Bitcoin Forum

I was trying to trace my USD (fiat) when i purchase my bitcoins.
So if i were to purchase on coinbase, my dollar goes to coinbase, where coinbase must've bought the bitcoins from a mining company or early miner with many bitcoin, or heavy investor?
I understand that bitcoin was a protocol, was never involved in fiat money, but once when people started to put fiat value (or pizza value) to it, I guess thats when the fiat <-> bitcoin game started.

So am I  right?
All the bitcoins that we purchase with cash, eventually the winner (for nowdays at least) will be early miners, mining company, or heavy investors who bought a lot of them when it was below 100$ ?

I don't understand what you mean by 'winner'?

winning all the fiat cash.

IT's a little confusing by what you mean. By winners do you mean the people with the most bitcoins or wealth in bitcoins?

Surely the winner is the one who just dumped some dirty fiat in exchange for a decent currency.

Coinbase usually buys their coins from other exchanges and from users that sell their bitcoin.

I have read somewhere that the price on coinbase is based on the price on btc-e so they likely use btc-e as their exchange.

I dont really get what u mean with winner? They didnt buy all coins at below 100$ and sell them to you for 600+$ if u mean that  ???

The winklevoss bought 120,000 BTC below 100$ IIRC...

you are the winner  :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhe61JaNFLU

He does not understand that selling bitcoin equals losing.
Be glad to own bitcoin, forget the fiat.

I think Satoshi is the biggest winner, though it is true we can all still be early adopters.

Early miners could have sold most of their bitcoin below $10. Non-miners could have bought tons of bitcoin at $60 and have not sold a single coin. Later adopters could also bought at $250 and sold everything at $1000.

There is no one type of adopters who are definite "winners". If you hold enough now, you will be a "winner" too.

No, you will probably buy BTC from one of large BTC traders.
Early adopters / miners/ investers are doing one of this things:
1) Holding like ther's no tomorrow
2) Using for their daily expenses if they are in area where they can do it.
3) Trading large amounts away from exchanges

But i'm guessing that main point is that there are some people that have large percentage of all BTC ever mined and it will take some serious amount of time untill that changes.

We are still REALLY early in the "game", we are still "early" adopters. There is only like .01% of the world population using bitcoin. I would say that puts us in the early adopter category.
Just keep working at getting more coins, and hold onto them. If you want to make more coin from a your stash there is PLENTY of ways you can use your coins to make more coins :).

He's effectively wondering how the conversion from FIAT to BTC happens. Many people assume there's some magic happening somewhere. Effectively it's just that on exchanges people who mined BTC at some point sell their BTC to people who deposited FIAT on the exchange and thus simply exchange the one for the other. The bitcoin protocol itself never had anything to do with FIAT or exchanges or magic or whatever!

Hey all. Thank you for your responses although some seems like they didnt even understand my q.
Im familiar with bitcoin and my first purchase was back in 2009 so.
But i just wanted to trace all fiats being converted to bitcoin and see who took most advantage of btc to fiat game. ( some replies are ridiculous here )
I was explaining bitcoin to a taxi driver and he asked me "so where does all the cash USD end up on?"
So that question kinda got me thinking as well. All i could think was early miners and heavy investors ir rich ppl.

Winner i meant person winning the btc to fiat game up till today. Having btc is not a winner rightnow. Tell me that later when all works out.

Thank you all

King Satoshi is the biggest winner.  :P
He deserves it for having created BTC

the early minors or anybody really had no idea the price would be so high.
i reckon most of them traded pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins.
even in 2012 when the price was $5 i bet no one has any idea it would skyrocket.
i am sure a lot of people saved them but the same amount lost them or used them ??

The winner for your explanation is someone who mined some BTC many years ago and didn't care anymore about BTC price in some years later
and he found BTC price was skyrocketing in late 2013, open his wallet and cashing out some BTCs
but i think only few people did this
many of them already sold their BTC on early 2013 rise or before it

Considering this is a bitcoin forum, i don't know if many people here would consider making fiat "winning"

Thanks all for your responses.

yeah but i wonder how many of them are very sure and confident about that right now.
It's good news that expedia and dell started accepting bitcoins

Hey man thAnks for the video but by reading your posts im sure im more familiar about bitcoins than you.
Started trading in 2009. What makes you so confident that btc is a winner over fiat?
Cant even get a bigmac with btc right now

Sound interesting. Who was you trading with?

My bad it was 2011 where i sent money order at walmart.

Actually, we are all winners. Even those with 0 BTC win by ending the dominance nation-state blood-money.

I love bitcoins and stand behind them 100 percent.. Good read guys!,, btw I think they  may mine some coins I may be wrong.. But as much money as they have you would think they can afford to mine there own ?

The early miners who were mining in all of 2011 mined pretty much double the bitcoin as all the miners who mined in 2013 (the block subsidy halved) however 2013 miners likely received a much higher amount of TX fees.

Assuming that the early miners held onto their coins they did very well financially because they earned a large return on their small investment (electricity, and GPUs)