Bitcoin Forum

Well, for me, my hardcore gamer friends were talking about bitcoin mining and I thought it was all ridiculous about a year ago my senior year of high school. I just thought it was like seti@home or something like that, except you got paid in bitcoins, and I was like, how the hell would this be worth the electricity costs even? Fast forward to this Christmas, luckily I missed the crash a year ago, and I was planning on buying random crap with bitcoins, but I had yet to realize the investment opportunities available. Anyways, in the few days I bought my bitcoins, the price shot from 4-6 and that's where I started trading and here I am! Things are pretty good here :)

"It's a bull market, you know!"

I read an article about bitcoins a while back, probably on one of the tech blogs I read, and was fascinated by it then but just never got around to trying it out.  I just built a new computer recently (getting ready for Diablo 3) and decided to go back and give bitcoin mining a try.  I just finished my first full coin, but i've been enjoying it so far.  I'm already plotting my expansion.

I don't know that I have yet. I was curious so I set up GPU mining at a small scale with the client and a wallet, but so far bitcoins are not of much value to me.

There weren't any particularly interesting technical challenges making it work, it only took a couple of hours to do and now that it all works it's all kind of boring actually. I don't really care much about all the hyped benefits I see touted on this forum and elsewhere, but for now I'll keep making coins in the hope I can find a reason to continue. I'm glad my additional hardware investment is zero so far because it looks like it will stay that way.

Lol hey all - I got into bitcoin because of the volatility - basically I'm a speculator on the price.  The concept is really advanced and difficult for me to wrap my brain around at times.

Some people get angry at speculators, but we provide liquidity for the commercial uses!

I read the article in Wired Magazine.

just the idea of a new de-centralised payment system sounded interesting, accounts are relatively easier to find and from a trading point of view it's a lot easier then learning the workings of FOREX lol

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=58847.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=58847.0)

To be honest, I was trading forex before bitcoin and I have to say that forex is a more accessible, easier to read, and a more profitable market.  Here's why.  Technical analysis is a great tool for profiting in the markets, but it tends to only work well if there are many practitioners using it.  For example, the 200 period moving average is a widely-watched indicator and you can watch currency and stock prices bouncing around it.  This happens because lots of individuals are watching these same things and have a plan / system based upon the same things.  In essence, technical analysis becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy in larger markets.


http://thetradequest.com/bitcoin/sp500.png


Bitcoin is difficult to read / trade in that it is an illiquid market and there are relatively few individuals.  You can make / lose a million dollars a day in the forex market, but a million dollars would cause the price to rise / fall 30% or more in bitcoin.

Here is the real deal when it comes to technical trading.  If you do this, you will have a chance.

1.  Develop a system:
--How many lots/bitcoin/shares will you trade?
--When will you enter?
--When will you exit?
--What times will you trade?

2.  Backtest the system:
--Open a NinjaTrader demo account with a currency broker (I suggest MB Trading) and load up a chart.  (I suggest NinjaTrader because it's great for this type of testing - you can click the arrow keys to move forward/back 1 bar)
--Move the chart one bar at a time recording your entries/exits in an Excel spreadsheet - chart your performance and do some metrics to see if your system has an edge
--Do this for 200-400 trades

3.  Forward test the system:
--Take the system you developed and trade it on a demo account with fake money for at least two months and see if your results hold with your backtested results

4.  Live trade
--If your system is robust and holds up, trade it with small amounts of money
--As you continue to make profits, scale in with more and more money

[H]ardOCP

A friend told me about them, he still is reluctant to "use" them...

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com

I earn money online  and i used to have my money sent to my paypal. But paypal is a pain in the ass to work with and began keeping all of my funds for 21 days before giving   it to me. I got sick of paypal, read the bitcoin wiki for a few hours, and began using bitcoins for all my money transfers, and I have never looked back.

I've read an interesting german news entry in the beginning of june 2011 which immediately caught me.

I was told offhandedly about them, and they just became something I found interesting.

Played around with it for a bit somewhere in 2010 when I read about it on some blog/website, but didn't stick with then unfortunately :)
Picked it up again a couple of months ago.

Heard about it form the TWIT Security Now Podcast with Steve Gibson way back in March or April

Seeing the price index for the first time, 20 euro for 1 Bitcoin! I want those days back!
Bitcoin can NOT fail, because I want to be rich!

I honestly don't remmember, but it was only around 1,5$ / BTC back when I found it.

Stumbled on it a couple years back, ignored it like a jackass. Kicking myself for doing that now.

I've known about bitcoin for a while now, at least a year or two. Back then, I could only pull in around 1 MH/s on my computer.. Now I can pull in 30 MH/s, so I'm mildly interested in BTC again.

Hoping to earn at least 1 BTC before the year is over >.<

A friend told me about bitcoins in times where it was profitable to mine :) So i jumped on the train. Sad that we passed those days but i hope I can soon turn on my miners again :)

I read an article about one bitcoin scam. Then i investigated the issue of bitcoin. And loved the idea. Here I am.

My first reaction: SCAM! I thought is was a BotNet recruitment program or just some waste of time.

Did a lot of research before getting started and now I mine 2 Ghash/sec 24/7.

Like others have already mentioned, I heard from a friend and the first thing I thought too was, "wait, this has got to be a scam."  A few weeks later, I have 2 mining rigs pulling 2.5 G/Hash  :D

On november 2011 i was thinking about upgrading my graphics card so i started doing some research on gpus. I was looking through craigslist and found a hd6870 and the guy added a comment:

"If you do bitcoin mining it can actually pay for itself"

So I wondered, what the hell is bitcoing mining?!

After that my attention passed form gaming to bitcoins and the amazing system behind it.

 :o

Haha I read about it

A friend asked me to pull his miner equipment out of the datacenter when i went down

I was looking for a way to earn online a year ago and found an article about mining bitcoins. Then I researched it a bit and forgot about it until now.

I've been a content creator on Second Life since around 2006. In 2006 I could sell my linden dollar for around 10 USD per 1500L. Todays market yields around 5-6 USD per 1500L. I decided to add Bitcoins to my investment pool to see if I could turn a profit on the low market.

I can't really pinpoint when exactly and why I started. I had heard in the beginning of last year about bitcoins, but I didn't spend alot of time checking it out, so I discarded the idea rather quickly. At some point later that same year I got back around to hearing about it again and have been mining since hehe :)

Honestly, first it was when I was told that you could make money with your graphics card by "mining". Then it snowballed from there, I started mining hardcore, btc hit $30+...been trying to learn more and more ever since.

Saw it as a donation method in Wikileaks at the end of 2010, started searching and here I am.

Saw it in one of the tech blogs I read. Initially thought it was a scam until I did a little research. Now I'm doing a bit of mining. Not making a ton, but it is fun and hasn't cost me a much at all since I had hardware already.

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It seemed like voodoo to me when I first heard about it a couple of years ago.  People supposedly mining a legitimate online currency out of thin air and it's value supposedly going up.  Like a few others,  I thought it was a joke but it seems to be here to stay.  The first globally independent, anonymous online currency...what's not to love?

These three things made me realize this was a genuine evolutionary step:

1. Bit-torrent based
2. Herculean encryption
3. The Genesis Block message

I'm not a hacker, but it was an epiphany.

Well I started by hearing about bitcoin on youtube. It really intrigued me a lot. I am thinking about building a small miner but from what I gather it is kinda pointless at this point in the game. I guess if difficulty were to fall I would get involved. Or if the price per coin was say $20usd. But I actually enjoy reading about the currency. I have always been fascinated with economies and how currency works. Just another thing to expand my knowledge.

Milkman39

kept hearing about it in the media on and off since the early days, discoverd silkroad figured id better have some coins.

Now there's a real waste of cycles and then they ask for donations. A classic boondoggle backed by nonsense science.

I dunno how I first heard of bitcoin might have been on LKML.

Was doing research on digital currencies while writing my book "iMigration" about living a global lifestyle.

Stumbled upon a great overview at the DGC (Digital Gold Currencies) Magazine in its December 2010 issue.

Should've bought some bitcoins at that time!

I think I found it on Reddit, but I read a lot of blogs too.

found out about SR in november but bought my first coins in january at twice the price xD

I joined the bitcoin world after I read this article: http://www.geekfalcon.com/07/bitcoin-912 (http://www.geekfalcon.com/07/bitcoin-912), then I looked for extra information and I bought a Radeon HD 5870 graphic card.
Now I have stopped because the price of Bitcoin is too low for my opinion.

I used google :D  Saw it in a random thread and checked it out.  :D

I read an article about it a few weeks ago and thought I'd give it a try to see how the whole system worked.  Of course my GTX 580's weren't very good miners.  They went to eBay and I now have some ATI cards mining away.  I did have to sacrifice some gaming performance, but it's worth it so far.

I received a Casascius coin as a gift.

Receiving a coin as a gift is an awesome way to get started. I was introduced to it by Reddit

I first heard about it on a Rooster Teeth Podcast. Did some research and it seemed like a cool thing. Never really bought into it until I learned about Silk Road. That's when I started buying coins. Funny thing is that I have never actually bought anything on Silk Road yet. I'm just having fun speculating.

I was reading an article about Bitcoins in the magazine new Scientist and got interested because of the freedom it gives you in being a worldwide currency with no borders. Then when I saw that each coins was worth $3.30 I got into it with my friend and have been trading since then.

I honestly don't recall. I've been "into" the whole BTC thing for the last few years. Just never done anything with it.
I have a bit more hardware so started playing with mining and such.

Really interested to see Bitcoin really go somewhere.

Bitcoin was introduced to me by a good friend of mine, he didn't tell me that it's addictive.

I read article on Arstechnica, when there was price correction from 22$ ;)

I was looking up ways to sell my computing power for money after using F@H a couple times.  Found out about mining, but didn't wanna go for all the mining rigs and stuff, so instead I invested about $20 into Bitcoins through Mt. Gox and a couple months later I literally tripled it into $60. Then I quit for a while and now I'm back for round 2.

the anonymous VPN I use for bittorrent accepts BTC so i bought some with cash, really convenient  ;D

Strange, but first Cryptocurrency i've heard about was solidcoin, it's scamcoin but if it wouldn't exist, i would still have no idea about Bitcoin :)
so this Scamcoin is good for anything *lol*

My cousin started a pool, I got hooked when I saw that you can use computer hardware to earn money in a profitable, not taxable way.  I have invested probably 10,000 dollars so far in BTC and continue to grow.

I saw this idea from blog, and then googled this forum.

Wikipedia. I was looking for an alternative for Moneybookers, preferably one that doesn't take away money if I transfer money or tells me to need to have a bank account.

Well, i guess each and everyone of us has stories to tell about how we landed here.

I was looking at the payment methods for a site, and saw bitcoin as one. I was like 'WTF is bitcoin?', so I did a google search, and here I am!

hi all,
 
ive been hanging around here for the last 8/9 months so thought it was time i said hello. so heres my sorry tale

well i was reading a forum thread and this guy wanted advice on what gpu to buy for gaming and mining.
     
mining wtf is that????
       
google some, get confused, google more ah that sounds good (£14 per btc then :o) then i save some cash to get mining as i watch the price drop and drop and drop.

buy some cards (£5 now :-[) fire em up and here we are.

make money, lose money, who cares im just along for the ride

@joe-90

Very nice tale to tell there :)

Read about it and got hooked on the technology. Read through many threads on this site and finally registered. I have a small mining setup here, not for the big wins but just for seeing it work. Marvelous. ;)

Someone needs to summarize these into categories with some sort of bar chart.

I can already see a tech-corner and a "wallstreet" camp emerging... :)

Tahoda

I read about anarchy and Bitcoins. Very intrigued, I must say.

I have heard them talked about in both my political and technical circles for about a year.

The more I read, the more I like. 

The technical protocol is genius, but establishment of new currency is difficult work even with the establishment is behind it.

I want to be along for the ride in a small way.

I am looking for an excuse to run a cluster :D

A friend of mine told me it's a good investment and that i could make money off my gaming rig. So i'm kind of skeptical to be honest. Hopefully i can get some posts under my belt so i can but some bitcoins. :D

I found out from a friend of a friend at a tech convention.

Sounded really interesting (and moderately insane), and I realized I could commit my PC's idle time toward mining. I was also pretty psyched to find that various Bitcoin poker sites existed. It's a cool idea, and hopefully it'll pick up a little more press in 2012.

I became interested in a computer technology conference on cryptography.  Processors are essentially "good decision-making hardware" and graphics processors are "good execution/arithmetic hardware." After looking into how many developers are switching over to AMD Radeon, because of its higher theoretical computational power over the nVidia counterpart, and the release of the 7970, I thought I would give it a start.  So far I am interested improving my mining operation to run at higher efficiency to generate more income.

Read a bunch of articles about it, kind of silently followed the progress of the whole thing for a while, and then decided it was such an interesting idea that I had to be a part of it.  Gotta admit I was preeeeetty skeptical at first though.

Cool story of yours.  :)

hi all,

I just found some articles about btc - and now I'm here! :)

I remember reading some article and being like that looks like an interesting concept. The more I dug into it, the more I realized it was a game changing idea that I wanted to become apart of. I do minor bitcoin mining compared to most but I still feel like every piece counts.

don't remember about that

I saw a forum post and got hooked. :-)

I was watching tv and saw it mentioned in a show, and wanted to know if it was real. Apparently it is.

Found it through the physical bitcoins being sold at memorydealers.com.

Pretty cool project, but getting my 5 posts is going to be frustrating, because the only thing I hate more than idle chatter is asking frivolous questions.

*sigh*

-Prayer

I saw the post about it on Lifehacker and started mining on my 8800GT right away. Obviously that didn't work very well, so I upgraded to 2 6870s last September. :)

Hey, my 8800GT is getting me some 25Mhash/s.  I'm getting ready to see if my old 8600GT will work as well.  Eventually, I might upgrade (I speced out my very own 8-core, 16GB, 3 VGA, 18TB server... just under $3000.  What fun that would be, especially if I sunk the whole thing in mineral oil and overclocked the crap out of it.

(the CPU and HDD would obviously be used for other tasks)

Yeah, vats of boiling oil are always fun!

Ooo, sounds epic.

It would indeed be epic.  There are some rigs (not necessarily mining rigs) posted out there.  Just do a(n image) search for "computer submerged in oil" to see some very cool systems.

The oil itself wouldn't boil, you still have to deal with the heat, but once that heat is in the oil, there are number of solutions to get rid of that heat, or even to make further use of it.

A closed loop water pre-heater would do wonders to offset the energy consumption, same thing by pumping it through a radiator tied into your heating system.  In the summer, you can pump it through a radiator located outdoors.

Anyways, this is probably a topic for another thread, I'm just glad to find something to waste some bits on until I get out of newbie jail. :)

-Prayer

i hardly remember how i found bitcoins. i think it had to do with encryption stuff i was looking up and i probably stumbled onto it from a page or document about encryption that mentioned something like a particular algorithm i was reading about was used in BitCoin. but that's my best guess. i wish i remembered. i will need to ask my fiance.

it is good for people to mention random things to other people like ... if you have not read about the Dvorak keyboard layout, then please, check it out! i love BitCoin, but i love this great, simplified keyboard layout as much as i like BitCoins too! here are a few highlights to tease your interest then i will stop because i don't want to turn my subject into other topics. but while i'm on this bunny trail... the Qwerty keyboard layout was designed to make typing slower! and the Dvorak keyboard layout was designed for the opposite: to be the most efficient typing layout for our English language. (i personally attest that it is MUCH more comfortable! because more efficient means less work on one's hands, thus easier and more comfortable. i hate the Qwerty layout now.) um, i will stop there, but if you want to inquire of this just email me at shawn2012 (at) sorren.com.

and BitCoin... i love it too! it is a powerful tool that big banks are scared of. consider how they essentially forced Paxum to stop assisting BitCoin exchanges! it is like the petroleum industry hating electric cars (which are better for the end consumer and the environment) but worse for petroleum companies and car manufacturers (because electric cars don't break as often and their design is FAR simpler, so MANY less parts in an electric car to wear out). but with much power that BitCoin has, it can be abused too. BitCoin is only a tool that can be used for good or bad. it is the users behind it that make the good or bad. just like cash. :P so if you hear anyone putting BitCoin down, remind them that the internet is used for good and bad too. they are both technologies that give *people* the power to choose their fate.

p.s. if anyone want's to rent movies with bitcoins, my brother and i already have a website up and running that uses USD via PayPal for users to pay for credits and watch movies. (we made it before NetFlix was popular.) i recently learned of BitCoin, and now i am interested in coding it to accept BitCoins. any programmers interested in helping, please contact me. for now, if you give me $1 worth of BTC, i will give you $2 USD worth of credit.

enjoy!

Yeah, I saw a bit about that on Tekzilla once. Sounds like it'd be something cool to try.

I'm typing on Dvorak right now. I agree, it is much better than Qwerty once you get used to it. :)

I read an article in Dec '10 and tried out the client but sadly pushed it aside.  Saw a comment on reddit about 6 months later and saw that it had gained momentum.

I don't remember too much but i was looking at an article bashing this new bitcoin thing and, because i'm used to understand exactly the opposite of what mass-media tells us, i started looking into it until it got me for good. In two days i was mining and never stopped since. Felt the coin-rush too, awesome feeling btw  :)

Read an article after the price crashed from $30; started mining a couple days later.

Well I heard about BitCoin before really using Paypal, western union or wire transfers much and thought "Cool, but what for really?".

THEN I heard about it again and realized how easy it made sending money around the world, programming money/banking APIs and the economic advantage over existing methods.

Safe to say I got a lot more interested and here I am a few nights of feverish reading and an annoyed girlfriend later.

Posting to get out of newbie hell and volunteer a little help in developing PoS systems.

Interesting, LOL.  :)

From a computer forum

from newspaper, after the hack of mtgox.

read an article about people who were able to buy bitcoins at 0.01 USD then able to sell them like 20 USD a piece. sweet.

I had seen several sites that accepted them but never really paid attention. Then I finally decided to see what the hell a Bitcoin was. Now I'm mining at 350MH/s and hoping to double it by the end of the month.

im a wolf in sheep's clothing........ just to see and now just for fun.




"Never get into fights with ugly people, they have nothing to lose."

I'm not sure where I first heard about it but I became fascinated with the idea of a currency that can be created independently of a state or a central bank. So here I am, researching, trying to understand how it works, and writing up an article about Bitcoins for Reuters, where I work.

Hopefully you're finding Bitcoin to be a positive thing thus far?  We need more positive publicity!

Warning!  Bitcoins are addictive.

unbelievably so.  i have no idea why either, but damn i'm hooked.

Haha me too!

Yeah. I just figured that. I can't stop thinking about them. It's a nightmare!

LOL, a kind of nightmare that you don't want to wake up.  :D

Is there such thing such as Heroine Member in this forum? A bitcoin addict member status.

I got started after reading about in on some crypto forum and looking deeper into it. I saw how cool it is and my hours of sleep per week have gone down hill from there  ;)

Certainly here for the enjoyment of market analysis, specifically technical analysis, which has had me hooked on bitcoincharts.com, btccharts.com, bitcoinica.com, mtgox.com, etc all at the same time at all times of day! (like now, 3:30AM)

My boyfriend got me in to the coins. I started reading about mining and then went from there. My favorite thing was when some one asked me how to buy coins cuz their broker didn't know where. priceless

Was it The Good Wife?

epic lol

paraipan. why you have photo yourself like pedrobear ? You criminal ?

I get into bitcoin from friend Pavlo at clinic. He say it good for getting US dollars. Also krokodil but he stupid.

I like America.

Lol, krokodil.  Yeah, would have to say that's about the stupidest thing a person can get involved in...

heh, long story (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64176.0), it's a seal of approval btw nothing criminal about it

I got into bitcoin when I saw it posted on Slashdot back in, oh June or so?  At that time it was ~$16 ea.  I bought a few.  Set up my GPU to mine.  When it was $30 I sold them all but kept mining.  Little did I know that the market would crash shortly after.   :(
 
Used the profit to buy some new computer equipment for my gaming machine.
 
I'm in it for the long haul, and have a couple troy ounces of silver that I purchased as well. :)  I like tangible objects, so I typically sell soon as I can afford something.
 
years later if they skyrocket in value, I'll lament why I didn't save.... but oh well, it's fun for me right now. :)

I saw it posted on slashdot, too.

I wanted to send a PayPal donation to a libertarian radio/podcast, but the guy said it's evil and mentioned Bitcoin. Karma, eh?

Word of mouth.

I heard about BTC a few times on the internet (dismissed it immediately as a ridiculous idea that would never catch on because of network effects). Then I read about Silk Road only accepting BitCoin and immediately understood that there must be more to the idea.

From there, everything I read made the idea seem more and more awesome.

(I would be interested to see/create a poll like: "When you first heard of BitCoin, did you think it was a ridiculous idea that would never catch on? Why?" if anyone knows of such a poll).

Cool  :)

I don't like paypal. At all.

I was looking for a way to pay for things online and get rid of paypal forever.

F*ck paypal. Srsly. They stole mah monies once and I will never use them again.

i was reading about BTC at Hardwareluxx for the first time.  I already had two 5870 in my gaming rig so i decided to give it a try.  I ordered 2 extra 5870s :)

After 4 mmnth minigng with that rig i found some threads here about FPGAs. Read into it and decided do switch completely to Ztex boards. When i have some money left i will buy an Icarus a x6500 Board for testing purposes.

I actualy own 5 Ztex 1.15x Boards now. That cluster gives me 1 GH/s at EMC

free talk live radio show/podcast.

http://freetalklive.com

I really need to get in contact with an owner of a store who uses bitcoin! heidijosboutique.com but cant access the website and they have no email.... :-\

I know it from twitter

My friend told me about it.

A friend told me about them a year (maybe even longer) ago but he didn't really explain it well and it came off sounding like a pyramid scheme so i never looked into them. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago i randomly stumble onto them again but this time i look into them and i love it. Kind of kicking myself now for not realizing what they were when i first heard about them but im glad i know about them now

I believe that's elwar (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=554) and his wife.

I first read about it at sweclockers and learnt that some knowledgable linux kernel hackers was involved, and thats usually a good sign.

Wikipedia. I am still very skeptical but I want to be a part, because I love the ideals and the implementation. Here are my two reservations about bitcoin:

1. the longterm viability of mining/transaction fees is really dubious to me. Even now, as evident in this thread, people are not mining because it is not profitable. It should always be profitable, whether it is by mining or by transaction fees. Thoughts, all disclaimed with a "maybe":When they cut the reward in half, sh*t is gonna happen, right? Even after the transaction fees stabilize, only the miners with access to the cheapest electricity and most efficient machines will come out on top. Nobody else will be able to compete. Is it heading towards a monopoly? Also, why not gradually reduce the reward instead of cutting it in half intermittently? It's pre-programmed market trauma, as it now stands.

2. Some more "maybes": The vision seems too small scale. People talk all day about how infinitely divisible coins is so amazing, but it's really not that great considering that a very small handful of people are sitting on 5%ish of the long term total and 12%ish of btc in circulation. I realize that they deserve a payoff, and that early adopters in any bubble are rewarded. But until all of the hoarders and speculators (early and newcoming) start spending, btc will remain a daytrading playground and retirement delusion. Hell, I wish Mt. Gox made their limit even smaller. I also think the 21 million get out way too fast.

Unless we have a few more Mt. Gox freakouts in a short time, I think btc will be around for awhile.

1.  Why would mining become a monopoly?  There's many people with good electric rates that have huge mining farms - not just one person.  And to make the argument that in the future, mining will be viable to few enough people that Bitcoin is susceptible to a 51% attack, you'd have to do some detailed analysis to figure out what total hashing power makes staging a 51% attack practical/profitable.  Mining doesn't need to be profitable to everyone, just so long as there are enough miners to secure the network from a single party taking over the network.

2.  I agree with you there.  Having 7% of the coins owned by a single person (Satoshi), and several others with smaller whole percents is absurd if this can ever hope to be a currency on the scale of the USD.  The current richest man in the world only has enough wealth to equate about 0.5% of the USD in circulation.

Who knows though - maybe 50 years down the road, if none of those original coins are moving, people might assume that Satoshi got hit by a car and died, without leaving anyone else any information about his wallet.  In other words, those coins would be assumed dead and never moving.

I'm with you on that one, I heard about them but didn't look into what they were, then I heard someone talking about them again at school and how they mine them, and I looked into it more and love it as a hobby, I also mine Litecoins as well thanks to Bitcoin.

A friend of mine from the Netherlands told me about a long time ago, probably about a year++.

I mined for a while (back when CPU mining was boss), didn't really understand how the payments worked, so i thought solomining would work. Tehe.

Stopped mining for a long while, saw the threads on /g/ back in April/May 2011, mined hard ever since:)

Just registered in this forum, finally!

Got in Bitcoin last year during the hype up season when the price is in the 20 range. Bought some overpriced rigs in the excitement and BANG, BTC price crashed with the series of hacking saga. Sold off all the rigs after a month time and incurred $500 plus loss.

It's a painful lesson and i had learn a lot from that.  :D

Crunching Boinc doing Distributed Computing with SETI.USA and one of the guys mentioned Bitcoin. 

i've read bitcoin from xtremesystems forums last july.. been hook since then... :)

I learned about through some thread on a forum that I frequent.

I jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon on August 2011 after my friend showed me it. It seemed new, but I didn't trust that it would live long.
Five months later I start mining.

I had been reading articles about bitcoin for months before I finally started getting into it. I started mining a bit and then started buying some every couple of weeks. I've been absolutely hooked on them ever since, and really believe there is a great future for currency of this kind.

Finally, as a small business man, this technology is an absolute godsend as it allows me to recieve payments for my service without having to involve any 3rd party. In fact, it is fast becoming my preferred method of payment, even over cash :)

i heard it from a friend and the prices were $15 per bitcoin.

Data charted here:  http://bitcoinforums.net/threads/how-people-found-out-about-bitcoin.467/

I had a look on the deep web and on silk road, and i saw if you wanted to buy stuff, you needed BTC. From there, i just sort of looked it up  :P

Found out  trading on  Silkroad.

Anyways Goomboo great post.

Good points. It would be cool, though, to see a system where mining would be profitable for everyone willing to run the software. That would be the most badass network ever. Our grandparents would be running it.

I sold computer stuff to some guy on CL. After the sale we were talking computers. He asked me, are you mining? Thats how i got in to this.

I started using them because I own and run a small graphic design school and I have about 85 always on computers with high end graphics cards. I learned about Bitcoin from a student that said these cards could be used to mine bitcoins and he taught me about it. I started reading here and realized that Bitminter could be easily turned on and off using a timer in a simple script so I'm in. Everything I bought for everyone in my life last Christmas was paid for with Bitcoin.  ;D

That would be cool, like unicorns who crap skittles. Think about it, if mining is profitable no matter how inefficient you are it's endless free money and all resources on the planet will eventually be dedicated to it.

It's wonderful as it is, the amount of resources dedicated depend on the worldwide demand for the system and the supply is anyone who can provide the service we need cheaper than average. To me it's more magical than (impossible) free money.

that rocks.  whats your hash rate?

It fluctuates greatly by time of day and at no time are they all used to mine at once but 20-40 ghash is about what I get spread among several different pools.  I ramped up slowly to where I am now for fear of damaging the machines but it seems to be working.

I started mining with some low-end hardware. Now im interested in more economic contacts that are bitcoin related.

very nice.  what is your electricity situation?  industrial rates?

Ha ha, I could have predicted the next question. The campus is mostly solar power, photovoltaic cell with solar radiant water heating systems. My building feeds back into the grid so much that we routinely get a check from the power company for back spinning the meter.

sounds like you have it made in the shade.  power usage is a massive part of the profitability equation.

Cool.  :)

I still have maintenance and upgrade expenses but this sure is a nice way to offset the costs.  ;D

I was on this page http://ottopress.com/2010/wordpress-3-0-multisite-domain-mapping-tutorial/ looking for instructions to help a friend setup Wordpress Network. At some point I noticed this "Or, send me bitcoins!". That was it! I immediately started my research :) I have read a lot of topics on this forum; for 4-5 days without registering. I consider it to be revolutionary and I just couldn't resist being a part of it :D

When I manage to get some bitcoins, I'm thinking of sending Otto a Bitpresent.

I seen a Post on Slashdot and decided to check it out. At first I thought it was doomed to fail but later changed my Mind.

I was looking for a way to do microtransactions online. Most solutions out there require a US bank account, which I don't have.

touche

I heard/read about it a year or so ago and recently (last week) stumbled on it again.  I bought some coins to test out and love it.  I see it as an investment and also a way for us to change internet money transfers.

My dad owns a few buildings on Montreal's south shore, and one of the renters disappeared off the face of the earth, He had a mining operation going in one of the spaces that used to be a printing company. Until the space gets rented again I can use it to run all the equipment. Once it is rented I need to find a spot for everything, but I am not too sure about the power requirements. Once the weather starts to warm up I might start selling things off I just hope the price of 5870 and 5970 series are still worth about 175$ and 350$ each.

I have been doing this for about 6 months now and am using my own private pool and things have been going great.

I love the chalange and the tweaking, learning Linux is an eventual task i will get to, but for now strictly windows 7.

The hardest part is keeping my day job, with this easy money coming in its not the easiest thing getting up and starting work at 4 am.

Where there also people here became successful with bitcoin?

I read about it on some underground forum where I stepped accidentally because I was looking for some guide how to protect myself from hackers.

i saw a report on youtube for about a half year (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROxs3D17SOc)

Friend at work got me into it.  Strange, really, considering when you tell others to start mining it just increases difficulty (however minor it may be).  He probably doesn't like that I already have 3x the hashing power.

Stumbled across bitcoins while looking for a VPN provider. First thought to myself, "what the hell is that? Looks to complicated." Then a few weeks later paypal did something that totally screwed over my ebay buyer account that had a perfect score. Now I'm sticking with the bitcoin bandwagon until the end, for better or worse.

I'm pretty sure I saw a post about bitcoin on reddit/a gaming forum I frequent.

Some one asked if i wanted to swap money for btc, i was like wtf are btc :D

I've been researching it for a while before I decide to take a dive into to it myself.  It looks like a good way to start investing. Even though I know it's not guaranteed.

i read about tor and all the stuff u can buy there

Gavin Andresen and Amir Taaki, Bitcoin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwNfBgwbqng

 My friend asked if i had any bitcoins. I was like  ??? So then he told me about it. And i was really interested. Now 6 months later i only use bitcoins mostly! Haha    :P

My cousin first told me about bitcoin minging the way he told it got me interested so i decided to give it a try and i already want to expand and make more haha

Was reading a review of AMD video cards on bit-tech and in the comments section someone mentioned Bitcoin.  I was like what the heck is that but then after researching for a bit I got hooked.  Now I am up to 8Gh/s and still going.  ;D

 I was just looking around selling my alertpay for LR and someone said do you accept bitcoins? I was like what the fuck?

 6 months later -
 I know what bitcoins are and they are amazing! :D

Sr Sr silkaaroad :)

over 18 month ago when PayPal was getting on my nerves with their policy and keeping in transactions for 21 days. Since this wasn't only happening to me on the usual l33t boards the talk came to Bitcoin as payment method and I liked the concept from the start.