I did find out about it in 2011 when a homeless hacker-ish friend claimed "this could be worth thousands now it's worth $1", therefore wanted to crack some free internet for us in order to mine some coins... But ultimately he never got that connection sorted. There was no strong enough WEP available from the neighbors, was trying dictionary brute force WPA prior to reaver/WPS, so gave up after a week. He instead got some coins P2P, followed by selling around $5-10 for some high grade weed (a classic case)
Funny thing about some people who might have a vision, they frequently will have lack of stick-with-it-ness or even lose their conviction. Another problem if a person is materially lacking in basic comforts such as a home, regular meals and maybe even has some bad habits, then those kinds of peeps will have tendencies to cave or cash in their profits...
so even if that guy was able to gardner together $500 to $2.5k to buy a BIG BTC investment, his getting 5x to 10x profits which would have been $2,500 to $25k - depending on how much he invested, would still have amounted to chicken feed in the event that he would have been able to HODL all the way through to present times - which surely is almost an impossible hope for a guy in such a position, unless he were to actually physically lose access to his coins and then regain such access at a later date.
If the second scenario were to have occurred, he likely would not have deserved such rags to riches, but many of us do surely love a rags to riches story, even if he would have blew the fuck out of $30 million to $120 million too, but gosh would have taken him a lot longer to blow such levels of accidental (and likely undeserved -
repeating myself) wealth.
To avoid confusion, this guy put in around $10 I think, maybe $50 at best, what he had at the time. The clue here Jay is that he was without home
Despite his insight, he wasn't in a position to be hodling for 10 years. Was quite happy with the 5-10x profits. This isn't so different from many tech nerds back then it seems. Most buyers around $1 weren't investors, they were simply different and likely autistic or with Asperger, computer geniuses at heart nothing else, and happy with simple gains more often than not. I think he later invested "real money" later on in life, but was permanently left with a sour taste in his mouth over "how much money he could have made" and never got over that. None the less, the weed he acquired was the best tasting spliffs I had smoked in a long time. The most valuable to date by far! This holds value in itself, as a memory for all involved.
The rags to riches from these price levels is a rare occurrence it seems. For sure it seems like anyone with a 2010/2011 account here did amazingly, but also worth noting most of those involved were probably too intimated to engage with an online community, even if dominated by fellow nerds. Out of a hundred geeks who invested around $1, I imagine only 1 of them held until around $1K at best. Surrounded by an society that isolates you, it likely crushes your confidence as an investor too. Geniuses are usually treated like psychotic morons at the end of the day.
Then again exposed in Winter 2014 while living with a core dev & (legal/unofficial) "hackspace" for a few months. I did learn a lot, but they were too busy getting high for me to take them seriously. Even when they weren't on acid, it seemed like they were on acid basically. But ultimately, even while being computer literate by then, it still seemed too young and too high risk despite the potential. Especially while beginning it's down-trending at this point after blow off top + had no money then anyway
Plus the crew were annoying af to live with, proper waste of space, so put me off for personal reasons investing in "their ideas".
I agree with both of those points (or are there three points?) that investing in something needs money, and there can sometimes be annoyance and distractions by the lifestyle choices of the peeps who might have some of the right ideas but are not really setting good role model examples in other ways.
You know that does remind me of some similar dynamics here on the interwebs, sometimes. Sometimes some of us BTC maximalists can be annoying as fuck in terms of turning off newbies who have differring views about either how to get into bitcoin or to have creative approaches to complementing their bitcoin investment with shitcoins. And, sure sometimes they might not be wrong with their overall approach, but vigorous debates on the interwebs (not know each other personally) can surely create some turnoffs and even some people may end up taking actions of either NOT buying bitcoin or betting against bitcoin because they get into some interpersonal battles - and jeez I heard Peter Schiff interviewing with Pompliano yesterday or so, and that little twat Schiff was making some decent points about diversification, but he did seem to be somewhat distracted by some pride ideas, including that he did not want to pump the bags of the bag holders such as Pomp and others... I do agree that there are several spots in that interview that Pomp had lost a lot of humbleness (which was kind of childish and not really a good look), but still people (BTC HODLers) can sometimes get a bit arrogant and have desires to rub it in a wee bit more than they probably should - even if it might well feel good at the time to enforce the "I told you so" idea with some actual performance metrics.
Sure I understand that you druggie buddies (roommates) were personal turn offs for somewhat other reasons, but still we can sometimes get distracted by personalities and lifestyles rather than appreciating some of the underlying facts (and broader underlying forces) for what they are.
For sure the so-called representatives were awful and far from role models, though this was 2014 so a different time-line in fairness. In the UK, it appeared to mainly dominated by burnt-out anarchists and parasitical squatters involved in the development, or at least this is how it felt from my unique perspective. I don't just mean bitcoin core software, they were also beyond that creating the latest controversial BTC software and online spaces. While many early live streams were from squats and other alternative individuals etc, in the US it was very different it seems, much more civilized I imagine. You're completely right that as Bitcoiners we can be incredibly off-putting, and it's something as a "community" we need to address. It's not 2014 anymore, but as you (kind of) put it, on the interwebs it can seem very un-inviting, cliquey and cult-like. I mean we literally have a gang here. It's great being a part of it, but as an outsider, it literally seems like a cult following delusional theories. It's time to reflect on how we approach others, in order to avoid further alienating them from such an obscure concept in my opinion. It always has been.
For sure Bitcoin does what is wants, will carry on without the need for any disbelievers, but I think I know you well enough to know that you care about educating those who wish to learn and benefit from this opportunity.
Again you're right that distancing your opinion from the person providing an idea is also crucial, this goes both ways. Eventually I did end up studying Bitcoin because of these wreck heads, but arguably enough damage had already been done to distance myself for sometime from the idea of blockchain due to those who represented it. Completely my own narrow-minded mentality for sure, but another example of how this dynamic goes both ways if you know what I mean. I imagine you do.
I'll refrain from informing you how many points I was attempting to make. There are clearly more points you are able to identify from my writing than I am intending to provide
So maybe if you say when you found out about bitcoin and describe the kinds of "investment" opportunities might have been available to you in your earliest days of exposure that you failed/refused to partake in...
I think you can tell from my past exposure with Bitcoin, it was relatively high and twice over, being in the the circles I was mingling in. Mining doge in 2014-205 was also standard practice from a housemate I'd be living with for example.
(An ex-housemate I still don't know the username of on here to be honest, but was involved in bounties on here while not busy taking heroin or otherwise)
By the way, if I would be more open minded (and I do consider myself to be somewhat open minded to explore various angles), probably my own thinking would have become more muddled.. for example, getting involved in doge coin, BCH/BSV, ethereum or various shit projects, could be very time consuming and even occupy a whole hell of a lot of brain space, those kinds of explorations would actually cause me to lose focus on some of the important aspects of bitcoin and perhaps even start to believe that there is some value in the various technically innovative ways to scam others (or even to scam oneself with pump and dump smoke and mirrors nonsense).
This I've come to recognize in myself more recently, more or less this year. I've always been interested in shitcoins (as you probably are aware), but primarily for the "sick satoshi gains" that comes with it. But I did realise the amount of time I was wasting learning about alternative technology was exhausting, it left me feeling disconnected from Bitcoin at best, and uninformed at worst. Now I just look at charts, I don't give a duck how "amazing" a project sounds. If the chart looks good for satoshi profits, I'll gamble with my trading account knowing more often than not it helps to generate more BTC. I used to be obsessed with different technological experiments, now I just find it a waste of my time, even if deep down still relatively fascinating. But I think it was also a necessary learning curve tbh.
Don't get me wrong, I am not proclaiming that you are totally off of the planet - because surely there are some particulars that you could likely flush out to bring better meaning to what you are describing - rather than some concepts that could be very easily misunderstood or even mislead people into thinking that there were real and meaningful investment opportunities in bitcoin in the early days beyond for the real geeks and internet nerd specialists (not suggesting any kind of denigration of the nerds).
TL:DR: It's ok, I hear you. Primarily I didn't explain very well the "waited 10 years part". More like waited 6/7 years in total ish, followed by waiting for Bitcoin to become 8/9 years old.
Hope that helps specify the previous response
Yes.. much more clear, now, about what you meant, and sure, I was not necessarily fishing for a lot of your various sordid details, so it surely is up to you regarding how much to share or how to present the matters, but sometimes there surely can be confusion when summaries are made that do not provide some levels of context. We all have that issue in terms of the more details that we give, the more we are inviting our lil selfies to be criticized for what we did and also for presenting some points in ways that could be read in more than one way.
Hehe I know you weren't fishing for sordid details; nice use of the word sordid by the way, haven't heard that in a decade! I simply share these details with you, on this public forum, knowing that you are one of the few persons within this space that is capable of identifying the potential value of the information I provided. You already discovered more points than I was intending to offer, and I know you discuss in detail with high intellect to all members involved here. I literally only bother to express myself in detail to someone like yourself, as no one else would care or even acknowledge much relevance in the information I am trying to share. I hope it helps you in your journey of educating the masses, as you so acutely do in your "spare" time.
But sure, the more diverse research the better! After Bitcoin there were more than 5-10 different currencies that came about as well.
Nice try though
Gosh.. comparing bitcoin research and virus research seems a stretch of a topic.. and who really wants to talk about some some 5-10 different currencies in this here lovey dovey bitcoin thread, unless perhaps we have some shitcoins that we feel like bashing..
Precisely my point, hence this wasn't my initiative as to me it seems like a very dumb comparison
I was just trying to show how stupid the analogy actually is, thanks for your assistance
Fair enough... Lot's of virus on the minds of people, so really difficult to avoid the topic, and I am still of the position that there is information that goes in so many directions that it is enough to piss off people no matter what their stance - and sometimes there might be some questions regarding whether the division is sown or even allowed to fester in ways that are "on purpose" based on some other things going on that a lot of us can see the money printing issues. so having battles on all kinds of levels and from all kinds of angles does not really necessarily stop the ship from going down (or struggling stupendously) while bitcoin chugs along
Voilà, you nailed it.
.....and sure, there have been a lot of direct and indirect attacks on bitcoin too.... but we also have people in various positions of power, so not everyone is really clearly on one side or another.. which in the end, seems that more and more people find out about bitcoin, even when the news is bad and the attacks against it are seemingly great, so in that regard, sometimes the bitcoin price ends up soaring during seemingly bad news, such as making bitcoin illegal in the USA which also makes little sense, when you think about it... are they really going to go there.. of course, they can do what they want, but there is going to be backlashes, even if some dumbass draconian (impossible to follow) laws related to bitcoin end up passing.
All publicity is good publicity
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