How did you First Find out about Bitcoin?

[Rob768]

How did you Find out about Bitcoin?  What was your initial reaction?

[1714099086]

1714099086

[1714099086]

1714099086

[1714099086]

1714099086

[1714099086]

1714099086

[1714099086]

1714099086

[1714099086]

1714099086

[Walter Rothbard]

I saw it mentioned on Slashdot around the time of the Gox crash of 2011.  I think it had been somewhere in my peripheral vision before, but I hadn't paid attention.

The first thing I noticed was the claim that the coins were "generated" by computers around the internet, yet somehow finitely limited.  I scoffed, figuring that there was some faith in a cartel-like agreement that would never hold.  But the idea stuck in my mind, and I thought "surely these people can't be so foolish as to be putting faith in something like that - do they have a real means to limit production to a finite number"?  My curiosity got me looking, until I hit a point where reading about Bitcoin, including the whitepaper, saturated a couple of days until I understood it.

Then I did nearly nothing about it for nearly two years!  I just looked for headlines every so often, and occasionally got the source code and looked at it.

[BitChick]

My husband read about it on Slashdot too in 2011 or so.  He mentioned it to me.  I said "Why not buy a few."  He said, "The feds might think we are involved in something and come knock our door down."   I said, "Hmmm.  I guess it is better not to risk that."  He also mentioned that it was used for drugs quite a bit. (I did not know how anonymously it could be purchased or I may have argued with him a little more about it not being that risky) Then we waited until the money laundering laws kicked in and figured it was somewhat a stamp of approval.  So, it would have been nice if we had bought at $1 instead of a few at $100. Oh well. Better late then never. 

[proudhon]

How did you Find out about Bitcoin?  What was your initial reaction?

I'm pretty sure it was this Bad Philosophy podcast back in early April of 2011.  I started listening to it on my way to meet my family for dinner, and I couldn't think about anything else for the rest of the night.  I was mining about a week later.

[CasinoBit]

I'm always unable to answer this kind of questions, how have I found out a community, probably a bad google search?

[Birdy]

I've read about "new digital money that can be generated by your PC" somewhere on the internet about 1-2 years(?) ago.
I gave it a try and downloaded the Bitcoin-qt client and started mining for about a day on my CPU.
I got no coins, so I discarded it... thought it was all about the mining.
When I was hearing again about Bitcoins some weeks ago, I figured that there must be more to it, because it's still around.
So I did some research (about a week non-stop-reading about Bitcoin) and concluded that Bitcoin may be one of the great new things to happen in the future.

[bg002h]

Slashdot, 2010. Back when your laptop could do this:

[pekv2]

How did you Find out about Bitcoin?  What was your initial reaction?

Wednesday, July 13, 2011
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/07/13/bitcoin_mining_gpu_performance_comparison

I created my account two days later.

[shawshankinmate37927]

I first heard about Bitcoin in the summer of 2011, when Chuck Schumer spoke out about Silk Road and asked the DoJ to do something about it.  I sorta kept bitcoins in the back of my mind and waited for over a year after that to actually buy some, but glad I finally did.  Thanks, Chuck!  They've been the best "investment" I've ever made, by far.  If I ever get the chance someday, I'll have to buy you a beer or two for bringing them to my attention!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110605/22322814558/senator-schumer-says-bitcoin-is-money-laundering.shtml

[MashRinx]

Happened upon an online talk by Cory Doctorow.  I had never heard of him before and in the middle of the talk I heard him say: "Take Bitcoin, for example."

I have been involved in distributed computing for years, first SETI@Home, then Folding@Home later.  When I heard Cory make that statement, it immediately grabbed my fully attention and I started researching Bitcoin right away and I was mining the next day. 

Oh how I wish I was religiously reading Slashdot in 2010 or even 2011.

[spndr7]

slashdot April/May 2010 

[noedaRDH]

In May 2011 I tried to sell a 5870 videocard on Craigslist so I could get a better card from Nvidia. Originally I had arranged to sell the card to someone in my age bracket, someone quite young, for my initial asking price. Then the next day, just hours before I was going to meet this fellow, a much older gentleman offered me quite a bit more for the card.

After I met up with this older guy at a cafe, I asked him what he's going to use it for. He did not fit the profile for your average "PC" gamer. Turns out he's a premier miner in my area and has been at this thing for some time.

For the next hour we discussed Bitcoins over some coffee, and the way I understood it back then was that it was similar to folding@home but it could be used to make yourself some money. What was especially focused on was not the political ideology of this system but just how it can work as a currency. And the fact that anyone in the Bitcoin world back then were still "early adopters". I did not understand the political or even the financial ramification of Bitcoins at that moment.

Once I got home, I felt bad about selling the card. A part of me felt awful for abandoning the original buyer. And another part of me felt awful for selling the card at all. But if there was money to be made on something as cool as that guy made it sound, then perhaps it was not all in vain and I should really learn this thing.

I became persistent to learn about Bitcoins; over the next few weeks I studied its history, its technology, its current state, and what the future of Bitcoins might be. As soon as the "big picture" clicked, I went out and bought 3x 5830s from CL and an AMD board for a mining rig.

Interestingly enough, two of those 5830s came from young dude who has a master degree researcher in distributed computing and he said he has been mining for some time now. So I guess he felt he had accumulated enough coins/profits and those 5830s were useless to him.

Fast forward to today, I could not have foreseen Bitcoins to be where it is now. Had I sold my 5870 to the younger fellow I would probably not have learned of Bitcoins until a much later point. And I probably wouldn't have taken it seriously for some time because I wouldn't have met a "IRL mentor" who is able to present Bitcoins to me in a neutral manner.

[pwi]

I  saw this thread and couldn't wait a few hours to respond to this interesting question.  I copy and pasted my first post from the Newbie forum below.  Original post can be found here:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200700.0  Loving bitcointalk.org so far and hope to be here a while.

I am a recently disabled professional that has been relegated to crashing at family and friends' houses for the past few months. All my hosts are conservative leaning despite liberal social tendencies. Such tendencies are seemingly the cost of home ownership and religious affiliation in some regions.  One such host watches Bill O'Reilly like it is a requisite Sunday revival passing out salvation candy.

Whilst attempting to swallow my own vomit; I overheard Mr. O'Reilly say, "Bitcoin," no less than 5 times during a 60 minute program. Bill spoke of Bitcoin like Glenn Beck does about 'gold'.

What can I say; maybe it was the 'O'Reilly bump'; but I was immediately interested. At the time I had about $2000 to my name in good old greenbacks. It was February 2013 and as cold as I can remember it ever being.

I was freezing and bored. Being a natural risk taker; I plunged into the coin with $1000 of my very limited resources. I told no one of my seemingly ridiculous actions for fear of being committed to the state mental hospital by my conservative hosts. My recent plight of transitioning from making five figures a month, to deciding whether to buy groceries or pay for insurance probably made the risk easier to assume.

As a genXer; I was born for a time of freedom from fiat and the control it exacts on its naïve holders. Sadly this control often masquerades as security.

Mr. O’Reilly opened my mind to both right-winger logic and the value of something seemingly valueless. Bitcoin was trading at around $20/BTC at the time of my entering the market. This was considered bubble level by many at the time.  The next few months left me wondering how much Bitcoin Mr. O’Reilly held as he pimped its merits.

Needless to say, I am now much more financially able to meet my needs via both BTC and paper fiat. I still don’t get right or left wingers no matter how much Fox News or MSNBC I’m forced to watch.  Regardless, I think everyone can agree on at least some of the merits and freedoms that a vehicle like Bitcoin affords its users.

As a bonus, I now feel a sense of purpose to educate and inform those that know less than me; and to learn from those with more understanding than I can hope to acquire, about our beloved crypto-currency. It has been life giving for a young educated person searching for purpose and principle in a world that is at times devoid of either.

Just a couple more hours of reading and I can play with others on bitcointalk.org.

Where would you post and what would you say if you could post somewhere other than the noob-pen? If you have something of value to add and just can’t wait to clear the noob hurdle, post it here.  Someone just might read it. You did.

I am PWI and I approve this message.

[tvbcof]

I heard about Bitcoin in the context of Visa, PayPal, etc deciding I should not be sending 'my' money to Wikileaks.

Unintended consequences are a bitch sometimes.

[Wed]

I read an article on heise.de, it's a german news page for it-news.
I thought, it sounds good, give it a chance.

[QuestionAuthority]

In 2011 I was trying to buy some MDMA and the guy I was communicating with said SR only took bitcoins.

[Rodyland]

From memory, early 2011.  The earliest mention of bitcoin in my gmail account is late May 2011.

If memory serves, it was in my peripheral vision from hackernews posts.  I vaguely recall the BTC1=US$1 parity celebration being mentioned in headlines.  That may have even been what finally caught my interest.  Of course, I regret not paying attention sooner - at the time I recall seeing the word and it meaning nothing to me, and moving on to the next most interesting post. 

I was mining with my meagre setup in the low single digits, but it was closer to US$10 (the first time, on the way up) before I managed to buy any on gox (June 2011 I think).   

[chrono]

silk road

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

April 25 Overclock.net, a user called reflex99  posted a thread about earning money with your GPUs and two days later I had 4 bitcoins.

[raze]

I think I first found out when someone on Twitter was giving price updates every now and then, back in very early January when they were just $14 or so. If only I knew