Questions to BTC Holders 2011 And Before

[Onuohakk]

I am very much interested in the questions the OP has just asked and I must say the reply answers are quite satisfactory.
But still I would like to know from bitcoiners back in 2011 how is bitcoin then and bitcoin now?

[pussyhunter6969]

On MtGox, you could deposit money via Paypal and credit card. After they added bank transfers, Liberty reserve and Dwolla. After the Liberty Reserve scandal, they removed it and replaced with Paxum(?) and then Okpay.
I had given bitcoins to users on a forum just as a Christmas gift. I don't see them anymore so they must be rich now.

(Electrum came in 2013)

electrum was the 1st seed based wallet i was so happy that i didn't had to sync bitcoin core

[jerry0]

Okay so those ppl that got btc around that time and before... was many of you treating it like it was nothing?  Thus 100 dollars worth of btc was 100 btc.  Thus ppl would send 500 btc like it was nothing back then right?

[vapourminer]

1.  Was it easy to buy btc?  How did one that in the US?  Was it through the exchanges and which ones?  Mount Gox i believe was most popular one?  You had to connect your us bank account to it right?  Or did ppl buy it through certain sites and pay via paypal or underground sites or things like that?

i mined mine on gpus in 2011 after a tech forum mentioned it.

2.  Where did you store your btc back then?

core wallet.

3.  Was it easy to acquire btc free back then or something? 

i remember getting some btc from a faucet, maybe the one gavin set up but not sure. i used the faucet to test how receive worked in the core wallet.

to sell it to dollars i xfered coin to mtgox, them used dwolla to send to my bank. dont recall exactly what the steps were, but mainly i remember dwolla wanted your bank account routing number and what your account on gox was.

[Nhebu]

I will answer your question based on facts.
1. I bought and still buying bitcoins at exchange. The most popular exchange in cryptocurrency is binance.
2. I store my bitcoin at my wallet. I used blockchain info or ledger in order to secure my bitcoin. Electrum is the common wallet that can store bitcoin.
I am gladly to say that I did not reach the 2011 because if I encounter btc when it devaluated, I don`t urge to earn money from here.

[Nhor1011]

 I didn't buy that time and i really missed it. I only collected small amount of satoshi from different faucets. But i think even now that bitcoin is too valuable, we can still buy in exchange easily if we have money but the profit is not like what you get from 2011.

[elisabetheva]

Actually the introduction of bitcoin was quite long and was introduced by a friend, but at that time there was no interest because most of the results were only for buying online games vouchers. which I saw like that at that time. so for me it is only for those who like online games that need bitcoin. clearly the development continues to change by being able to exchange with others.
now feel loss also if you know bitcoin can produce spectacular.

[ratonoklo]

I think cryptoinvestments are the most dangerous but the most profitable from the other side. I was looking for that and found something perspective in Credits Blockchain project. But pls don't think that it's an dirty adv. or something like that, cmon. I spent a lot of time reading about Credits and found some features

[BitHodler]

I didn't buy that time and i really missed it. I only collected small amount of satoshi from different faucets. But i think even now that bitcoin is too valuable, we can still buy in exchange easily if we have money but the profit is not like what you get from 2011.

Even with a high degree of profit potential, way more people lose money than make money-- there is no shortage of altcoins with massive potential upside, but where are you? You probably end up buying the top.

People need to stop focusing on making tons of profit in a short period of time. If you care less about profits you'll make more because you're less likely to dump whenever there is a 20% surge.

If you believe in a project, hold it firmly and stop looking at its price so frequently. I know it's hard to do in the crypto world, but this is the way to go. Those who keep refreshing charts are mostly the losers.

[JayJuanGee]

I heard about btc in 2011 when someone told me about it online and they said it would be big.  I looked at it for a bit and then thought this seems stupid as its like a joke.  I believe price at the time was 10 dollars or so.  But i believe it was 1 dollar earlier in the year etc.  I never thought about buying it because it just seemed fake to me etc.


Now for those of you who bought or owned btc in 2011 and before...



1.  Was it easy to buy btc?  How did one that in the US?  Was it through the exchanges and which ones?  Mount Gox i believe was most popular one?  You had to connect your us bank account to it right?  Or did ppl buy it through certain sites and pay via paypal or underground sites or things like that?


2.  Where did you store your btc back then?  Was it in exchanges?  Did most do that?  I asked and someone mentioned electrum came out in late 2011 or so.  So did a small percentage kept in in wallets like that?  What other wallets like electrum existed back then?  What about ppl that got btc in 2009 or 2010?  Where they did they store it?  Were there very few that bought like 1k or 10k btc since price of it back then i heard was like 1 cent or so?  I mean, there is no harm in buying that if well its one cent.  And if so, where did they store it?


3.  Was it easy to acquire btc free back then or something?  Like were people giving them out as bonuses or for doing things etc?  The other thing is back then, were there any btc online casinos or sportsbooks like there is now or there was none around 2011 and before.  I assume there were none?  And was btc used as a form of payment much or not?  If so, like for what type of things?  Like imagine someone wants a website built and someone was willing to do the job... did those ppl offer btc or accept btc as oppose to say cash or paypal or bank transfer?  Did you or many point treated btc like it was nothing?  Like oh heres 100 btc, thats 1 dollar so nothing?

At first, when I saw this thread, I thought that you (author of OP) had some kind of camaraderie with folks who bought 2011 or earlier, but looks like your only camaraderie is that you found out about BTC in 2011, but you did not buy at that time.  

So you asked the question for those who bought then and the hoops they may have jumped through, but you did not really disclose your own buying story in order to compare/contrast.

In other words, it is like you are exploring 2011 because you are fantasizing about whether you had made the right choice by not buying then and you are kind of second guessing yourself, perhaps.

I, personally, believe that it is best to act in the here and now, but of course there could be some reasons to explore the topic further in order to perhaps learn how to better act in the here and now, rather than beating oneself over the past.

Perhaps if you explained when you bought then there could be some compare and contrast, and also learning and understanding of the subject matter a bit better.

My personal buying started in 2013, so I don't really fit the target audience for this thread, but I did not really know what bitcoin was before 2013  (besides having had heard the name, bitcoin).   So mostly when I first looked into bitcoin in 2013, I decided to start a buying plan and also to research further into bitcoin while I was investing into it... but also I was very eager to invest some money at that time, too, which could be kind of contrasted from earlier parts of my life where I had already felt that I was investing enough money into other projects... so I did not feel motivated to add new investments, as contrasted to the time when I found out about bitcoin

[Broly46]

Got to know bitcoin back in 2011, I think it was some anime site, but I was too poor to afford any donation alike, back then I thought bitcoin was a gift card for donation and not even knowing what is mining and wallet and also knowing you can hold bitcoin just like a money, and not knowing who create it too, then I didn’t pay attention to it at all, but it catch my attention again in 2013, when everyone are crazy about mining with computer, but it’s not profitable and all, and I slowly following the price on a daily basic just like I did with stock market, then finally get into the scene in late 2016, and you can’t easily trust the internet in the earlier 2011, there is too much of internet scam, thieve, credit card fraud, hacking, etc, and bitcoin just look as ridiculously vaporware in that day, who would have want to get duped when it’s so obvious.

[Glutius]

This forum is remarkable because you can go back in time and find those old topics that were created in 2011-2013. At this time, only the birth of cryptocurrency. Read what people wrote then. It's interesting as an action movie.

[Nellayar]

I'm one of those who got involved in Bitcoin back then. It was the very beginning and Bitcoin wasn't nearly so popular and known as it's now. The price was relatively high for my income I had then but I decided to give it a try and didn't regret.
Opportunities for storing Bitcoin were very limited and I remember that I kept mine on blockchain wallet. It was much harder then from my point of view so I think todays' Bitcoin users are spoiled.

Many noobs are spoiled! Back when it was started, many things are hard to believe. In fact, even the person that shared this opportunity to me said that bitcoin is nothing during 2013 something. But when it sparked, almost all people began to get some interests in bitcoin. And many things are also change right when it was created. Unfortunately, noobs were spoiled because it was not hard to store btc as your time.

[jerry0]

Well I mentioned i heard about btc in 2011.  It was probably mid 2011.  The price was around 10-30 dollars at the max around that time right?  Now i mentioned i looked at it and thought that is stupid.  To me it just felt like buying worthless coins or cards except it just doesn't make sense since i thought it was useless.


But im curious if i had bought it, how much i would have bought.  I mean say it was $10 a coin.  I mean i probably couldn't imagine myself buying 1k usd worth which would be 100 btc.  I can't see myself spending more than 100 dollars on it.  Now if it was 1 dollar each, yea im probably going to buy 100 of it at least. 


But here are other issues.  Say i bought it... where would be the most likely place i keep my btc at?  I know mount gox was the most popular exchange around then.  But when it got hacked, where did ppl then buy btc after that time?  I believe prehack, almost everyone bought btc there?  So after the hack, where did they buy it at such as what exchange?  Now the other thing im curious would be is where did ppl keep their btc then?  Were paper wallets a thing back in 2011?  Did most ppl keep it in bitcoin core which i heard is the oldest btc wallet there is?  I read that you need to download the entire block.  So that is what ppl did?  Also it had a 12 word phrase like electrum right where you could restore the btc in case something happen to your wallet or computer?  I ask this because back then, i did not have any internet security at all on my laptop etc. 


So i thought let say i did bought btc back then.  Would it be good chance i sold it when it hit over 1k a few years later?  I mean if i had say 100 btc, and its over 1k a btc... thats 1 million dollars.  I would have a tough time thinking of not selling any. 


The other thing is how would i know my btc would been safe the entire time?  Did those who held btc in their bitcoin core wallets did lot of security for their wallets?  So if you visited bad sites or downloaded trojan/malware, good chance your bitcoin core wallet could get hacked back then?


So i'm curious because had i bought btc back then, well couldn't many things have happened?  Like those ppl who have btc in a hard drive and either threw it away or don't remember their password etc.  I mean surely tons of ppl did that right since well it was not worth much?


Im curious if btc was getting tossed around like it was nothing.  Like did ppl treat 100 btc like nothing back then when buying/selling things?

[jerry0]

Can someone tell me what is the price of btc in 2011 in terms of every month?  I cannot find this on coinmarketcap as it doesn't go back that far.


Also where did majority of ppl keep their btc at the time?  Is it bitcoin core wallet where you had to download whole blockchain?  Was it basically that or mount gox?  What about paper wallets?  Or there wasn't those back then?

[JayJuanGee]

Can someone tell me what is the price of btc in 2011 in terms of every month?  I cannot find this on coinmarketcap as it doesn't go back that far.


Also where did majority of ppl keep their btc at the time?  Is it bitcoin core wallet where you had to download whole blockchain?  Was it basically that or mount gox?  What about paper wallets?  Or there wasn't those back then?

Bitcoincharts.com is a pretty good website for looking back at some historical data regarding trading price on various exchanges, and volume, too.

You can customize your data or period of time, but you have to go exchange by exchange to see how far back the history goes for each exchange that might be listed in the pulldown chart, there.

https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg2zig6-hourzczsg2011-01-20zeg2011-12-22ztgMzm1g10zm2g25zv

I did not get into bitcoin until late 2013, so I can't really answer your wallet questions from any kind of personal experience.

[vapourminer]

Can someone tell me what is the price of btc in 2011 in terms of every month?  I cannot find this on coinmarketcap as it doesn't go back that far.

https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Bitcoin_history#Bitcoin_in_2011

basically when i started in mid 2011 it was around $10. then ~$30 at some point, then crashed down to $2 in early 2012 iirc. the link will have the real info.

Also where did majority of ppl keep their btc at the time?  Is it bitcoin core wallet where you had to download whole blockchain?  Was it basically that or mount gox?  What about paper wallets?  Or there wasn't those back then?

always used official core wallet (and actually still run it with the same wallet.dat from 2011 even now), with the full blockchain download. and moved coins to paper wallets later on as i got comfortable with them. never trusted any 3rd party wallets then, and especially not cloud based ones.

mtgox was just an on/off ramp for me. i didnt really buy, sell or trade; i mined most of the btc i had.

[jerry0]

Well back then i was not good at security at all for computer.  For example i would put very silly passwords.  Would you say there is a good chance that a person with not much computer security would have issues if they kept their btc in the official core wallet back then?  It also has that 12 word phrase similar to electrum right?


Im wondering had i bought btc in 2011, first off where would i keep it.  Would you say most likely it would been in the official core wallet as oppose to an exchange? 


Also if you visited streaming sites back then, did you risk your official core wallet getting virus and then your wallet getting hacked etc?  Were there cases of like that back then?  Or not because no one cared about it etc?


Does anyone know where i can find the full price chart of btc for 2012 and before?  I want to know for 2011 the entire year because that is when i first heard of it. 


Also to those of you who heard of btc around that time and did not buy any of it back then, do you all regret it?  I always think about it but then a part of me thinks... what if i sold it for some profit when it went up?  Or what if my coins were in my wallet and it getting hacked?  Or say i kept it in exchange and then the hack.  Back then i didn't think about computer security.

[Kakmakr]

Also remember Gavin Andresen's faucet were also giving between 1 to 5 bitcoins to people for free back then, so some people were just playing around with that, because you could not buy a lot of things online with Bitcoin in those days.

People also did a lot of person to person trading with "trusted" individuals, because it was still basically illegal to use Bitcoin as a currency. Then https://localbitcoins.com a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange was established in 2012 and people started to do more person to person trades. 

[simpleIPaddress]

2011 And Before:

tacotime on April 14, 2013, 12:31:47 AM

I think the likeliest scenario is that hundreds of people downloaded and ran the client then, got a bunch of blocks that were at the time useless because they were valueless, then deleted their client.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175996.msg1834484#msg1834484

There are lots of 'shalecoins' https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5134441.0, coins with no owner.