So how did YOU first hear about bitcoin?

[hybrid]

I'm curious how and when others on here first heard about bitcoin and what made them get into it.

Here's my quick story:

The first time I heard of bitcoin was sometime back in late 2009 when I was building an online store from scratch and wanted to avoid PayPal fees.  I searched online for alternatives and found a site that listed several different online payment services and what their fees were.  At the bottom of the list was "Bitcoin," advertised as having no transaction fees.  I looked into it a little bit, but didn't understand it at all.  I ended up staying with PayPal since most people use it.

Then in the fall of 2012, I was looking to buy a VPN service, and heard that bit coins were the preferred payment method because of the anonymity.  I tried to buy some coins but couldn't figure out how to, so I just paid with my credit card.

Sometime around the middle of March this year I heard that the price of a bitcoin was $40 and rising.  I remembered seeing the price at $12 just a few months earlier and so I did lots of reading and ended up putting almost all my savings into it.

[ElectricMucus]

Browsing wikipedia, end of 2010
I think it was somewhere falsely listed as some sort of virtual gold currency like e-gold.
I could have been an early adopter then but I didn't think it would take off and wasn't greedy enough.

[worldinacoin]

I first heard of a mysterious e-currency that is the backdoor to all things bad and evil.   Search high and low for it, keying in the keywords ecurrency etc.   It took me sometime before I found Bitcoin, then I found this fantastic forum....

[ThatDGuy]

2011 from a co-worker.  Sounded too similar to virtual currencies in games from the description.  Now, regret.  Better late(earlyish?) than never though!

[Barnacle_Ed]

About one year ago. I take the light rail into work on occasion and it has wifi on all cars. I tend to use the time to catch up on email, get powerpoints done, and just surf the web when there's nothing else to do.


I was idly browsing Craigslist one day when one of the listings for a GPU mentioned something about "good for Bitcoin mining!!!" as a defining characteristic. Being curious - and having time on my hands - I hit up Google immediately afterward. The rest is history.

[derekleong75]

Heard about bitcoins when I was browsing Flipboard while taking a dump and saw an article about bitcoin miners raking up USD150K in power each day.
Needless to say, that was one of the longest dump I've ever had while googling everything about bitcoin.
Few months later, here I am in this forum still learning as much as I can about it while kicking myself for not discovering this earlier.
But hey, great community, enjoyable hobby for me now.  (doubt I'm gonna be buying a new car with BTC anytime soon.)

[ThatDGuy]

Heard about bitcoins when I was browsing Flipboard while taking a dump and saw an article about bitcoin miners raking up USD150K in power each day.
Needless to say, that was one of the longest dump I've ever had while googling everything about bitcoin.

Just imagining this story if BTC keeps going for years and years.

Talking to your grandkids, telling them about the dump that changed your life!

[ravenx13]

About a year ago from my friends. Didn't think it was anything but a fad for that whole last year. Recently my friends all bought 7970s and started mining. Don't know why but this caught my attention and I stopped thinking of bitcoin as a passing thing. Now I'm hooked...
And I know that Bitcoin is here to stay.

[medicine]

I found out about it from an article in the book Best of American Science and Nature Writing 2011.  Just wish I read about it a few months earlier than I did.

[raze]

About 6 months ago, some guy I follow on Twitter was posting price updates when they were about $15ea.

[sunnyl]

One month ago,from a news paper.

[*Bob]

I had read about it a few times before 2011, but I failed to recognize the significance until I listened to this in April, 2011:

www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.html‎



My recent understanding of the theoretic potential of colored coins and decentralized exchanges (property, shares, commodity-backed currencies, etc.) riding off the blockchain infrastructure have only made bitcoin that much more interesting.

[CurbsideProphet]

Read an article about the Allinvain theft.  Sometimes I wonder if he bought back in, he would be fantastically rich if he did and it would be a nice way to wrap up the story as the hackers probably sold immediately instead of having the foresight to hold.

[FlappySocks]

Security Now podcast with Steve Gibson Feb 2011
http://twit.tv/sn287

I got really interested in Bitcoin.  I was going to do Mining. But something else distracted me, and I forgot about it until I read about the high rise in price.  Kicking myself now.

[The Bitcoin Catalog]

A year ago, I was watching Money as Debt documentary and someone was mentioning bitcoin in the comments

[Stampbit]

Funny how everyone so far has dodged admitting they got into it to buy drugs and gamble.....

[Svennisen]

My friend called me and said, check this out. 24 hours later I owned my first bitcoins and had started mining.

[malevolent]

I read a short article about it on a Polish libertarian website in May 2011 and they linked to the weusecoins video that I watched and was intrigued by the idea of mining but didn't fully understand  how it exactly worked at first. Managed to start mining on June 1st 2011 and started buying the next GPUs (mostly 5850s and 5870s) soon after that.

I have an acquaintance who is no way a 'technical' person (e.g. doesn't you're supposed to install at least some drivers after OS reinstall, etc.) but he heard of Bitcoin a few months before I did, (I think he mentioned February 2011), because he read about them somewhere. I really regretted that he hadn't told me, I would have made so much more when difficulty was that low (-;

[gogxmagog]

4chan, believe it or not.
oddly, its the third very profitable bit of info I caught wind of on /b/
(I thoroughly researched each tip b4 investing ofc)
one involving a way to boost adsense profits (made over 60k)
another was a tip on some pharmaceutical penny stock (made ~30k)
and bitcoin I heard about in early 2012, started buying at 20 early this year as it was just beginning to shoot up.(wish I'd acted sooner) 

sometimes the /b/ros are goodguygreg!

[CompNsci]

In late 2010 I saw a mention in Slashdot, and so went to investigate.