Bitcoin Forum

I'm just curious, but if you were given chance to invest in Bitcon back in 2011 (or early 2012), how much would be the optimal ammount to both a) not raise questions and b) not intervene with the progress of Bitcoin's appreciation? I mean couldn't one person just out of the blue investing too much money into the currency somehow hurt the progress of its rapid growth over several upcoming years? Also - aside from sports betting - what would be some other good investment opportunities for a normal person back in 2010-early 2012? Thanks for any advice

its for a school project

There are no questions back then. They were paying for a lot of bitcoin just for a pizza. You can have as much as you want and miners would really love to sell it too you.
They need money to pay up for electricity and what they mined doesnt fit it. So they will be running to you just to sell their coins.
It is really a different era there and it is hard to compare specially when you dont know this could happen.

What would you do now if someone tells you that he knows the next big thing that will have a huge appretiation in some years? And that you should invest all your money in it, really, sell your house, go to work day and night, sell your body and invest as much as you can.
Probably you would just walk away and forget it.

That's right, you never know, that's why no millionaire has put all his money in Bitcoin back then and even now. After 2013, when Bitcoin was gaining $100 a day for almost a week straight, people knew it could be a money making machine. Some of the richest people in the world could sell a mansion or two and throw something like 10 billion into it, but they didn't. I'm sure that if I were filthy rich and had 50 billion USD like those guys on Forbes list, I'd surely put at least 10% of it in Bitcoin. Life is all about the risk and risk is easy if you have a backup plan.

there are real examples of this. roger ver bought something like 300,000 coins on gox. he didn't seem to care about affecting the market, he carried on buying.

Maybe people will create threads like this in 2023 and ask the same question about 2017  :P

This is quite hard to answer, even with the knowledge, with bitcoin condition during that time, I do not think that I will invest a great amount of money in this technology.   And during those time, bitcoin is almost worthless.  Anyway to cut the story short.  I think I will have the same mindset since I do not know that bitcoin will be this popular during that time.

Point is that not everything happens through exchanges. I am fairly sure that insanely large trades happen off exchange. Main reason for that is that people want to remain low profile, but also not to affect the markets, as even till this day, markets have very poor liquidity. In the same way that whales can't comfortably unload a huge load of coins without dumping the market down too much, they can't buy a huge load of coins without pumping the price too much. That's also why the FBI auctions have turned out to be rather popular. It was a perfect opportunity to obtain large number of coins at a fixed market rate.

I wondered many times what would I do if I knew back then that bitcoin will start economic revolution. I would probably sell everything I have and buy BTC.
Back at that time in 2009-2011 bitcoin faucets were giving out pretty much whole bitcoins - you could just claim rewards and be a millionaire today.

I don't believe that you would interfere with the market buying large quantities of BTC. No unless you were a fiat whale at that time already.

This is something which cannot be imagined. Everytime when something goes really high like bitcoin people start saying if you had a chance or if you get a chance to go back to the initial stage of this or this. So, this is useless guys stop imagining and accept the fact. No one knows when a coin is released will go high like bitcoins or not or anything like bitcoins. We cannot just predict some guys do, but they do not have the funds to invest in the initial stage so they just start selling off when it (the item) is just raised in (price) by some factors. When Google was in its initial stage no one was interested in investing, but still there were some people who bought some shares of it and now they are earning a really good amount. I have seen some companies.

Ya it is true what you are saying now we cannot compare with past and cannot say that if that time i was knowing it i would have done this and that . But think that who ever knowed it even they also did not valued it and dont know that in future it will be like this.  Even their are so many new altcoins which are having so good projects but still no one is holding right now because what knows in future this coins also perform like bitcoin performed. So no one knows future and if everyone know it then the future would be different due to current situation.

^ This. There are so many scams, HYIP and ponzi schemes around that your first instinct is to always be defensive. There are so many promising penny stocks in the market that can make you a millionaire 10 years from now but would you take a bet on them?

I first heard about Bitcoins back in 2012. I read a random article on the Internet but it mostly went over my head and I didn't give it a second thought. Mainstream media never covers this stuff in my country anyway, so it's easy to forget. Next time I heard about BTC was in mid 2016 and I nearly fainted looking at the price. That is when I decided to learn all about it and get myself a few coins asap. Looking back, yeah I missed the boat between 2013-2016 but I wouldn't have invested in it back in 2010 when it was still an unknown entity.

We are in the same boat with altcoins right now. We can buy truckloads of them right now and hope to become rich one day but that's always a gamble.


It's called hindsight bias. It's easy to look back and think of it as a missed opportunity but the reality is there are millions of hidden gems in the market and it's always a matter of luck which investment will pay off. For every guy that got uber rich by buying Google shares early on, there are thousands who invested in shares of failed companies and lost everything. Bitcoin is/was no different.

the same thing as today and the same thing as 10 years from now: what i can afford to invest!
we never know the future, and any investment no matter how good you think it is, will have some risks. we all know the risks of bitcoin and it is always a good idea to invest what you can afford. it doesn't matter if it was in 2011 or 2017 or even 2022. bitcoin is still on the way up with its adoption growing day by day and that means investing in it will give you a big profit for the future too.

it is not about IF, because we all had the chance to invest in bitcoin back then and i am sure many of us knew about bitcoin so we have the knowledge. i myself know about it in late 2012 but never bothered to look into it more, and i will regret that for the rest of my life.
and it doesn't matter when you find out about bitcoin, as others said you always invest what you can afford.

and for your other question, it is not going to disrupt the progress of bitcoin, not even back then. there were always more than enough bitcoins anybody could buy.

yes mate we really can't say if we will do that but the thing is the value will keep rising and base on what we experience 5-6 years ago will
teach us to believe that things is really possible to happen, me I'm also late got in when price already 400$ and didn't bother to hold but to'keep
on selling my earned btc, if only i can predict maybe i will hold it until now i should be a rich person now.

Maybe im not a staker by that time since im a 100% newbie by the time bitcoins hit to 350-400$ at piece and maybe if I am knowledgable by that time surely it can make me millionaire today but theirs no doubting feeling in my side since im still quitely earning some good profits by my ventures here, And price is rising is just a bunos for me since im not actually a staker since normaly im cashing out my balance and exchange it to fiat.

Yes, it was still early times back then, we just passed the 25% of all coins mined and the market cap exceeded $1 000 000 US, which was a big thing at the time. One of the biggest "Bubbles" was also forming, so there were a lot of attention on Bitcoin. In May of 2010 the previous year, Lazslo bought those Pizza's and people saw that it had some value. The bubble were backed by a lot of money and it did make a difference, but I think it was mostly existing bitcoin users who started this. ^smile^

I think it will change all the past happenings on bitcoins and even the price itself. If i have this knowledge way back 2011 maybe i have the 50% of all bitcoins around the world. Maybe as of now im living like a king.

A lot changes same as now might have not taken place, but in reality if I have got the same knowledge and the importance of bitcoin as now during the year of 2011 or 2012 8 could have made a big investment upon it. At least I could have made an investment to afford 50 btc.

If I had that knowledge about bitcoin wave back 2011, maybe I am one of those wealthiest person being a part of bitcoin system until now. The investments since 2011 will grow bigger as of present if early start happened to me, I wouldn't be engaged of some emergency loans or any debts that drown my financials until present days. That would be the best decisions I ever had, during that time if someone ad taught me to learn digital currency like the famouse bitcoin

who knows price will raise that much!!!
I want to go back 2009
a pizza sold for 10k btc unbelievable  ;D
2009 I got 5 btc from my friend free,I was trying to sold my btc and price was $1.25.I can not sell my btc and I forgot my wallet ID.
I will be looser again after 10 years when the price goes $1000k and feel why I dont invest $100k on bitcoin.

If I have a lot of money of course I will buy a lot of bitcoin in that year. But when I do not have a lot of money then I will figure out how to share it with living expenses. Because I definitely have to think about how my life can be balanced with the value that I invest.

Same goes for me. If I have known about bitcoin that time and I have enough money I will sure buy a lot o it since its price is cheap and I will hold it for a long time so that I will get a high profit.

Back then, my view of bitcoin is different from what I view it today. It is not that if ever I have a chance, I did have a chance to invest in bitcoin back then, but I do not believe in bitcoin back then yet. I believe it was a scam and used for illegal activities back then. That is why my investment was more on stocks and mutual funds. 

Funny thing is, I had 50 btc 5 or so years ago, and I spent it all on dice gambling!

I would have invested around $500 in Bitcoin. Any amount higher than that would hurt me bad if I lost it.
So even if I had the foresight, I wouldn't have invested more than what I could afford to lose.

Yeah, a pizza sold for a 1000 bitcoins. That is really insane if that happened these month. And bitcoin was released January 2009, and I don't think many people knew that, Satoshi Nakamoto even mined a million of bitcoin, back then, and that is the first mined bitcoins. I am saying these because that is how bitclin began, it starts at $.003 price and start pumping after that. I can buy even a million of them back then. And I will be rich.

If i actually had this opportunity i would sell of all the gold i had and buy bitcoins , sell or my property, my stock market shares and all other form of savings in bitcoin and wait for 5 years. Talking about gambling yes i would plan to start a dice site in starting and then expand towards building sites like fortunejack. Thou no matter what i won't start sports betting site as it is a risky business

If I have knowledge back in 2011 and know what will happen in the nex 6 years, I would have sold all my properties, houses, lands, domestic animals, farm animals, and invest in bitcoin.  Then wait until today to encash.  I would have been a millionaire or a billionaire if I know all this stuff back in 2011.

I think if even only one person started hoarding a really significant amount of bitcoin back then, it would not be where it would today. I believe everything that has happened in the past has made bitcoin what it is today.

No need to go back to 2011 anymore. Past is past.

You don't need 2011. Have any of you bought any bitcoins last year from 200$? Don't think so. Me neither. I thought "That's it, it is going to ground zero. Bitcoin is ded." But seeing where we are at now, that GoX bubble from back then do not look even big on bitcoinwisdom charts anymore.

We closed a massive gap from 1200$/2013 and doubled it. If the history ever repeats (which i doubt), this time nobody who bought from 2700-2800$ will be making any panic sells and this is going to prevent bitcoin from crashing even harder. From now on, there is only one possible direction: UP.

Good or bad thing about Bitcoin, early adopters/miners were the fortunate ones because due to the mining protocol if you start mining sooner rather than later you could get most of the coins, and now even if the hash power in total triples after the difficulty retarget it increases as much to prevent any excessive mining over 10 minutes 1 block found average.
Even miners currently mining are the lucky ones in my opinion, if you could mine now with the cost of $2000 per coin not only you could sell and earn a profit but if you'd kept them for another year or so then selling them then you'd be in the clear.
Please don't mistaken currently available crap coins with Bitcoin in it's early stages thinking to go and buy them in bulk, rather mining them is the best option.
Right now I have the knowledge just like I said in my last post, but there is not enough smart people around me willing to take a leap of faith with me and risk their investment, I now have the facking knowledge that Bitcoin is going to worth thousands of dollars in the near future, sadly I'm empty only the knowledge is not enough.
I think I'm going insane, lol.

The problem is that back in 2011 no one though Bitcoin would ever be THAT high (except from a few fanatics).

So why would you even invest 500 USD in Bitcoin (which could by you ~ 500 BTC back then), when you didn´t think this thing will be worth anything some day.

No limit, at the time no one would have entered the system and changed with the coin supply Satoshi would hold a large amount so asking him for some would likely have only moved some non moving coins to the liquidity.