Bitcoin Forum

So, almost exactly 3 years ago a lot of us were euphorically watching as bitcoin blew through the $20 range and into the $30s.  Not long after reaching nearly $33, there was a series of relatively large sell-offs into pretty thin bids, and that ultimately bottomed out around $10.

The price "recovered" to around $17 and then we were all epically goxxed with an insane hackcrash from $17 to, basically, $0.  It was gut-wrenching.  I was on my way to the gym when it happened and casually opened the price app on my phone to see the price was under $10.  I was a little disturbed, but it's bitcoin.  At another stop light I checked again and the price was under $5.  That's when I called my wife and frantically attempted to explain to her how to log on to MtGox and put in a sell order...by the time she logged in the price was $0.25 and I said, "well, shit, it's pretty much all gone..."

Share your story.

3 years ago I saw some stories on bitcoin at slashdot and other places and stupidly ignored them

Did you sell at $0.25?

3 yrs ago, you were trolling Bitcoin hard, just like you do now. ;)

Would not matter all those trades were rollbacked. these were the days when everyone thought mtgox was a competent exchange & a benefit to community. little did we know...

My story 4 years ago: learned about bitcoin from the internets, came on here when there was no gox and people were literally running around the internet trying to move 10k bitcoins for $100, didn't understand wtf is this all about after 5 minutes of reading, thought it's a cleverly designed mass self-installed trojan software, left. Did more research later, got interested, but it already was at $1 per coin, thought that I missed the train completely and everybody already bought into the hype, left. Came back when it was at $32, started buying after it crashed to $17, and enjoyed the ride down to $2 with proudhon adding optimism along the way :) But managed not to sell, because never invested what was not prepared to lose completely. After that grizzly market all those recent events of 2013-2014 are really just minor stops on the way up.

FTFY

Proudhon^TM -trolling with 3 years of excellence

Are you sure?  :D :D

Read about the tech thru a slashdot article but took one look at the price and said to myself "Bubble"  :o.  Revisited and read the whitepaper (actually understood the awesomeness of Bitcoin as opposed to the media misreporting) 8 months later... joined bitcointalk a month+ after that.

I missed the whole thing :D

Nice to see you round these parts. Trolling is very low quality at the moment, why not stay a while :D

make another bitcoin song, that bubble song was funny  ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7TuFy0fcuw

proudhon is a special type of troll.

At times he can be downright vicious. At other times he can be downright adorable.

I'd been following bitcoin for a number of weeks at that point and watched that hackcrash in real time. The price recovering to around $14 fairly quickly in the days after that gave me confidence to make some of my first purchases. And as I read constantly about bitcoin and monetary systems in general through the following months, my confidence in bitcoin rose as the price fell. Just wish I'd had more fiat to put to work at the time! :)

Just don't have the time these days to troll as it ought to be done, and I feel like if you're gonna do something, do it well.  I'll probably pop in here a little more frequently, though.

Well then the patented proudhon-in-spec-subforum indicator would suggest we are indeed in for another run up. I'd better back up my truck.

A year ago, you would have had 100 answers by now. The forum is full of jobless socialists now. I much prefered the days of jobless anarchists. DAMN ALT COINS!

Myself, I was 8 months from hearing about bitcoin. Bought my first btc at $5.50... and a few more in the $4 range before the price JUMPED on 4/20 that year.

Yeah 17$ was sick. I buy your coins for 18$ so you don't have to suffer a 17$ price ever again!!!

You joined in summer 2012 and are talking about the good old days of this forum? Hahaha. Cute!

I started reading the forum just after proudhon song.
dude you were my hero! best troll ever to hit the board.
took some real balls to make the switch like you did.
smoothy's posts used to fun as well but now days he's all serious (mostly)

three years ago i heard about bitcoin, didn't understand the slightest bit, didn't know about this forum, decided to send a few thousand bucks to tokyo anyway. price was around lower tens when i wanted to buy, but wiring cash to gox just took forever, while the bubble kept going. when the funds f i n a l l y arrived, price was going towards 30. I went all in with what i had sent. bubble popped right after my purchase.
i was paralyzed, my funds were evaporating fast. it dawned on me that this wasn't the future of money but the presence of a very elaborate scam and i was stupid enough to literally throw my money this way. not a nigerian scam but a japanese. oh fuck, i watched the price go down, down, down, and i didn't knew any other idiot WHO was stupid enough to do this. i decided not to tell anyone, forget all about, literally erase everything on my pc that was related to gox and managed it to forget all about it until march 2013.
(gox was then kind enough to restore my account and my first hundred btc - bought on top of the top - were still sitting there untouched) the thing that made the difference for me was to find this forum in march 2013.

lesson learned: with bitcoin even the most ignorant fool buying on top of the most epic bubble still makes a decent buck when waiting long enough  :D

Around 2 years ago. I said to my mates and anyone else who would listen:

Me: "You know what, I am going to sink £1000 into Bitcoin as a wildcard investment and this time not blow it all on Silk Road, but hold them as I really think that this Bitcoin could have some potential 5-10 years down the line. But I am not going to buy now (October 2012), because Bitcoin has gotten way too expensive. I don't like to pay any more than $5 for my Bitcoins don't you know and they are currently trading at almost $10! This is because the growth of of Silk Road, as everyone loads up on drugs for the festival season, and then again for winter festive season their has been a high demand for Bitcoin. I am going to wait until Jan 2013, when the price is going to sink back down a bit just like it did in Jan 2012 when all the drug buying was done and the vendors were all cashing out."

My Mate: "Maybe you should just buy them now if you have the money. Who knows, the price may not come back down. Maybe Bitcoin will just explode to $100 or something?"

Me: "Naw, don't be so silly. Bitcoin price is driven by Silk Road. The price will come down when the drug buying dies down a bit after the New Year"


Me to my younger brother circa Feb 2013:

Ricky: "Hey Matty, Matty, ken those Bitcoins you are always going on aboot, they have just hit $30! Could you buy me some!?"

Me: "Keep away from Bitcoin bro, it is in a bubble! 1 BTC being worth 1 Oz of Silver is just totally unrealistic! It will crash and go back to $2 next week."

Jobless I assume?

Jumping to conclusions much?

Just trying to figure out what part of my post you got butthurt about. Still didn't answer the question.

at that time i wasnt aware of Bitcoin  ::) completely missed it.

You compare the forum of your joining to today and talk about like you are some kind of veteran, but you only joined in 2012 summer... That is like on 4chan if a summerfag calls a newfag "newfag".

Summer 2012 is getting kind of early in Bitcoin, he may have been interested by Bitcoin before joining

In relative terms, it absolutely is. But remember Bitcoin was 3.5 years old at the point he joined and even if the forum was different at that time, it was nothing compared to the 2010/2011 times where the forum was used to get projects and developement going.

2012 (and obviously today) it is/was a platform to promote scams, fud, altcoins and HYIPs...

2011 was pretty scammy too. It actually cleaned up a bit in the latter half of 2012 (pirate notwithstanding).

Gotta go back to 2010 for things to have been mostly pure.

So is summer 2014.

Again Mat, you just keep making me laugh!! Thank you.

3 Years ago I was feeling the pain and frustration with moving money around, all the post 9/11 KYC and AML and the horror of the 2008 collapse. Starting to see and take seriously what was really happening. Saying to myself - like a crazy person's mantra - "there has to be a better way, there has to be a better way.............."

2011 bubble had just crashed and I heard about Bitcoin for the first time. Lighting struck !! Answered all my questions and the white paper blew my mind. Bought $235 worth of btc just to start playing with it. I was amazed, and had that feeling - like " this is it"

Having run into lots of multi-level scams in my life, I immediately looked for real people to talk to and see if this was for real. Went to the first (I believe) conference in NYC (summer 2011), run by this nut job named Bruce Wagner (turned out to be a nut job). Anyway met great people (talked to Gavin - his integrity, and humility is what really sold me on the heart of bitcoin)...and from then on started making small buys on Gox. I told nobody about this - not even my closest friends and family (my brother is still a little pissed I did not tell him about this back then)...

For me the 2013 spring bubble came out of nowhere and rocked my world. I was not prepared for all the growth and did not yet understand the market very well. Freaked me out. I remember sitting in front of my computer the night we were bottoming with my finger on the sell button. I talked myself into selling that night. And I swear as soon as I sold, the market started taking off and cruised all the way up to $100. Sold way too much at the $50 bottom post bubble. worst decisions ever. :'(  On top of that I had major funds get stuck at a defunct exchange - which I actually ended up recovering 100%, by the grace of God and some high integrity heros. I was ultimately able to buy back in to recover much of my position ... "but you don't understand.. I could have been a contender!"

Since then I just dove deeper and deeper, into the tech and economics - and have been amazed at how far we have come so fast. It has been an incredible ride. Aaamazing :o

Today seeing bitcoin discussed on CNBC and Bloomberg and hearing CEO of serious companies talk as if this is inevitable still blows my mind and makes me shake my head in wonder.

Since early 2013, This forum has educated me, inspired me, pissed me off and guided me throughout this time, and I am deeply grateful it was here and particularly to a few key players on this board who have shared wisdom generously and consistently.

Yes, but what are few scams compared to majority of announcements being scams ;)

well stated. that's the spirit!

2011-2012 When Coinabul scammed me for .21BTC (Worth $10 at the time. Not related to their gold trade.), Bitcoin crashed, lost my main wallet password, and pretty much everything that was bad happened. And in 2013, I got phished. Happy years, huh?

Yeah, I can relate. After wrangling with my bank and dwolla for a couple weeks to get my first pittance into an exchange, it was simply a *very* liberating feeling to be able to near-instantly zip bitcoins around the bitconomy once I actually had some. Effortlessly shipping them around between a couple local wallets, web wallet, various services was incredible. I think I emailed my father right then saying "THIS is how money should work!". True believer ever since.

I still say that most adamant bitcoin naysayers have probably never even bothered to use it.

3 years ago I heard about Bitcoin for the first time, but I got into it quite a bit later.

What puzzles me though, is that exactly 3 years ago Bitcoin ended its bear run after reaching 1 dollar parity, it was a second wave before the big bang to 32$. If you look at the logarithmic all time graph in the present (http://blockchained.com), then you'll see the end of the bear run after reaching 1k$ parity and the preparation for the next big bang. Like 3 years ago it was a second wave and the shapes are quite similar, only stretched along the time axis.

History repeats itself. Time fractals anyone? :)

SHHHHH! Don't tell him that! He might realize there were people here before himself!

3 years ago... I did nothing BTC-wise, as I recall. I was still in risk-taking mode, and the risks in terms of initial investment were negligible. Easy come, easy go.

SHHHHH maybe he knows already but doesn't make a clown of himself like you do! SHHHHH

I see no trolling in OP post, but some folks haven't forgot that you were shilling for HashFail too which is now bankrupt. So I think that you are worse than OP.

I remember before this forum was called Bitcointalk. I started in this as a test because someone from my overclocking forum was having trouble mining on his 6950. I had one so I figured I'd try it and report back. I read a little about it and first thought was that this was like F@H but you get paid for it. I was like "Sweet!" Then I learned about Bitcoin and what it offers.

The Gox crash was somewhat surreal for me. I didn't know what was going on initially. I had about 100 mined BTC at the time, but none on Gox yet. I didn't have a huge investment as far as I was concerned, so I wasn't panicking. I remember watching on GoxLive as the price just kept ticking lower, then it was lights out. For 5 days!

Three years ago is about when the first talks of "The Manipulator" surfaced. I believed! I traded opposite of him (Pirate?) and made great money. And the walls of the single digits....

Curious what I have to do with this? lol

Yes i'm much more serious in my posts. But I do have my moments  ::)

This is a funny story. I am guessing you eventually bought back in?

Yes.

In November 2013, at $700!

After I had bought some Silk Road Bitcoins at $100-ish from LocalBitcoins in September, then went offshore on a job that lasted around 6 weeks, came back and seen that my Bitcoin stash had trebled in value (Bitcoin around $340), filled my pants and sold for some instant 'free money'. That night I had a dream of Bitcoin going through $600 on Gox. If you read any of my posts, you will know I take great heed of my dreams. I woke up feeling like a proper dumb cunt. Bitcoin was up $50 or something since I sold, and I set about trying to get a Bitstamp account as the nice vendors on LocalBitcoin were all wanting 20% premiums. It took about 11 days before I was ready to go on Bitstamp, and Bitcoin had recovered from first flash crash and was back up in $700 range.

I am one of those who knew about Bitcoin pretty early on. Was using Bitcoin very early on, and who could have become a millionaire if only he had the correct mindset. I have the right mindset now, a bubble or two too late for a man of my means to really capitalise on Bitcoin.

Sucks that you used bitcoin since 2010 (guessing, not sure) [and did not find a stash you forgot about or something on your harddrive] and rebought in 2013.

Nope...no stash on old USB stick or nothing. Even have the same wallet on my hardrive, showing old 2011-12 transactions for numbers like 177 BTC. Just around 500 quid worth or something back when that particular transaction was made.

I would put my mother on the game to get those 177 BTC back alone!

I believe in karma. MatTheCat, your time dispensing TA on this forums will be rewarded. I hope you make some winning trades and get back some of that stash.

3 years ago I'd heard of bitcoin but hadn't worked out how to buy any. I saw the price crash and decided to wait out before buying some. which I did. But nowhere near enough, it turns out!

Realize this is probably another troll-post but I'll still bite for the sake of telling my story. This is in my form of short-speak so I can get straight to the point:

So early/mid June 2011 I'm at my sister's wedding reception and I've got some coin. I'm talking to a friend about how Bitcoin hit $30 "earlier this week" and he's got double digits in Bitcoin himself so we've been joking about it's going crazy. This friend's wife overhears us and she says, "Yeah, my husband says that someday it'll hit $100, but it's falling now."

I say, "Well, honestly it doesn't matter what the price is now, it's got a fixed cap, so someday, maybe in a decade even, it'll hit $1000, we just have to hold it that long."

She says, "but it's falling right?". So I load up my crappy smartphone and show her the price on the only Android app available for Bitcoin pricing.

Oh shit, she's right, it just hit $12 and falling. Fuck. Buying opp!

I kiss my sister and congratulate my bro-in-law then head home early around 10pm (they partied till 6am I find out later). I hop on Gox, see the price, it's like $11. Buy about $500 worth, put in an order to sell at $18. Pass out drunk.

Wake up next morning, check app, it's $13. Well, damn, I think, volatility might have finally killed this thing. Check price history. Wait, it went to $18 after I passed out? Check Gox, I'll be damned, hit my sell order. Nearly doubled up my money in less than 6 hours. Got like ~$1k chilling in my account.

Price falls over several months. See this huge-ass buy wall on Gox for like $185k that slowly moves down. I keep putting in new measly buy orders just above it, they never get hit. Meanwhile, I've been mining like a badass (I brag to friends I run the biggest Bitcoin mining OP in the Midwest even though I know a guy in KC that's running 20+ GPUs). I have 6 GPUs going 24/7. Every single person I tell except my friend from the wedding calls me a 'fool'. Spent most of the summer of 2011 sleeping in 90 degree heat even with the A/C on. Utility bills of $200ish/month. Just losing money all over the fucking place. Frankly don't care, I know this is the real deal and I got a new computer with awesome GPUs I can resell, anyway.

November 2011 comes around, I figure "fuck it" and put in a buy order for all $1k at $2.01 above the buy wall at $2. Order goes through (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53949.msg644802#msg644802). Fuck yeah! Next day it hits $2.50. Buy wall disappeared. Bubble starting up again, I know what's fucking coming...

(In all honesty, I sold along with many others as the price increased throughout 2012 and especially 2013. I also bought FPGA miners and ASICs and generally supported the blockchain and community instead of focusing on just making coin and hoarding. As an example, I remember spending 7 BTC (5BTC worth of expedited shipping) on this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85432.msg992142#msg992142) and to be honest, even today it was worth every coin. Still have them hanging on the refrigerator, in fact. Bitcoin is best spent after you've made your profits instead of trying to pick highs and lows, IMHO. I got lucky, don't plan on Lady Luck.)

No no no.. please just lock most of what you just bought away and play with the rest.

In fact, if I've got it right Mat you've got about 60 BTC or so. So put 50 aside and play with 10. Then you still have the best chance of becoming a millionaire in dollar terms (BTC to $20k is perfectly feasible I think).

Three years ago I was thinking about the ideas around the financial system but had not yet heard of Bitcoin
If I had I probably would have bought some or start using it.
That said at 4 million difficulty I remember the days before it was up to billions.

I was on vacation watching in amazement on my mobile.  All I remember thinking was that I wish I could get a buy order to go through.  It was easily one of the most exciting moments in Bitcoin history.

3 years ago I heard of Bitcoin from a Kaspersky report that they were taking steps into protecting the digital wallets as there were many priv keys stolen, I thought wtf is that ? a week later I began mining with a single GPU and was producing about BTC0.1 a week lol and then after couple of months I took the time to gather some extra cash and bought BTC1100 at $10, a year later invested all of them in pre-ordering asics from Btcfpga and BFL, almost 10 months later bitcoin was ~ $100 and I was still waiting for the mining equip, requested refund, received refund in FIAT fast from BFL and 2-3 months later from Btcfpga. I took a step out of Bitcoin world after this for about 6 months didn't checked prices, etc then last December I entered mtgox saw the price $1000, I imagined how fun it would've been if I wouldn't had invested the BTC1100 in pre-orders...fucking stupid... waited for the price to come down and purchased my first bitcoins after 3 years at $450 in april, plus I recovered BTC2 from blockchain wallet from 3 years ago  ;D

3 years ago i did not even know bitcoin existed!

Long time lurker of the bitcoin forum here :)

I bought my first coins during the 2011 bear market, and its been a crazy ride since then. I remember opening my first account at mybitcoin, watching Bruce "Pedo" Wagner's bitcoin show, waiting for dwolla transfers to go through to mtgox, and panicking that the price dropped $2/coin! It was an exciting time back then and in a way I kind of miss it. I had no idea were it was going to go, but it seemed like the future.

I have 13.5 BTC.

I lined up a 60 BTC buy-in on the Feb crash to $400. I was really going all in with that as I had a dream that Bitcoin hit $380 and as you know, I believe in my dreams. I had one 60 BTC buy in tranche on Bitstamp at $391.37, or something like that. I missed out on the entire lot by less than $9. Phucking idiot!

Since then, I have taken a lot of fiat off the exchange, spent a lot of it, and lost a hefty sum when I resolved to hold out on a bad short trade until I broke even (my nerve broke well before the break even point finally came) and without having worked to earn more, and now Bitstamp won't let me get any fiat back into my account without subjecting me to an anal probe before hand. So I have what I have on the exchange and/or in Bitcoin and that will be it.

I have my Bitcoins in offline wallet for now. I am confident that we will be mostly heading north from here. As soon as I lose my confidence and start getting Bitcoin Fear proper, I shall post the fact on this forum.

Three years ago I was reading a forum where someone wrote about a digital currency which could be mined at home.
Didn't care about that, it was without any sense for me.
The guy now is one of the biggest owner of btc and I am one of the smallest.

3 years ago I think I passed through this forum but never joined, found out about btc from /g/ ....I was stuck in...well lets just say I was really far away.....when I heard about BTC back then I spent 2~3 days solid trying to buy it, but where I was there was no way to get money through.....next I looked I saw it had crashed back to $2, was so glad I did  not buy any......yeah yeah I know....right.

I clearly remember the old gox site.......

The "Aha Moment" for me after watching for 2 years after my libertarian techie friends introduced me to bitcoin was when it "survived" the "Goxxing"....Proof is in the pudding.  8)

What's your mother look like? I mean, 177 coins is a lot of money, but if she's in prime shape...

I can tell that you are a man of discerning tastes so for you, for a one time special offer of 150 BTC, I present to you, my dear old maw....


























http://media-s3.viva-images.com/vivastreet_gb/clad/b1/d/41612006/large/4.jpg?dt=e791237edab125b2091e185c99af2b29

great example of a "win/win" situation...

 :D

It worries me that reverse image search returns zero hits.

Ok ok ok....

U drive a hard bargain sir!

100 BTC and that is my final offer!

3 years ago.... damn. i found out about bitcoin in 2010, thought it was a cool idea and forgot about. then saw charts from 2011 and figured it was dead. didn't get around to taking it seriously until 2013....

Like many potential early adopters who never bothered to become actual early adopters, my story is filled with regret...

I heard about Bitcoin just after the 2011 bubble. At first I thought it was interesting, but I didn't really grasp the immense significance of it. I figured, hey, if I can print some money at home, why not? So I started GPU mining on-and-off on my PC, mostly when I wasn't using it. In a couple weeks of occasional mining, I made 0.5 BTC; this was August 2011 and the price was plummeting, so I quickly decided it wasn't worth the electricity and the trouble of turning it off when I wanted to watch a movie on my computer. So I stopped mining. Idiot.

Then I thought, never mind the chump change, this Bitcoin thing is kinda cool and there's a chance it will be worth a lot of money in the future. Why not buy a thousand dollars or so worth of BTC and keep it as a long-term speculative investment? I had a good feeling about Bitcoin and I wasn't turned off by the fact that it peaked at $30 and then crashed. I was this close to buying a couple hundred BTC at about $5. But then I discovered that the only real way of doing that is wiring money to Japan, and at the time that required that I physically go to the bank. I was waaaay too lazy for that. So I figured, meh, I'll do it some other time. And then I forgot about the whole thing until late 2012. Idiot.

Fast forward to December 2012. Price rising. I'm getting really excited. One cautious voice in my head says "$12 for a piece of virtual geek money is really expensive!". But it's drowned out by the other voice that says "This is going to be HUGE! Buy now!". But then that voice is drowned out by an even more powerful voice, that says "Still no good exchange in my area, have to wire money to Japan. Too lazy. Will definitely do it next week". And so I only really start buying on March 2013, at over $100. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that I finally did, but I could have done it so much earlier... Idiot.

Now, do you see the terrible, vicious irony of it all? All this time I was too lazy to go to the bank and wire money to Japan, it never really occurred to me that this is exactly the sort of banking difficulty Bitcoin could easily solve. If only I had realized that Bitcoin was the solution to the problem that was keeping me from buying Bitcoin, I would have DEFINITELY bought Bitcoin. Oh, cruel fate.

Initially I thought that Bitcoin is pretty cool, you can check my posting history if you'd like. I even mined some.
Then I got to know how pathologically anti-social this community is, and sociopaths like Bruce Wagner get a free roam until they do their thing. I only started to really realize how stupid this community really is after pirateat40s ponzi scheme. (I posted "Smells like a typical HYIP scam." right after his OP, which I'm sure every idiot who gave him money had to see.)
Other realisations came to view, the amount of coins owned by satoshi, a design flaw concerning a missing incentive to relay transactions after the next few block reward reductions and the difficulty adjustment controller. Only a fraction on people using Bitcoin know these things and you don't find out unless you look.

I could go on but I have better things to do. (like laughing at the next clusterfuck)
To present day I still think Bitcoin is stupid, I'm not saying that won't change but I can't see any reason on the horizon as yet.

This is just wonderful  :D

My story doesn't go as far back as 2011 and isn't very interesting either:

I found out about Bitcoin in late 2012 and as someone being interested in economics I started doing research. I decided that this is really amazing technology and I need to buy some. The price was 13$/BTC. I was just about to leave for a month long trip so I postponed my buying until my return. I came back to a price of 26$. Quickly bought in with an amount of money I was willing to lose totally (about 5% of my liquid net worth). Been hodling ever since. The end.

The coins owned by Satoshi aren't very relevant to the long-term health of Bitcoin.  The Fed's infinite supply is an infinitely worse problem with the U.S. Dollar.

Once mining is complete, very far down the road, transactions will include transaction fees.  Fees sufficient to ensure transactions are added to the blockchain will naturally be selected by clients.  At that point the transaction fees will become a floating market to be negotiated between clients and miners.  Not a real problem.

So you see some bad apples and you conclude the entire bunch of them are rotten? And the entire reason you're still here is to wait until something bad happens so you can point and laugh at the community? How ironic that you call us anti-social.

but why do you think it is so interesting? there are lots of things that i think are stupid, but i wouldn't waste time on those.

Three years and 2 months ago my $99 HD 5830 GPUs were mining 3 BTC a day each. I was so cheap that I only bought 8 cards.

About 3 years ago I had been mining for a couple of months with a single 6990.  I OC'd the crap out of that thing to get it up around 900 MH/s.  We lived in a pretty small house at the time and just that one miner raised the temperature of our house by at least 10 degrees.  By July/August, with temps outside in the upper 90s to the low hundreds and with no central air, it was pretty miserable.  My wife definitely deserves a lot of credit for putting up with that through the summer.

honestly Mucus, you are angry at bitcoin instead of yourself. like how could such a stupid thing make stupid people so much money while I, the only smart guy who understands how stupid this whole idea is, do not get to profit from my understanding. right?

Proudhon - Bitcoin is a bubble https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7TuFy0fcuw

Exactly the same... apart from the fact that after beginning to take it seriously (putting a very small amount of money in) for a few days in April 2013 I went on holiday and forgot about it until it was too late at Christmas!  :P

Heard about it in 2011 bubble. Registered here back then.Unfortunately I had utter crappy PC back then and couldn't mine and was pretty broke to buy anything significant. I'd probably buy 5-10 back then though but it was pretty hard to move money into it, I registered at Gox but since I couldn't send money with Paypal, I haven't bought anything. Few months later something reminded me about btc so I went to Gox and saw price at 3-4$. I thought this is dead and moved on.

Bought my first coins on March 27th, 2013. 7-8 of them for less than 1000$. Had an amazing run since then, some wonderful alts and fees trades that netted me hundreds of btc profit and I just need one step, one bubble or one great alt trade (or preferably both, lol) to really make it and never to have financial problems in my life again. Hopefully, that step will come and I won't make some mistake to cancel all good things I've done in last 14 months, but anyway it's by mile the best business thing that happened in my life.

I'm not angry, to the contrary now I'm quite amused. I mean GOX's missing gazillions and the willy bots activity basically matching that amount with a real, impossible to be fixed exploit as a scapegoat. Priceless! ;D

About a little over 3 years ago I was running TWO 6990s and NINE 6950s.

And yes it got hot in my home. My wife put up with it as well. Glad for that!

But he never shilled for a scamming mining rig vendor.

I had to put a <CR> in that quote.  Coming from an early adopter, there's a lot to read between the lines.

It's inspiring to read all this old folks!
I hope in three years we're all here and kicking! And that bitcoin surprises you as much as it has the three previous years :)

I first heard about btc in september or october of 2011. It was when news papers were writing about tor-network and the online drugstores there so I downloaded the browser and went to look what it's like. Saw some people talking about btc there and looked it up a bit. I was also trying to buy some back then but found it too difficult to get money in to an exchange and forgot about it. Saw some news headlines last years spring but didn't pay too much attention. Then at the fall of 2013 I saw a headline of that norwegian guy who bought an apartment from Oslo with money made by buying some 25$ worth of btc back in the day. Got angry that I didn't buy btc when I first heard about them and thought that better late than never and started buying in. I started buying in when price was around 200$ piece and bought all the way up. Now that price is around 650$ I'm little bit on the side of making profit but sure was quite miserable when it was somewhere in the low 400's this spring and I didn't have any money to buy me some more and just had to be sad and hope some day my losses are not going to be so bad. I truly hope that next few years are going to be amazing and I can come back and laugh at these posts :D Hope everything went nice and smooth for you, future me!

Finally I understand why proudhon is always bearish about bitcoin. That kind of experience is difficult to wipe off from memory

I pulled $10,000 out of my retirement account and put it into Bitcoin when MtGox re-opened at $17.

Then I spent the summer watching as the price went down...down...down

Lost most of it getting short squeezed at $3.50

Sold the rest at a loss at $12 just before the jump over $100.

I just held during the whole 2011 bubble cycle. I agreed with the then already widespread opinion on this forum that if Bitcoin catches on (a huge if at the time) there would be several bubbles on the way up. At the same time I knew I had no particular talent for picking tops and bottoms.

Proudhon, you forgot to mention the "Winter is Coming" of 2011/2012 when I watch the few BTC I had at the time drop from $15 to $2 and eevrybody including me was considering jumping ship.   I held onto my coins but but dumped at $5 for the quip profit - and got trampled by a bunch of bulls...  :D

Ouch man. I remember when Bitcoinica hit the market I was hearing tons of people having made a boatload on various short sales, but it seemed just too much like a bucket shop to me. Turned out I was wrong on what it was, but still right to not get too invested in it.

I think my worst trade was a huge sell I did somewhere in the hundreds of BTC on Bitfloor @ $9-10 after it fell from $15 (as pirate defaulted) in August 2012. Then the price slowly rose to $12 over several months from there before the crazy shenanigans in 2013. I've since learned that if an only-Bitcoin-based business fails, it's best to hold through the bad news and sell when it inevitably spikes. Both the pirate default and Silk Road going down were like the best things to have ever happened to Bitcoin for hoarders...


I *mostly* held, too, though I kind of doubled-down as it fell to ridiculous lows. $30 to $2 was quite ridiculous.

I've found I'm really good at picking bottoms, but not so great at picking tops. That's why I put in really low buys and sell slowly when the price is increasing. After my horrible Bitfloor trade, though, I've learned I need to sell very very slowly as the price is increasing, instead of thinking "Well, this is as high as it could possibly go!" and then finding out only months (sometimes days) later that I was very very mistaken.

I enjoyed something similar, but the loss wasn't so high.
Entered when the value was around 160$ and the April 2013 bubble was just exploded, sold at 80$ with a nice -50% in few hours.

Almost 3 years ago bitcoin price recovered from 6$ to 12$, and probably many thought the bear market was over.  ;)

3 years ago, give or take a couple days, I was sitting at a Father's Day BBQ, having just hurt my back a few hours before, watching in shock as the price of BTC plummeted while everyone around me was enjoying the day, blissfully oblivious. Over the next few days I went from disappointment to joy when I realised I was able to buy BTC at $2 again. Ah, the good old days :-)

I started mining CPU somewhere in 2010 and then GPU mining with a 5870 and 5770 end-of-2010.
During 3 months I mined 24/7 with the cards. In the beginning I was winning a block (50 BTC at the time) every 30 hours.
After the 3 months, stopped because it would take about 1 week to win a block and didn't feel like entering a pool (hehe).
Forgot about the whole thing up to the point where BTC > 20 USD. Saw the crash happening and really forgot after that.
When the price recovered I had already reinstalled my pc twice (reformat vista and then win 7). Wallet was gone but fortunately could get it back from my 2 rolling backups.
Finally got an account on Gox, sold some in the rise to 1000, cashed out (and received) quite a bit, bought some gold coins, a trip to Florida, and lost 25k€ in the Gox affair.

Yup, I was in the exact same boat. If only I had reversed the percentages of my portfolio for metals and bitcoin.

Three years from now in 2017 people will be wishing that they had bought bitcoin in 2014 when it was "only" $650!

Hmm, won't people buying bitcoin now be considered "buying into all the hype"?
Or maybe in a few years...

Nope :)

Nope.

Three years ago I had around 22 HD6870s (with lifetime warranties from XFX) mining away.  Of course, getting into Tier 5 with my electricity company somewhat ate those profits...

Anyway, ended up with several hundred BTC that I promptly sold for a pittance on the dead cat bounce from the first bubble ;p  I was left with some minor amount, around 30BTC or so, when the market fell to under 5 USD.

At least I killed every single one of those 6870s and XFX turned them all into HD7870s for me to eBay away.  May have made more profit there than from the BTC sales.

2011 really set off a strange series of events for me.

If my brother hadn't been living in Japan at the time of the Fukushima thing, I might still have been asleep to the world. Instead, I now had a vested interest in the situation, so I started to try to find some real news about what was going on.

That started a trip down the rabbit hole that inevitably led to bitcoin. I think by June of 2011 I was telling everyone I knew about how cool bitcoin was and how it would kill the banks and topple governments. I couldn't figure out why everyone just laughed or looked at me funny.  :-\

and then I found this place  ;D

Despite the bulls who like to say with certainty "not a chance", I'd answer: sure, it's possible. I can think of several scenarios in which Bitcoin, more or less, fails, and people who bought coins at $650 would be thought of as "buying into the hype".

There are still two good reasons to invest nonetheless: given the (admittedly) huge upside potential, the expected return might still be positive. And: I don't see most "failure" scenarios if one of them would happen as happening over night, so you could hope to get out in time before price approaches zero.

In other words: it's rational to buy at this price, in my opinion. Just don't delude yourself that it's "riskless" or "a sure thing".

the wisest of all words.

I hope there is a thread like this in 3 years and I can write: "I invested nearly everything I could afford to lose into this".

Hehe

So I just came across an old spreadsheet I used to track my orders on bitcoinica and calculate my zhoutong price...

These are the orders I had in on bitcoinica when it went bust with about $700 in it....

https://i.imgur.com/hbGBytbl.png (http://imgur.com/hbGBytb)

Granted they wouldn't all have filled in the end, but they were nervous times. I spent hours arguing with myself about whether I should buy more coins for more than $3 and how much I should hold back to buy on dips.

I was making a real play for the vladimir club hehe

Didn't turn out quite as I expected :)

Thanks for sharing ;)

You were very ahead of most, I am dreaming on what will be said in 3 years of time

That is amazing.  So I'm guessing you had (or still have) hundreds of coins from back in the day?

He could have a few thousands or 50 depending on if he hold strong or not

He has 0.005 BTC in his donation address ;D and 0 in 16oZHZ62XZsoLjfZDpw3gUZAbp4zWMAmR3 that is showed on his website

So what happened next, did you keep them to one side and hold, or did you recover what you could? I hope that it was the former.

Oh, basically this. I saw it getting mentioned in some news, but ignored it as it was linked to criminal activities, didnt research further. Since then a feeling of bitterness conquers my mind a lot throught the day. Hopefully Bitcoin goes to 100K a coin during the next 10 years or I will be too old to enjoy the money fully.  :'(

Really interesting thread.

Everyone can look back in hindsight and say 'I should have done that' but to get into something like bitcoin so early on meant you would have had to navigate some uncharted waters. And it also meant you had to have some intelligent 'influencers' or defining experiences. Or just be really switched on, Roger Ver style. Kudos to everyone who did and is still here.

I've really found it an enjoyable trip down the rabbit hole. For me, there was no more influential experience than losing a pretty penny during the financial crisis. Before that it was follow the herd investing even when I didn't understand what I was doing (stocks/ options etc). But it led me to educating myself and in about feb of 13 to bitcoin.

I have an bad feeling we will be re-testing the $360..  HODL.. remember 2011-2012.

2011 was a one time event. It would be very unlikely to see another drop followed by a long sustained decline again. The bubble of 2011 seriously shook confidence in bitcoin. It took a year and a half to recover. That bubble, and the two in 2013 have all tempered the market. Each new raise and drop will have that history and the inevitable rebound to consider. Of course, it's on a logarithmic scale... so it's still pretty turbulent.

Indeed. Pump and dump or ponzi schemes never recover so a tremendous amount of confidence was gained by people around the world when the price of Bitcoin recovered and beat the ATH. Every time this cycle is repeated base trust get's higher. It's kind of silly, as everyone that truly gets Bitcoin knows it's not a ponzi scheme, but that's what it is.

Share your story.
This was written the night before Gox was due to finally re-open:

When the Hot Deadly Lava from MtGox is Inches from Your Feet how Will YOU React?

"In ancient Pompeii many people were needlessly killed the day their fine city was flooded by the local volcano named Mt. Vesuvius.
Later today, many good people could lose a lot of money when our fine community is flooded  by the local volcano named Mt Gox.  ::)

Question: What really caused all those needless deaths in Pompeii?
Answer: People panicked.

The open gates of the city got blocked by a massive stampede of terrified people. The first dozen, or so, in front wanted to leave but their legs were pinned under 5 or 10 other people, who were about to die because they were also trapped under the people behind them.

Question: What can we learn from about all the needless deaths in Pompeii?" ...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=19880.0

There has been a lot of market manipulation but it is actually players making moves and the market volatility has not prevent the price to go up every year

3 years from now, a much bigger group of members will be talking about the huge Rally in late 2014!

I really hope so, I'm holding and won't sell even if we hit single digits.

Maybe it can take some months, maybe an year, but bitcoin will surely hit a new ATH sooner or later, just hold and wait for it.

We can never say 'surely' as there will always be risks in Bitcoin and there will be no guarenteed result otherwise it would of already been adopted by many of the rich people in the world. It's a experiment which I think will pay off if people can hold and trade at the same time otherwise if too many hold and dont trade with it it becomes worthless.

yes everyone should be active in trading with a portion of their bitcoin stash, it provides liquidity and helps discover the real market price, otherwise Bitcoin becomes liable to market manipulation which we've seen so many times.

thats a really nice thought ! i also have a feeling, that we will see new all time highs this year.

I bought this dip (~2.5 usd per coin) for my first real btc investment and have never looked back. Now only if I would have pulled the trigger with $50k...

3 years ago I bought 5 6970s and 2 6990s to mine bitcoins and thought I was da shitz...
Now, compared to those huge mining outfits I am just chickenshitz.

But those were good times baby seriously good times!

Yeah but 3 years ago those 7 cards made more BTC per day than what $500K can buy today :P  Plus you could have played WoW or XCom on them :P

Ahh the power of hindsight - I wouldn't have even mined, I would have stockpiled at $2.

I wish I was here three years ago, holding bitcoins since now, but probably I was playing poker.

I'm sorry, 3 years ago I would not join here.
It will only let me regret.

That was a great amount of hashpower for the time, how many coins did you mine with such hardware?
I suppose you have sold some of them, or have you holded hard?

Well... about 2 years ago i was looking for a good VPN that had a anon minded log retention policy.. i came across one accepting bitcoins, bought some using a moneygram payment, was super nervous that i was going to get scammed.. but sure enough i got my bitcoins. I paid around $7 each for them.. then started mining with two 6950s, been heating my house in the winter ever since.

This newbie enjoyed the stories guys/girls. Best read so far on this forum for me +1

Those times will be recorded in history

It's easy to get carried away with the doom and gloom when the price dips. Re-reading old posts with the same sentiment when the price was one tenth of today usually helps. (Especially with the then-newbies going "should I perhaps wait a bit before I buy..?" when the price was $50 or something which you'd do anything to buy for a year and a half later).

These stories would be the stuff of legends a few years down. So glad I'm going to be part of it and have my own stories to tell other wide eyed newbies in a few years time.

"Look guys we been through this before. Just buy and hold. $5000 a bitcoin is a steal right now"

I so look forward to saying that in the near future ;)

 
3 years ago, I needed to transfer money without fees between France and UK.
I heard about Bitcoin from some obscure geek blog or news.
I came here. Everyone was "talking Chinese to me".
Gave me headache. I gave up.

Early 2013, big spike. A lot of news.
I look back and understand that I could've been millionaire.
Learn from my mistake : read the forum everyday and invest 100% of my FIAT to BTC/cryptos since.

Ah 2011..them was the days...

No newbs or crappy shitcoins...proudhon was there with his negative posts (which turned out to be right)...but I digress...

I recall mining 0.5BTC/day on 1 GPU..or was it 2..I dont remember...though it was fun times watching BTC price bounce around between $5 & $30..

Take me back in time & I'd make a fortune lol

Good move superresistant!


It will happen in late 2014 or 2015 but the new big rally will happen soon enough and libertarians will have the value to make their ideas known