When and how did you find out about Bitcoin?

[N12]

I’ve read about it on an imageboard in February and was amazed how I could’ve missed this for two whole years.

[1714176591]

1714176591

[1714176591]

1714176591

[w128]

I’ve read about it on an imageboard in February and was amazed how I could’ve missed this for two whole years.

Reddit, last week.

I feel the same way.

I was actually looking for something like this for a long time, spending lots of time in various distributed computing projects and benchmarking/performance circles even dabbling in creative uses of OpenCL. I somehow missed on Bitcoin entirely.

I actually went back to see if I'd simply overlooked it in one of the feeds I regularly consume.

Nope.

Apparently, bitcoin discussion was pretty tightly confined. I think part of the problem is/was that a lot of people have an irrational hatred for it. In some forums, the mere mention is grounds for having your posts mocked or deleted prior to being banned.

It's fine to have the same daily, circular arguments around Intel/AMD, which Linux distribution is the most elite or spend hundreds of dollars on completely ridiculous liquid nitrogen overclocking experiments that produce nothing beyond bragging rights but talk about bitcoin and mining are completely unacceptable.

[mewantsbitcoins]

I learned about it when I was looking for a way to donate to Julian and Wikileaks.

[kjj]

Slashdot.  Terribly written story about 2 weeks ago.  Apparently I had missed the previous story a couple of months prior.  If I had seen it earlier I'd be fake-rich now.

[PLATO]

The Hidden Wiki in January, which was mentioned on The Rogan Boards

[N12]

Apparently, bitcoin discussion was pretty tightly confined. I think part of the problem is/was that a lot of people have an irrational hatred for it. In some forums, the mere mention is grounds for having your posts mocked or deleted prior to being banned.

I’ve experienced the exact same everytime I brought up Bitcoin myself. I don’t understand where all the hate comes from … When I first heard about Bitcoin, I thought of BitTorrent technology as money system and that seemed very positive to me, all technical details aside. Searching on Google for forum discussions showed pretty much the same thing everywhere. How come this happens?

Are people really offended by alternatives because they are so deeply entrenched in this system?

Ironically, later on, people complain about early adopters being rewarded – the same early adopters who were punished for trying to introduce people to Bitcoin.

[w128]

Slashdot.  Terribly written story about 2 weeks ago.  Apparently I had missed the previous story a couple of months prior.  If I had seen it earlier I'd be fake-rich now.

Fake-rich beats "not any kind of rich" =)

I'm actually more bothered by correctly predicting the rise or fall of a number of tech stocks like this one, this one, or this one and having cash to invest but never having the confidence to actually jump in than missing the boat on bitcoin.

[kinghajj]

I read about it in late March, probably on reddit. First I mined with my GTX 260, but soon upgraded to a 5870 and have been mining with it as much as possible (only stopping when either a damn pool or Comcrap goes down). I wish I had started with even my 260 in Feb 2010 when I got it, I would have so many more Bitcoin by now! Oh, well, some is better than none, right?

[w128]

Apparently, bitcoin discussion was pretty tightly confined. I think part of the problem is/was that a lot of people have an irrational hatred for it. In some forums, the mere mention is grounds for having your posts mocked or deleted prior to being banned.

I’ve experienced the exact same everytime I brought up Bitcoin myself. I don’t understand where all the hate comes from … When I first heard about Bitcoin, I thought of BitTorrent technology as money system and that seemed very positive to me, all technical details aside. Searching on Google for forum discussions showed pretty much the same thing everywhere. How come this happens?

Are people really offended by alternatives because they are so deeply entrenched in this system?

Ironically, later on, people complain about early adopters being rewarded – the same early adopters who were punished for trying to introduce people to Bitcoin.

I think It's a combination of many things with plain old misunderstanding and groupthink probably being the biggest contributors in the past. Right now there's probably a growing dose of jealousy and regret mixed in there too.

At some point in the future when the concept has been broken down into spoon-feedable chunks and repeated through enough sources you'll be able to go back to the same places and have by any number of Google-powered experts tell you just how much you don't know.

Last but not least there's the bitchiness of Internet culture in general. Being positive and genuine about anything is cause for ridicule while jaded sarcasm is normal.

[extracool]

the third week of April from @RKHilbertSpace on twitter.

[NicholasBell]

One of my friends must have seen the slashdot article in February. I dismissed it for a week because he didn't describe it thoroughly (I'm pretty sure I was under the impression that it was centralized and that mining was a way of cheating the system, based on his initial description). Eventually, he posted a blog post that was much more descriptive and piqued my interest. I spent an entire day reading about it and decided to get into it. Started mining a bit. Got lucky and bought 40 of them at nearly their lowest price since I was introduced to it (about 70 cents each). Holding most of it because of ridiculous deflation but trying to use it where convenient.

tl;dr: irl friend in February.

[Littleshop]

One of my friends must have seen the slashdot article in February. I dismissed it for a week because he didn't describe it thoroughly (I'm pretty sure I was under the impression that it was centralized and that mining was a way of cheating the system, based on his initial description). Eventually, he posted a blog post that was much more descriptive and piqued my interest. I spent an entire day reading about it and decided to get into it. Started mining a bit. Got lucky and bought 40 of them at nearly their lowest price since I was introduced to it (about 70 cents each). Holding most of it because of ridiculous deflation but trying to use it where convenient.

tl;dr: irl friend in February.

The slashdot article in Feb for me, I ordered my first Radeon 5830 that week. 

[proudhon]

Bad Philosophy podcast.  Listed to it on April 19th.  Was mining the next day.

[Gilboa]

I saw posts about it on an imageboard at first but never looked into it. It was an article on lifehacker that finally peeked my interest in Bitcoin.

[MoonShadow]

April 2010 slashdot article.

[MemoryDealers]

I heard about it on Free Talk Live around Dec of 2010.  (www.freetalklive.com)
I thought it was a great idea when I heard about it,  but was disappointed when it looked like almost no one was using them.
Then when I heard about the federal poker ban,  I knew that bitcoins had found their calling.
(Actually one of their many callings)

I've hardly been able to sleep since!

[billyjoeallen]

Besides Satoshi, There is another shadowy internet figure called Mencius Moldbug who writes the subversive reactionary blog Unqualified Reservations. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/
He suggested buying a few hundred bitcoins months ago. Damn, I wish I had.

[Indemnified]

A few weeks ago on the Urban Survival Daily News Update

                   http://urbansurvival.com/week.htm
                 

[error]

I have long since forgotten where I heard about Bitcoin.

[spenvo]

I came in from the Security Now podcast and immediately shared Steve's enthusiasm.  His reaction to Bitcoin really encapsulated the way so many geeks feel about the topic:  total awesomeness.

twit.tv/sn287

[Timo Y]

halfbakery.com  June 2010

[Seraphim401]

Two months ago while reading reviews on  http://www.guru3d.com/.
I noticed an ad from compute4cash, saying they would pay me for doing computations with my gpu.
I thought that was awesome,but after about 2 weeks I emailed them asking what the hell it is my gpu's were working on.
They replied:Bitcoins. I then googled bitcoin,the rest is history.
Btw I dumped compute4cash like a brick!

[FreeMoney]

Two months ago while reading reviews on  http://www.guru3d.com/.
I noticed an ad from compute4cash, saying they would pay me for doing computations with my gpu.
I thought that was awesome,but after about 2 weeks I emailed them asking what the hell it is my gpu's were working on.
They replied:Bitcoins. I then googled bitcoin,the rest is history.
Btw I dumped compute4cash like a brick!

Haha, I thought they were a tad sleazy, but it's nice that they told you straight up.

[darvil]

security now was how I found out about it.

I actually had a 5870 so I ran it for a while and generated 2 blocks.  But since the software was crashing my PC, I stopped running the software.  Sucky mistake on my part as I figured out later it was FF that was an issue.

Anyway I can't complain too much as I am mining quite heavily these days.

[bitdragon]

December 31st 2010-
reading about EFF which seemed like a well to do organization and stumbled upon the donate page-
Along with a bitcoin address and a nice little link : learn more-

I have been learning daily ever since.

[jerfelix]

I had seen several articles on Slashdot, and sort of ignored them.  It sounded to me like a geek game - mining sounded like geeks racing to see who could win the race and capture the worthless coinage as a prize.  It vaguely sounded like Pokemon cards of a decade ago, where people who had them talked about how you had to get them because they were only going up in value.

A couple of weeks ago, my son (age 21) said "have you heard about bitcoins?  You have to check them out."
I've learned that when my son says something like that, it's worth my time to investigate.

(He's a big reddit fan, so that's probably where he heard of it.)

Since then I've told at least twelve people, who tend to look to me to spot early trends, and then often laugh at me when I say something is going to be big.  (one guys says "I still remember you describing Twitter to me years ago, and I thought there was NO WAY this would catch on, so now I listen to you.")

[db]

I was building a similar - but not at all as good - system in the beginning of 2010 and searched for competition.

[Alex Beckenham]

April 2010 slashdot article.

I did a search and the earliest I could find on there was July 2010.

Do you have a link?

[robmon]

Max Keiser mentioned Bitcoin in late december 2010.

[Batouzo]

Buddy shown it to me, but actually I think long ago bitcoin was mentioned in few security networks (anon networks) like the anonymous money (btw, which it is NOT)

[John Tobey]

Ran Prieur's blog, April 22, 2011.  http://john-edwin-tobey.org/cgi-bin/ran/2011-04-23T05:13:26/ranprieur.com/index.html

BTC was around $0.80.  I told my wife not to expect much of me for the next week.  A few days later, I had decided to invest in BTC, which were then around $1.30.  I scrambled to find a way to transfer money, and by the time I had my first non-faucet coins, they were $3.20.

Now I refer to BTC as "DBC" for "damn bitcoins" but am still not much use around the house.

[FreeMoney]

Ran Prieur's blog, April 22, 2011.  http://john-edwin-tobey.org/cgi-bin/ran/2011-04-23T05:13:26/ranprieur.com/index.html

BTC was around $0.80.  I told my wife not to expect much of me for the next week.  A few days later, I had decided to invest in BTC, which were then around $1.30.  I scrambled to find a way to transfer money, and by the time I had my first non-faucet coins, they were $3.20.

Now I refer to BTC as "DBC" for "damn bitcoins" but am still not much use around the house.

It's always nice to hear that other people are as distracted over it as I was.

Don't feel too bad. I bought $15 worth asap and before I got a bigger chunk they'd gone up 100%. I think everyone always wishes they'd gotten more and earlier at this point. Hopefully we'll always feel that way.

[N12]

Don't feel too bad. I bought $15 worth asap and before I got a bigger chunk they'd gone up 100%. I think everyone always wishes they'd gotten more and earlier at this point. Hopefully we'll always feel that way.

I will probably never have 0.1% of the money supply. Feels bad.

DBC indeed.

[John Tobey]

Don't feel too bad. I bought $15 worth asap and before I got a bigger chunk they'd gone up 100%. I think everyone always wishes they'd gotten more and earlier at this point. Hopefully we'll always feel that way.

The price jumps are bad enough, but while I'm buying them, I have to keep persuading my wife I'm not crazy.  Hence, DBC.

[FreeMoney]

Don't feel too bad. I bought $15 worth asap and before I got a bigger chunk they'd gone up 100%. I think everyone always wishes they'd gotten more and earlier at this point. Hopefully we'll always feel that way.

I have to keep persuading my wife I'm not crazy.  Hence, DBC.

I don't even try for "not crazy" I'm working on "not too crazy".

[Alex Beckenham]

I will probably never have 0.1% of the money supply. Feels bad.

What % of the USD supply do you have?

[Crs]

slashdot. about 10 days ago.

[Gabriel Beal]

I heard about it via the mmorpg-lite game minethings.com about three weeks ago. You can buy their in-game currency for bitcoin. I spent the following week researching it and trying to get my hands on some coins. I had some trouble (it was right when paypal stopped being an option) and decided starting a bitcoin-only business might actually be the best way to acquire the currency and would, in a very small way, help promote adoption of the currency I'd grown to love.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

I know I'm going to regret subscribing to this thread.

But late February 2011, it was mentioned on LW that SIAI accepts Bitcoin donations.

At first I thought, "hm, Bitcoin, is that a new payment processor?". Nothing has prepared me to what I was about to find out .

[luv2drnkbr]

My "join" date on these forums pretty much tells my reason for finding out about them.  I'm a poker player in the USA...

[AbeSkray]

I found out about Bitcoin from the March 2011 Slashdot post about Mike Hearn's release of BitcoinJ. I've been enthralled ever since!

[airdata]

I found out a few weeks ago, but didn't read too much into it. 

Then I came upon some message board discussions last week and decided to test the waters.
I realize that for the mots part I've missed the boat.

It's still amazing to me to think of all of the people who got in early who have rediculous 5-6 x 5870 set up's on a single system and are crunching huge numbers.

Wish I would have found out several months ago

[MoonShadow]

I found out a few weeks ago, but didn't read too much into it. 

Then I came upon some message board discussions last week and decided to test the waters.
I realize that for the mots part I've missed the boat.

It's still amazing to me to think of all of the people who got in early who have rediculous 5-6 x 5870 set up's on a single system and are crunching huge numbers.

Wish I would have found out several months ago

Don't wish too much.  I've been here over a year, and I have never mined a block.  If everyone mined, this wouldn't work.

[abyssobenthonic]

Jerry Brito's piece on Time's Techland blog (was that only a little more than a month ago?)

[no_alone]

http://sc2.nibbits.com/
a week ago

[WakiMiko]

I created it in January 2009

[theymos]

I found it on 4chan around February 2010. The post was someone complaining about how long it was taking to download blocks.

I've always been interested in decentralized systems such as BitTorrent, Tor, and Freenet, so I was immediately interested.

[Horkabork]

I ran out of drugs, so I googled, "best way to launder money and pay for illegal things over the internet."

[riX]

I found Satoshis whitepaper while googling for something like "encrypted money" in January 2010. I had been thinking about how to create unforgeable money for some time, but probably never would have come up with the blockchain solution.

[Lynzoi]

I first heard about it on Wikipedia a long time ago, probably when I was looking up Liberty Dollars or something. I didn't pay any attention to it, it wasn't worth anything. When it was worth $1 my friend got into it, and I bought $40 of Bitcoins from him. Should have bought A LOT more.