What got you into Bitcoin?

[Jrock]

I'm sure threads like this have exist already but I'm making another anyways!

What got you interested in Bitcoin? Where did you find out about it and when?

I'm only curious because I stumbled onto a "make free money thread" on overclocked.net which talked about mining for bitcoins back when coins were under 5 bucks a pop. That thread was pretty soon locked/closed pending the legitmacy of Bitcoin and eventually lost forever.

If it wasn't for that thread I'd never heard of Bitcoin, ever. I've never seen any other bitcoin exposure outside of that one thread, unless it was something I found directly on this forum.

All I can say is I'm glad I found it, but it's just crazy to think about how if I didn't happen to see that one trending topic on the side of the page, I'd at this moment still have no clue Bitcoin exists.

[MashRinx]

I first heard about Bitcoin while listening to a speech given by Cory Doctorow that I watched during the first week of Jan, 2012.  I have been using my home machines for some sort of distributed computing (Seti@Home, Folding@Home, etc) for many years, but the day I heard about Bitcoin I started researching and had the three machines I had at that point mining the next day and never looked back.

If I let it, I would get frustrated that I had not heard of Bitcoin before then, seen any of the related posts on Slashdot, etc. especially as involved in Distributed Computing as I have been for so long, but "you can't 'could have'", so oh well...

[Elwar]

Methinks it was an article on Reason.

[acoindr]

It showed up on Hacker News while it was still in the cents range. I misunderstood it (I got thrown off by the mining/electricity aspect) and summarily dismissed it.

[Piper67]

A friend told me about a really cool app for the iPad, Zite. I installed it, and one of the articles that popped up was "Why I'm Putting All My Savings Into Bitcoin" by Falkvinge. But what really got me was its deflationary nature (ok, ok, inflationary-neutral, you know what I mean)

[dserrano5]

An internal email within my company, along the lines of "Hey what do you think of this "bitcoin" thingy?". June 1st 2011, right in the middle of the bubble ecstasy.

[gradient vector]

Max Keiser interview with Jon Matonis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GiQEECNcZM

[tvbcof]

Probably the incentive which finally pushed me into compiling and running Bitcoin was being pissed at what the mainstream institutions did to Wikileaks.

I downloaded the source in 2010, but got tied up with other financial matters until mid 2011.  Oh well.  Sloppy seconds at the end of 2011 has worked out OK anyway.

[TheKoziTwo]

I was reading a wikipedia article about e-currencies, was looking for something new since the fall of e-gold and a bitcoin link caught my attention.

[mitty]

Friend asked me if I knew where to buy Adderall, I did some searching online (lol, yes I'm a nerd), read about Silk Road, saw that SR only accepted "bitcoins" and remembered glancing over an article about Bitcoin in an IEEE magazine a while ago, quickly became more interested in bitcoin than SR, bought a couple of 5830's off ebay (this was the end of October/beginning of November 2012 when everyone was going crazy over the soon-to-be block reward halving) and started mining, then slowly got more and more into mining as I realized what an amazing technology bitcoin is.  To the best of my knowledge my friend still never got his Adderall.  But... I think the concept (and implementation) of bitcoin is amazing.

[Mike Christ]

I found it on RT, the Keiser report.  He mentioned Bitcoin and I was really interested in what it was.  Thought it was cool and didn't pay much attention to it, until I heard it again somewhere else, and decided to join this forum and talk about it

[BkkCoins]

A comment in a blog post in May 2011. Got me interested in mining - which I have done ever since.

[knight22]

I was looking for fiat alternatives

[Melbustus]

/.

Saw a story about it in early 2011 and made a mental note to check it out. Didn't follow through on that until I saw another story in late May or early June 2011.

[boscorocks]

I had been interested in alternative currencies including egold and am fascinated with the theory of Bitcoin. It is not backed by precious metals or anything yet is used in trade. What value is placed on..calculations? Supply and demand of nothing material, but most currency is just digits. Things that make me go hmmm.

[Transisto]

This guy

[Pteppic]

I was so incredibly bored at work I found myself on the guardian's technology page and saw this article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/18/bitcoin-value-crash-cryptocurrency

I don't know why I clicked on it since the headline had no meaning whatsoever to me at the time, but after lots of reading and research and getting excited about Bitcoin's potential I thought; 'Come on then, mister so-called economics graduate. If what you have studied has any value at all, you should be able to fleece these nerds for all they are worth.'

It hasn't quite worked out like that...

[Lethn]

A hatred of our current currencies and central banking, I literally rage typed about currencies once and then Bitcoin popped up onto google

[hugolp]

A hatred of our current currencies and central banking, I literally rage typed about currencies once and then Bitcoin popped up onto google

Hahahaha I believe this.

[vdragon]

At some point i bought 10 rigs for some other purpose. Since there wasnt work all the time, I tried looking for something to keep them busy