I'm an undeserving early adopter, and here is my side.

[Uekiya]

This has been bothering me a little, so now I'd like to offer a rebuttal to the most common criticisms:

You make excellent points, but communicating them should have been unnecessary.  A sad world in which we live today.

[iddo]

If the pricing you bought your coins at was similar to the pricing of the infamous 10,000 coin pizza, 1000 euros would have bought you roughly 550,000 BTC.  Hello, $8.8 millionaire, good to meet you.  

I don't think that anyone has 550k BTC, according to the following list the richest address is less than 300k BTC, but maybe one person has more than one of these addresses?
http://bitcoinreport.blogspot.com/2011/06/bitcoin-top-1000-rich-list-6th-june.html

[SgtSpike]

If the pricing you bought your coins at was similar to the pricing of the infamous 10,000 coin pizza, 1000 euros would have bought you roughly 550,000 BTC.  Hello, $8.8 millionaire, good to meet you.  

I don't think that anyone has 550k BTC, according to the following list the richest address is less than 300k BTC, but maybe one person has more than one of these addresses?
http://bitcoinreport.blogspot.com/2011/06/bitcoin-top-1000-rich-list-6th-june.html

Yeah, you can't rely on that at all.  Every wallet has at least 100 addresses, and some BTC can be stored on each of them.

[Nagios]

+1 and thank you!

[phillipsjk]

I found out about bitcoin months ago and decided I liked the concept.

Recently (about 2 months ago), I took a second look; planning to buy some. I think the price as about $3 USD then. I still don't have any bitcoin. I want to have all of my ducks in a row first.

About one month ago I started signing my e-mail using gpg. Now that I have a public key, I can participate in a web-of trust. People can also send me encrypted e-mail (though I have not actually been able to reply with encrypted e-mail yet).

I investigated getting a safety-deposit box for my "savings" wallet; over 10km away from my house. While I was at it, I bought an external hard-drive so that I can keep an off-site back-up for my fileserver in there as well. I also bought a USB key for holding an encrypted copy of my wallet.

I also plan to use full-drive encryption on my laptop computer, and start using better password management. Password management will include a list of websites I have an account with and passwords stored in my safety deposit box. Since the information is kept in one place, I can then change those passwords periodically. For low-value passwords, I will likely start using a browser keyring as well.

Before investing in mining hardware, I plan to focus on network connectivity first. In particular, I plan on IPv6 connectivity, and hopefully finding a reasonably priced connection I am actually allowed to use. Because I no longer trust my ISP, all HTTP traffic will be sent down an encrypted tunnel. If I really am a multi-thousandaire after a year of holding bitcoins, I will likely invest in "big iron" boxes that would be mining only to protect the network.

Edit: I also plan on spending Bitcoin. I don't do online banking or use a credit card, so my transaction fees are quite high. Even if bitcoins are worthless in a year, I expect bitcoins to pay for themselves after only 10 transactions.

TL;DR: I am risk-adverse and am taking my time. I would not be surprised if I am considered an "early adopter" in two more years.

[iddo]

I think the price as about $3 USD then. I still don't have any bitcoin. I want to have all of my ducks in a row first.

I failed to understand, why didn't you buy at $3 ? Did you expect that you would be able to obtain bitcoins more cheaply in the future?

[phillipsjk]

I don't have a secure place to store my bitcoins at the moment. By "secure" I mean secure from attackers and data-loss.

I have been putting off setting up my computers properly for about 6 years now. Everything is predicated on getting the fileserver working with verified back-ups. I am optimistic I can be up and running by the 14th.

[iddo]

I don't have a secure place to store my bitcoins at the moment. By "secure" I mean secure from attackers and data-loss.

I have been putting off setting up my computers properly for about 6 years now. Everything is predicated on getting the fileserver working with verified back-ups. I am optimistic I can be up and running by the 14th.

Just encrypt wallet.dat with a strong password, and keep the encrypted file in several places (dropbox, usb flashdrive, laptop, ...), if you're concerned that the computer where you create wallet.dat contains trojans or keyloggers, then create it on a clean install... Why would that be insecure from attackers or data loss?

You still didn't answer, why didn't you buy at $3 ?

[phillipsjk]

Let's assume bitcoins are worth $7000 USD each in two years. The difference between buying at $3 and $20 is not that big a deal. I don't want a valuable wallet.dat on any of my machines until I am ready.

If I make over 10 transactions before the value drops to $0 USD each, the difference between buying at $3 or $20 is moot as well.

I am currently mining at about 670khash/s from a live CD. I am not sure what I would do if I actually processed a transaction by mistake. Likely make an offline wallet and send the coins to it.

Edit: Another reason I have been in no great hurry to purchase Bitcoins is market volatility. I started valuing Bitcoins at the 30 day weighted average price. Since the spot price is now 25% below that, I should be snapping them up

[Bonkers]

All I can say (again) is that Bitcoin is a marathon not a sprint.

As is everything worthwhile in life.

[guywhogotgoxed]

Good for you if you made money investing in bitcoins.

Personally I do not mind what the price of bitcoins is, as long as it doesnt fluctuate violently. I "earn" my BTC by private services, and it works better than any other payment method right now (as long as I dont get goxed again, LOL).

[BitApparel]

But perhaps I'm an exception, you say? Well, the day I  read Satoshi’s paper, I became a firm believer in the concept. I am passionate about bitcoin and optimistic that it will change the world for the better.      I immediately told my techie friends about it.  Not ONE of them saw the potential in it that I saw.  They just didn’t “get” bitcoin at that time. They even laughed at me when I sent money in an envelope to some dude in Canada for some worthless cryptographic keys. 

A wise old owl once said, "Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful.”

Congratulations

[Jaime Frontero]

Pretense you say you're an early adopter but why is this your first post in the forum??

Why have you waited more than 2 years to post a so well elaborated post as this one?

Good point.

Still waiting for these 2 answers.
Your profile says you registered in the forum today !! Why did you took so long? What happened today?

it's a lousy goddamn point.

have you read this forum?

way to go, Pretense!

[Etlase2]

See above. Investing isn't free. For every investment that pays off, like bitcoin, there are 10 investments where I never see my money again.

So you used some conjugation of "invest" at least 10 times in your post. Why can't bitcoin be a currency, not an investment? (Aside from programming design, of course.)

Is it because it wouldn't have caught on? There is so much praise for how bitcoin will revolutionize the world, but this could only be accomplished by promising wealth off of the fiat of others?

[iddo]

Let's assume bitcoins are worth $7000 USD each in two years. The difference between buying at $3 and $20 is not that big a deal. I don't want a valuable wallet.dat on any of my machines until I am ready.

If I make over 10 transactions before the value drops to $0 USD each, the difference between buying at $3 or $20 is moot as well.

I am currently mining at about 670khash/s from a live CD. I am not sure what I would do if I actually processed a transaction by mistake. Likely make an offline wallet and send the coins to it.

Edit: Another reason I have been in no great hurry to purchase Bitcoins is market volatility. I started valuing Bitcoins at the 30 day weighted average price. Since the spot price is now 25% below that, I should be snapping them up

Still not sure that I understand your attitude regarding $3 vs $20, doesn't the ratio 20/3 remain the same even if the price goes to $7000 ? i.e. if you bought e.g. 200 bitcoins at $3 each then in dollar amount you would have $7000x200=$1,400,000, but if you buy at $20 each then you would have $7000x30=$210,000

i hope you meant 670mhash/s (not khash), but still if you're not using a pool then the chance of getting the 50 BTC reward is way too negligible.

And your comments regarding security were also a little unclear: if you said that you plan to buy, say, 500 gold coins for $1500 each, but first you need to prepare in advance a secure safe to put them in, that would sound reasonable. But for bitcoins, simply encrypting your wallet.dat with a strong password and storing it in several places is safe enough, no? You could even use deniable encryption with truecrypt if you're concerned that criminals and/or the government will try to force you to decrypt it.

[Alex Beckenham]

Still not sure that I understand your attitude regarding $3 vs $20, doesn't the ratio 20/3 remain the same even if the price goes to $7000 ? i.e. if you bought e.g. 200 bitcoins at $3 each then in dollar amount you would have $7000x200=$1,400,000, but if you buy at $20 each then you would have $7000x30=$210,000

I think what he's saying is this:

Let's say you were to buy exactly 100 btc...

@ $3 each you'd be spending $300
@ $20 each you'd be spending $2000

Now let's say they go to $7000 each... your 100 bitcoins are now worth $700,000, so who cares if you initially spent $300 or $2000 on them?

[kite]

See above. Investing isn't free. For every investment that pays off, like bitcoin, there are 10 investments where I never see my money again.

So you used some conjugation of "invest" at least 10 times in your post. Why can't bitcoin be a currency, not an investment? (Aside from programming design, of course.)

Is it because it wouldn't have caught on? There is so much praise for how bitcoin will revolutionize the world, but this could only be accomplished by promising wealth off of the fiat of others?

Currencies are, inherently, investments.

[Reikoku]

Still not sure that I understand your attitude regarding $3 vs $20, doesn't the ratio 20/3 remain the same even if the price goes to $7000 ? i.e. if you bought e.g. 200 bitcoins at $3 each then in dollar amount you would have $7000x200=$1,400,000, but if you buy at $20 each then you would have $7000x30=$210,000

I think what he's saying is this:

Let's say you were to buy exactly 100 btc...

@ $3 each you'd be spending $300
@ $20 each you'd be spending $2000

Now let's say they go to $7000 each... your 100 bitcoins are now worth $700,000, so who cares if you initially spent $300 or $2000 on them?

But you'd be more likely to buy $x worth of Bitcoin.

If you bought $3000 worth of Bitcoin at $3 you'd have 1000 BTC.
If you bought $3000 worth of Bitcoin at $20 you'd have 150 BTC.

At $7000 a coin:

If you spent $3 a coin, you'd cash out for $7 million.
If you spent $20 a coin, you'd cash out for $1.05 million.

[Alex Beckenham]

Still not sure that I understand your attitude regarding $3 vs $20, doesn't the ratio 20/3 remain the same even if the price goes to $7000 ? i.e. if you bought e.g. 200 bitcoins at $3 each then in dollar amount you would have $7000x200=$1,400,000, but if you buy at $20 each then you would have $7000x30=$210,000

I think what he's saying is this:

Let's say you were to buy exactly 100 btc...

@ $3 each you'd be spending $300
@ $20 each you'd be spending $2000

Now let's say they go to $7000 each... your 100 bitcoins are now worth $700,000, so who cares if you initially spent $300 or $2000 on them?

But you'd be more likely to buy $x worth of Bitcoin.

If you bought $3000 worth of Bitcoin at $3 you'd have 1000 BTC.
If you bought $3000 worth of Bitcoin at $20 you'd have 150 BTC.

At $7000 a coin:

If you spent $3 a coin, you'd cash out for $7 million.
If you spent $20 a coin, you'd cash out for $1.05 million.

I agree that's more likely... I was just trying to offer an explanation that matched Phillip's post, so people might see where he's coming from.

[Etlase2]

So you used some conjugation of "invest" at least 10 times in your post. Why can't bitcoin be a currency, not an investment? (Aside from programming design, of course.)

Is it because it wouldn't have caught on? There is so much praise for how bitcoin will revolutionize the world, but this could only be accomplished by promising wealth off of the fiat of others?

Currencies are, inherently, investments.

Really? I thought they were a medium of exchange. Just because they are used as an investment does not make them "inherently" one.

Business minds disagree with you.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-currency-can-never-be-an-investment-2010-9