What got you hooked on Bitcoin?

[PeteChad]

I'm just curious, what is your reason for using Bitcoin? Personally, I fell in love with BTC almost a year ago because I saw great possibilities for investment opportunites and portfolio diversification. I also like the idea of a decentralized currency as it allows for more economic freedom without government interference.

With Bitcoin, anything is possible! 

[1714890999]

1714890999

[1714890999]

1714890999

[1714890999]

1714890999

[kjlimo]

I'm just curious, what is your reason for using Bitcoin? Personally, I fell in love with BTC almost a year ago because I saw great possibilities for investment opportunites and portfolio diversification. I also like the idea of a decentralized currency as it allows for more economic freedom without government interference.

With Bitcoin, anything is possible! 

Here's my timeline:

1) run your computer, get free money.... Awesome, I'll do that and sell these worthless "bitcoins" to people who think they are worth money.

2) a few months later, I think they are worth money

3) now I'm trying to get every business to use them

4) hope for all the above to make me a millionaire

5) really believe in the technology and try to promote where best applicable.

6) ASICs announced - ZOMG let's start a mining company with my friends...

I'll let you know when I get to the next chapter in my obsession.

[smoothie]

Well I wouldn't say I'm hooked. With technological advances, there is always a possibility for a better alternative to be created down the line.

Bitcoin is awesome, but i'm not hooked on it.

[kwoody]

1) The idea of a currency that isn't controlled or regulated by any central service, and therefore isn't discriminatory towards any single user or group of users.

2) The idea that wealth can be transferred thousands of miles in a mere matter of seconds, with practically no fees attached in comparison to comparable services.

3) The idea that I could generate wealth worth believing in, using compute time that would otherwise be idle.


"The" Bitcoin Foundation makes me worried about 1).
ASICs make me worried about 3).

[Ryland R. Taylor-Almanza]

I thought it was cool

[mb300sd]

I've made more in bitcoin than I've ever had before

[Atlas]

The idea of nobody controlling my finances besides myself while still having the ability to spend and trade at will.

No gods, no masters, only me and my wallet.

[adamstgBit]

I'm a programmer, i never looked at the code, but it was easier for me to understate how it all works... THE BLOCK CHAIN! its just one of these ideas that you know has value.

so i got 25$ worth with CoinPal ( i had to setup a PP account and wait 5 days for the bank transfer... Oh how i wish i had trasfered more, but i was buying my house THAT WEEK lol... Oh how i wish i had held off buying my house and dumped my savings in bitcoin! ...true story )

watched it go from 0.75$  ( i got in on the very last dip... right as the news "Bitcoin - P2P digital currency and SR!" was coming out   ) and with it the bubble to 32$
... was totally blow away...

I bought more when it dropped.

I bought even more then it started showing signs of going back up

I bought stuff using some the coins. it was FUN! not like filling out a "Verified by VISA" forum.

I paid small amounts to members for helping me with thebitcoinrewview.com ( adding images, deleting dead sites...)

I'm hooked...

Code:

While( BitcoinFiatExchangeRate  >= 0)
{
   keep_on_bitcoining();
}

[sippsnapp]

It seemed to be different from anything ive seen on the internet.
For me its something revolutionary in the very first steps but i dont think its the final bitcoin, what i mean its limited to 21 million what is really a small cap, there must be a split or a v2.0 bitcoin to make it masscompatible.
However, i think the model to create a valueable exchange good from cpu power is great.

[ralree]

I'm a programmer, i never looked at the code, but it was easier for me to understate how it all works... THE BLOCK CHAIN! its just one of these ideas that you know has value.

so i got 25$ worth with CoinPal ( i had to setup a PP account and wait 5 days for the bank transfer... Oh how i wish i had trasfered more, but i was buying my house THAT WEEK lol... Oh how i wish i had held off buying my house and dumped my savings in bitcoin! ...true story )

watched it go from 0.75$  ( i got in on the very last dip... right as the news "Bitcoin - P2P digital currency and SR!" was coming out   ) and with it the bubble to 32$
... was totally blow away...

I bought more when it dropped.

I bought even more then it started showing signs of going back up

I bought stuff using some the coins. it was FUN! not like filling out a "Verified by VISA" forum.

I paid small amounts to members for helping me with thebitcoinrewview.com ( adding images, deleting dead sites...)

I'm hooked...

Code:

While( BitcoinFiatExchangeRate  >= 0)
{
   keep_on_bitcoining();
}

I wish this was my story, but this is what I've got:

Feb 2011: Discover bitcoin, buy $10 with Coinpal
Late 2011: Hear the bitcoin hit $30 and then dropped a bunch, figure it's dead.
Mid 2012: Hear it's still alive, and that people are making a decent amount of pocket change mining.
Shortly after: Buy several 7970s and associated hardware.  Mining for a couple months now.
August 2012: Paid for some SC singles
September 2012: Paid for some bASIC 54's
...
To be continued in some other thread either titled "We're All Filthy Rich!" or "It was fun while it lasted" or "Who's barely breaking even?"

[Ryland R. Taylor-Almanza]

It seemed to be different from anything ive seen on the internet.
For me its something revolutionary in the very first steps but i dont think its the final bitcoin, what i mean its limited to 21 million what is really a small cap, there must be a split or a v2.0 bitcoin to make it masscompatible.
However, i think the model to create a valueable exchange good from cpu power is great.

21 million is plenty. Here's a quote from the Myths page on the bitcoin wiki. The myth is "21 million coins isn't enough; doesn't scale"

One Bitcoin is divisible down to eight decimal places. There are really 2,099,999,997,690,000 (just over 2 quadrillion) maximum possible atomic units in the bitcoin design.

The value of "1 BTC" represents 100,000,000 of these. In other words, each is divisible by up to 10^8.
As the value of the unit of 1 BTC grows too large to be useful for day to day transactions, people can start dealing in smaller units, such as milli-bitcoins (mBTC) or micro-bitcoins (μBTC).

[sharky112065]

Money and it looked promising...

[Elwar]

Read an article about it a long time ago.

Went to the website and downloaded the client to start mining.

Client wouldn't install. Could not figure out mining.

Left it to others and their "2 cents per Bitcoin" technology.

Read another article a few months later. Holy crap, Bitcoins are worth $2 per Bitcoin.

Tried loading the client again. Mining did not work, screwed up my laptop.

Left it to others and their "2 dollars per Bitcoin" technology.

Read another article in June 2011. Bitcoin went from $10 to $30! Holy crap, this is it...!

Cashed out $10k from IRA, got in just in time at $16/BTC before it climbs through the roof!

Bitcoinica...Zhoutgouned...

Working on figuring out how to use this technology to get back my initial investment.

[kentrolla]

heroin

[Insu Dra]

Years ago, I thought it was a funny and interesting concept so I had my pc mining away in support. But at some point it started to look like all other alternative currencies, domed to fail ..

The second time was when I discovered a old wallet backup from a few years back, so checkout the sites again, saw that it was still around and doing way better then I expected ... my little backup was worth 10 times what it was before ...

So now I'm stuck trying to figure out a way to somehow pay back to the community what they gave me ... that and absolute hatred towards that other financial system we all 'love to' use  

[sceeth0]

I stumbled across Bitcoin in may of 2011.  I read everything I could over the next 72 hours, and by the time I finally stopped to sleep I was hooked.  There have been lots of reasons for using bitcoins, so I break them into 3 categories which can be broadly summarized.

1.  Intellectual:  I'm learning from my experiences, and enjoying it. 

2.  Pragmatic:  There are things I can do with bitcoins that are impractical or impossible with other currencies.

3.  Moral:  This was something that was "opt in" rather than "opt out", thus truly voluntary, and any social contract emerging from that state is legitimate to me.

[AngryCatfish]

I originally discovered bitcoins from freetalklive talking about it. I was in the market for a new video card and got a 5770 to mine some coins along with playing some decent games. I picked a few things up with the coins and fell out of interest for a little while. My interest got renewed when I went to porcfest and discovered all the new innovations and advancements that had been made in recent months, met the guys from bitinstant, and picked up a physical bitcoin while I was there. Running into real people there that talked about using it and/or store value in it instead of gold/silver sealed the deal, I haven't lost interest since.

[Realpra]

First read about it in 2011 during the 30$ spike, I understood it to a large extent and put it in the back of my mind as the way of the future - unfortunately since it was distributed peer technology I assumed the protocol was entirely unchangeable.
This meant I wrote Bitcoin off on some of the fixable flaws it still has - divisibility and performance mainly.

Probably lucky I did so I didn't buy during the 30$ spike

I got in again when I realized it was the only way a computer program could do finance without depending on human cooperation, something I needed for my bachelors project.

[Steve]

Satoshi's white paper

[Mr. Coinman]

When I started with Bitcoin, I wasn't necessarily hooked on it yet. But once I discovered there was a whole avenue of cool Bitcoin businesses like Bitpay, Casascius, Bitmit, and Bitinstant, I started getting hooked on buying and selling with BTC.