoin community.

So yes, there are a thousand and one ways to acquire bitcoin today, but there are also just as many ways to lose it permanently.

To start, you have to learn how Cryptocurrency and Blockchain works before you create a wallet to store your Bitcoin. You should also know which you should use and how to keep it safe. Learning about the importance of seed phrase, private key or mnemonic phrase will help you secure your assets. Being informed about the ways that the hacker use to steal your wallet is helpful to stay away from such schemes.

If only you could read through the Satoshi Nakamoto mandates on bitcoin that prompted him to make such discovery and the white paper more better to have a clearer understanding why it was created and the purpose it served and the protocols that guided the network entirely, since we are almost not part of the early users of bitcoin right from inception before it turns a global currency, you can get this on Satoshi profile maybe or the history behind the establishment of bitcoin right from the beginning.

Thanks for your advice, but that doesn't answer my original question at all. In fact, it doesn't even have anything to do with it.

I think that by that time people were buying Bitcoin using P2P services or directly from CEX. I believe that some other people will acquire Bitcoin from faucets which used to give out a huge amounts of Bitcoin. I recall seeing a faucet that could give you 1 BTC every 5 minutes which was incredibly generous back in 2010 I think.

In addition to that, there were people who mine Bitcoin or engage in freelance work on forums to earn Bitcoin. They may also trade Bitcoin against fiat currencies.

As far as I remember, it was very easy to get bitcoins for the most ordinary questionnaire. There were many survey sites that offered Bitcoin as one of the payment methods. My boss also offered me payment in Bitcoin for maintaining a group on social networks. While people were learning to understand the value of Bitcoin, it was quite easy to get it, and you can remember that some simply burned it because they did not know its further use.
Good times that will never come back.

What is difficult about downloading a wallet from the store or from an official site (signature verification is an additional step) and then saving your wallet seeds in paper (a metal plate is an additional option) and not sharing them with anyone, not randomly clicking on links or downloading unknown programs (using an open system is extra step source)

For buying bitcoin, it differs according to your country and according to the data that you can provide, but it is simply the same as online shopping, you search for the best option according to your country, buy bitcoin, withdraw those coins to your wallet, and we are done.

Your use of additional steps enhances your security.

It's a pity that those early times will never come back. When I read some posts about how people earned Bitcoin by just answering a few questions, I always regret that I wasn't here then. But I doubt if I would have accepted to embrace Bitcoin because I might think it was a scam or a Ponzi scheme. Even if I had accepted it, I also doubt if I would have been able to keep my coins to date. So many people lost their coins because they were careless about storage and safety. The early Bitcoiners are not just tech-savvy but visionaries. They believe the unbelievable and saw the unseen. But I am glad to be here now and have been able to earn some coins through various means. It is better late than never.  Basically, you can get Bitcoin by mining, buying, and earning.

I believe that especially with bitcoin, you shouldn't regret anything or you'll go crazy. Between those who lost access to thousands of btc because of a lost PC, a scam or something else, those who sold everything in FOMO mode, those who invested elsewhere and lost everything. We can only rejoice if we still have a little left. Learn from our mistakes and those of others and have no regrets.

I'm assuming wallet.dat-files was just stored on hard drives and CDs? Which over time became the cause of many sad stories, with the tens or even hundreds lost bitcoins.



Did you/others also have that disc with bitcoins (wallet.dat backup) or is this more of a meme than the truth?

I still remember when I created an exchange account and started buying my Bitcoin there. I don't have a wallet and at first, I thought it was safe enough for my Bitcoins. I left my Bitcoins on the exchange platform for quite a while until I finally understood that I actually only had access to my exchange account. The bitcoins that I have on the exchange account are not completely in my control.
I decided to buy a hardware wallet and move it.

No idea about others, I personally never stored (important) backups on CDs.

Even today I still got a whole bunch of wallet.dat-backups that go back to 2010, stored on different thumbdrives and SD-cards.
Just checked them and guess what? Everything is still where it's supposed to be, I can still read it all, nothing is corrupted.

"sad stories":
Yeah, sad, but... if people are not careful with their backups, especially if it's "money", they might lose it.
That's even true for seed words, if you lose them, your wallet is gone.
So be careful and think about what you're doing.

I remember that when I stacked my first sats, It was difficult to find a wallet to store them and I wasn't really sure how to do it anyway. I just bought some sats and sent them back and forth with a super clunky wallet that I downloaded from some random forum thread.

After sending it a few times, I looked my transactions up on-chain and they were all taking a massive fee of like 25¢ per transaction by the wallet itself. I almost quit Bitcoin because that fee was a substantial portion of the amount of sats that I was sending back and forth. I finally found BitAddress.org and printed off a paper wallet and sent my finds there for a while until I did a bunch more research and learned how to use other wallets and how to properly send/receive bitcoin.

Not long after, I found some bitcoin faucets that you could get a tiny amount of bitcoin for free but it didn't take long before it was overwhelmed with traffic and shut down.

I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to use bitcoin years before I found it because the number of wallets that I used in my early days were so limited, I had a lot of trouble using it. Thank goodness I didn't give up and stuck with it because it is the only thing that gives me hope for a better future.