Very early adopters (early 2009) and how much they made

[eternalgloom]

Many Early adopters still have BTC in their bitcoin wallet and they are rich now but the problem with all of them is that either they never stored anything or the machine is not with them or they forget the password of their wallet. Although they are trying every possible step to make it possible to get their coins back it looks impossible as of now.

Are you sure that many of early adopters still have BTC? Because as said in previous DannyHamilton posts, many of these early Bitcoin users sold their BTC on the first more meaningful price increase. Some sold for few dollars, more patiently people sold it for few hundreds and only small part of early users is still hodling.

That's actually more interesting than OP's question IMO. How many people who had a significant amount of Bitcoin back in 2009/2010/early2011/ still have part of their original bitcoin from back then?

I really can't imagine that someone wouldn't sell if the price increased by x100 or x1000. It must take a massive amount of willpower to resist that.

[1714145743]

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[BrewMaster]

Many Early adopters still have BTC in their bitcoin wallet and they are rich now but the problem with all of them is that either they never stored anything or the machine is not with them or they forget the password of their wallet. Although they are trying every possible step to make it possible to get their coins back it looks impossible as of now.

Are you sure that many of early adopters still have BTC? Because as said in previous DannyHamilton posts, many of these early Bitcoin users sold their BTC on the first more meaningful price increase. Some sold for few dollars, more patiently people sold it for few hundreds and only small part of early users is still hodling.

That's actually more interesting than OP's question IMO. How many people who had a significant amount of Bitcoin back in 2009/2010/early2011/ still have part of their original bitcoin from back then?

I really can't imagine that someone wouldn't sell if the price increased by x100 or x1000. It must take a massive amount of willpower to resist that.

when you sell, you don't sell everything you own. you can still sell a small amount and be happy about it. it is like buying, you don't invest all your lifesavings and sell everything you own to buy bitcoin so why should you sell all when you are selling bitcoin.

imagine having 1000 bitcoin and price goes up to $1200 in 2011. selling 1/10 of your total stash gives you $120,000 and you still hold a lot.

[skyline247]

The amount of money early adopters made is simply outstanding... hard to imagine for the average person. You could buy 1,000 Bitcoin for almost nothing, like a few cents or even less in the beginning.

[aplistir]

I did a bit of digging around and in another thread, I came across this Tx from 28th August this year moving 3000BTC that was mined in January 2010.
https://blockchain.info/tx/4b60dc9cd051f4489420018bf52ead4f1f1377b0e0b4f2bc552f31b2649230ab
So someone has been able to avoid the temptation up until now.

Wow, that is quite interesting 
60 addresses with early 50BTC block reward in them and someone had the keys, or found/rescued his old keys.
Do you have a link to that thread?

I remember reading, that if someone would ever spend a single one of the early 50BTC block rewards, which are assumed to belong to Satoshi himself. Then the value of Bitcoin would collapse, because that could mean that someone controls keys to all the 1000000 coins in those addresses and they could come and crash the market.

But yeah. Holding coins for a long time is easy, if you have lots of coins. You can cash a million dollars every now and then, and you still would not need to touch most of your old addresses...

[BrewMaster]

60 addresses with early 50BTC block reward in them and someone had the keys, or found/rescued his old keys.
Do you have a link to that thread?

i don't remember anything interesting about that thread although there has been a couple of them.
these coins were moved after the Bitcoin Cash fork off. which brings up the possibility that someone wants to get ready to claim his airdrop. although coins on BCH chain has not yet moved, so this is speculation at this point. maybe the owner is waiting for a pump or waits for people to stop watching him so he can sell them without crashing the price of BCH.

I remember reading, that if someone would ever spend a single one of the early 50BTC block rewards, which are assumed to belong to Satoshi himself. Then the value of Bitcoin would collapse, because that could mean that someone controls keys to all the 1000000 coins in those addresses and they could come and crash the market.

the early blocks were mined by more people than just 1 satoshi.
the 1 million is also a big guess. we don't know how much coin Satoshi really owns.
but yeah if these coins move, they can cause some panic but i don't think there will be a big "crash" and i seriously doubt that Satoshi is going to move the coins to dump and crash the market in any sense.

[carlerha]

I keep reading about how some early adopters made 10K+ BTC and I would like to understand how exactly. I have been doing research on this forum and elsewhere about how much they made and how exactly they did it, but so far it has all been inconclusive. By very early adopters I mean those who got into Bitcoin between Feb 1st 2009 and July 1st 2009.

With that said, what would it have taken to mine some 10,000 to 100,000 BTC in that particular time period, in terms of time and processing power spent?

And if instead of mining them myself I decided to buy them from another person (I know there were no exchanges yet, but let's say I started looking for someone to perform a p2p transaction of 10k-100k), how much would I have spent? Or, to put things in another way, how many BTC could $20 have bought in early to mid 2009?

Lastly, how much time and effort did it take users like SmokeTooMuch and laszlo to break through their first 10,000 BTC? How were things back then?

In the first half of 2009, was it really that simple making more than 10,000 BTC? What kind of computer and how much time did that take?

I would like some data, numbers and facts, please.

Thank you.

Let me tell you that the time you are asking about year 2009 bitcoin was totally worthless at time having value almost equal to zero. Not zero actually. I remember I read somewhere that in 2009 bitcoin was only 10 cents so it was not a real big deal to buy it at that very time.
In 2009 people use to buy around 200 bitcoins of just 20 dollars.  At that time it was way much easy to get a bunch of bitcoin. People with broad visions could only understand that and.
It 2009 it used to cost only around 1000 to 1200 dollars for buying 10,000 BTC.

[gentlemand]

Relevant thread - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=388169.0

this is exactly what most people forget when they are talking about "early adopters". they think everybody who were involved with bitcoin MUST be a multi millionaire by now.

but in fact things have not changed at all. right now you don't see bitcoin be worth $200,000 so when it goes up to $5000 you think it is a great deal to sell. what will people in 2020 tell about us who sold at $5000

Yup. I am constantly amazed at the proclamations of people here planning on selling when it hits 10k. 10k is still comparative peanuts and nowhere near its true potential. I can't believe with all this history behind it people can't look beyond what'll probably be a few hundred dollars for them. I won't have any sympathy.

[Wendigo]

Bitcoin was probably worth cents in 2009 and could be worth 100k or 0$ in 2029. Bitcoin was mined in 2009 like any newly sprung alt coin nowadays - at home. People were likely pulling a thousand coins every couple of days solo mining.

[TheQuin]

60 addresses with early 50BTC block reward in them and someone had the keys, or found/rescued his old keys.
Do you have a link to that thread?

i don't remember anything interesting about that thread although there has been a couple of them.
these coins were moved after the Bitcoin Cash fork off. which brings up the possibility that someone wants to get ready to claim his airdrop. although coins on BCH chain has not yet moved, so this is speculation at this point. maybe the owner is waiting for a pump or waits for people to stop watching him so he can sell them without crashing the price of BCH.

The Bitcoin Cash thought was what went through my mind at the time but looking again at that TX it seems that the receiving address has been quite busy.

[ruskytailz02]

I think most of them have lost the coins they saved back in that days
maybe not having back up private keys and the hardware been crashed or
they didn't remember the password or MOST common is back when that day
when BITCOIN pumped up they immediately exchange it

if they have stored to those first generation pioneer earners they will be rich now

[Red-Apple]

never mind you what the early adopters of 2009ish have made. instead you should worry about what you are not making while busying yourself with questions like this.

bitcoin was about $1500 cheaper per 1 whole bitcoin in a couple of weeks ago. and this is the story of bitcoin history for as long as i can see. people asking what others before them made instead of looking at the present time and how much they are missing out on.

[TheQuin]

never mind you what the early adopters of 2009ish have made. instead you should worry about what you are not making while busying yourself with questions like this.

bitcoin was about $1500 cheaper per 1 whole bitcoin in a couple of weeks ago. and this is the story of bitcoin history for as long as i can see. people asking what others before them made instead of looking at the present time and how much they are missing out on.

That's so true. When I first got involved at the end of 2012 everyone was talking about having missed the boat because the price had already gone from a few cents to $20. Never make that mistake, we have no idea how far this thing can go, time spent accumulating Bitcoin in-between then and now has been time well spent.

[buwaytress]

Tell you what, some of the earliest faucets even gave out 1 BTC. As DannyHamilton points out, there wasn't really a marketplace for them and people even gave them out free (to me even the pizza day affair was basically a giveaway for a treat although, there were other giveaways recorded for no effort). If I'm not mistaken, Gavin made a faucet in 2010 that gave out 5 BTC. http://web.archive.org/web/20100703032414/http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

At the rate that some faucet farmers hit these days (I know of people who do at least 12 each on moonbitcoin and freebitcoin) I'm not surprised if faucet hitters from those days could have easily amassed hundreds in a month. Of course, they might have just used them up the way we use up satoshi for fun now, so I doubt anyone retained his faucet collections until today.

Here's another perspective. When I first used Bitcoin, I gained my very first from a giveaway (100,000 satoshi!) and then found faucets giving out close to a thousand. Like the newbie I was, I farmed perhaps 50 faucets so heavily I'd collected 0.01 in perhaps little over a week. It was worth maybe $6 at the time, but today it's more than $40 after just over a year. If Bitcoin were to reach 10k...

[TheQuin]

At the rate that some faucet farmers hit these days (I know of people who do at least 12 each on moonbitcoin and freebitcoin) I'm not surprised if faucet hitters from those days could have easily amassed hundreds in a month. Of course, they might have just used them up the way we use up satoshi for fun now, so I doubt anyone retained his faucet collections until today.

You don't even need to cheat, even with only one account, the claims I was making 3 years ago are worth something now. When it 1st started in late 2003 freebitco.in was paying a 0.0005 signup bonus, the max win was 1 BTC, minimum 0.00001 per roll. Looking at my stats now I've made 0.35 with only a handful of active referrals. If price continues to rise in the same way someone starting now would do just as well as I did.

[nightways]

60 addresses with early 50BTC block reward in them and someone had the keys, or found/rescued his old keys.
Do you have a link to that thread?

i don't remember anything interesting about that thread although there has been a couple of them.
these coins were moved after the Bitcoin Cash fork off. which brings up the possibility that someone wants to get ready to claim his airdrop. although coins on BCH chain has not yet moved, so this is speculation at this point. maybe the owner is waiting for a pump or waits for people to stop watching him so he can sell them without crashing the price of BCH.

I remember reading, that if someone would ever spend a single one of the early 50BTC block rewards, which are assumed to belong to Satoshi himself. Then the value of Bitcoin would collapse, because that could mean that someone controls keys to all the 1000000 coins in those addresses and they could come and crash the market.

the early blocks were mined by more people than just 1 satoshi.
the 1 million is also a big guess. we don't know how much coin Satoshi really owns.
but yeah if these coins move, they can cause some panic but i don't think there will be a big "crash" and i seriously doubt that Satoshi is going to move the coins to dump and crash the market in any sense.

Those who are the early investors are now the most successful among the community and all this is just because they took initiative and put their money into the coins and then they secured huge profit that was not easy they faces a lot of problems critics but they have believe in them and they did it in good way and now they are enjoying.

[Ultegra134]

Most early adopters have already sold their BTC in previous price peaks of 2013 - 2015. Its price in 2009 was dirt cheap, around $0.0xx, less than a cent per coin from what I've read. Unfortunately, I doubt that there are any of the early adopters who still hold their coins or sold them in the recent 1-2 years.A large amount of coins is probably lost and forgotten in wallets.

The difficulty was way lower back then, each block mined would result in a vastly large amount of Bitcoin as a miner's reward, while you could easily mine each block on solo mining, something you can't do it yourself nowadays.

[gentlemand]

Most early adopters have already sold their BTC in previous price peaks of 2013 - 2015. Its price in 2009 was dirt cheap, around $0.0xx, less than a cent per coin from what I've read. Unfortunately, I doubt that there are any of the early adopters who still hold their coins or sold them in the recent 1-2 years.A large amount of coins is probably lost and forgotten in wallets.

It was literally worthless for most of 2009.

The first published exchange rate from the first exchange is here - http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/page/2009+Exchange+Rate

1309 coins per dollar. And that was based entirely on the electricity needed to create it.

No doubt lots of early mined coins are gone, but I'm sure a fair few are accessible still. The occasional wallet from that era moves, but not very often.

[peterthegreat]

I think practically anyone who invested in 2009 is guaranteed to be a millionaire by now.

[hatshepsut93]

I think practically anyone who invested in 2009 is guaranteed to be a millionaire by now.

Wrong, many people who invested early also sold early when they had around x10 profit. Many investors were not ready to see exponential growth because they came from traditional markets and were used to a much smaller magnitude of price moves. So when they saw that their investment increased like 10 times in its value, they started getting scared that it's an all time high or a bubble and that they should sell now and maybe buyback later. But in many cases this "later" never came as the price kept increasing. The people who are hodling since the first days of Bitcoin are those who deeply believe at it's potential to revolutionize economy, for them Bitcoin is much more than some investment.

[Reez]

I don't think there are many of these early adopters as anyone who did buy around then likely didn't hold onto them for long. Or they got greedy and sold them a couple years later. It's understandable though, not a lot of people thought BTC would be where it is today so it's easy to succumb to the pressure.