Don't feel bad newbies - Early adopter without many Bitcoins

[bitpop]

I am an early adopter and I only have a few Bitcoins.

In early 2011 I mined ~1,000 Bitcoins. Before we had paper wallets and encryption I had my wallet on a Bitlocked harddrive. Well that harddrive completely crashed.

My Ghost backup sadly turned out to have backed up corrupted data due to Bitlocker. New Bitlocker technology and old Ghost did not work well together I learned. At that point it also wasn't easy to export private keys and I didn't know that much yet.

There went around 1,000 BTC.

I came back and mined more with GPUs this time. I have an illness and even though I'm a brilliant PHP programmer, holding a steady job is hard. So the Bitcoins I mined had to pay for the GPUs and electricity as I mined them. I wasn't left with much even though I was a diehard believer and wish I could have held them.

Part of what I had left, 100 BTC was spent on Butterfly Labs. This was right after their good FPGA delivery. I donated what I had left to the newly launched Sean's Outpost, donated to projects, faucets and purchased from all the Bitcoin merchants I could to support the economy. I bought Alpaca socks for 30 BTC! When I didn't have BTC I bought them to buy what I needed if there was a merchant who took BTC. I thought I'd make it all back. Well their ASICs were years late and I only made a couple of BTC.

I am very glad I was part of the early people to prove Bitcoins were great for commerce and to show new merchants there was a market. I am proud to be part of the early Bitcoin economy.

This year I got a loan and bought 2 KNCs. Delivered perfectly. However, I again had to sell BTC to pay for electricity. I had to pay back the loan and sold one KNC on this forum for 17 BTC.

So with the couple thousand BTC I could have right now, I only have a few. It's sad because I was there, at the right time, in the right place and a total believer. But oh well.

What makes me mad though is Butterfly Labs turned out to be scum bags and now have even more Bitcoins they took from us. I wish I was able to generate that many early on legitimately.

Lessons learned: It is still the early period! If you are here right now, you ARE an early adopter. I should have bought the BTCs I could have but then again I had to take care of my family and don't have a steady income stream. The few Bitcoins I have I will hold on to as much as I can as long as my family is ok.

$700 is nothing. Buy 1 Bitcoin and sleep on it. Come back in a few years and you will be well off. Some early adopters are in my boat so don't fret. You are still here at the right time, in the right place. Help the economy! Find a merchant that accepts what you want and buy and send the BTC instead of money. Or buy gift cards on Gyft for almost anywhere.

PS. I love you guys and I love this board. I've never actively been involved in a forum before or after this forum. Sometimes I know I may be abrasive but I try to be helpful and I'm always honest. Can't wait for the years ahead!

My goal is to set you at ease. Otherwise people look at all the early members and assume thousands of btc which I wish was true. But those early adopter conspiracy theories aren't true. There's very few of us that still have many of the original bitcoins. Those that have the most just bought them. Not many early adopters went out and bought 50 Xeons to mine. There's no pyramid scheme.

Tldr; Hodl. Do not mine, trade, altcoin, invest, gamble, etc.

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[abstractednerve]

brohug

[bitpop]

brohug

[Digigami]

Looking back, I made some pretty foolish decisions with the BTC I've possessed since discovery too. (Looks like I reg'd here just a few weeks before you did)

Knowing what I know now I certainly would have done things different, but had we all known where we would be today then maybe we all would have held, and the first bubble would have been too big, and crashed so hard it never got back off the ground?

Meh, can't fret over crap we didn't know about at the time.. Hopefully you still came out ahead to some degree. The learning experiences along the way has been priceless in any case.

[bitpop]

Looking back, I made some pretty foolish decisions with the BTC I've possessed since discovery too. (Looks like I reg'd here just a few weeks before you did)

Knowing what I know now I certainly would have done things different, but had we all known where we would be today then maybe we all would have held, and the first bubble would have been too big, and crashed so hard it never got back off the ground?

Meh, can't fret over crap we didn't know about at the time.. Hopefully you still came out ahead to some degree. The learning experiences along the way has been priceless in any case.

Very true. It's like past relationships, you had to break up to learn those lessons and we are finally ready to be in a committed relationship. There is no going back because we needed those lessons.

[abstractednerve]

Looking back, I made some pretty foolish decisions with the BTC I've possessed since discovery too. (Looks like I reg'd here just a few weeks before you did)

Knowing what I know now I certainly would have done things different, but had we all known where we would be today then maybe we all would have held, and the first bubble would have been too big, and crashed so hard it never got back off the ground?

Meh, can't fret over crap we didn't know about at the time.. Hopefully you still came out ahead to some degree. The learning experiences along the way has been priceless in any case.

Very true. It's like past relationships, you had to break up to learn those lessons and we are finally ready to be in a committed relationship. There is no going back because we needed those lessons.

Yup exactly.

[Pazatron]

Tell me about your hard drive crash. I may be able to offer my services.

[bitpop]

Tell me about your hard drive crash. I may be able to offer my services.

Head crash. I've already tried a service. Disk is long gone now.

[jp26]

Thanks for your post. New to the forum myself and relatively new to BTC. I appreciate hearing your experiences.

EDIT: And I just looked at your profile page, saw your BTC address, and already feel like I must be doing something wrong. :-)

[ausipxb]

not to worry mate these ALT coins will make up for that BTC 

[Pazatron]

Tell me about your hard drive crash. I may be able to offer my services.

Head crash. I've already tried a service. Disk is long gone now.

Oh well, good luck with the mining and stick to SSDs & backups in future.

[hasenfang]

Sorry about that... that really sucks!

Glad you are still part of the community!

I am interested in the miner you have for sale...

[infinitybo]

@Bitpop You are just the man because everyday we can feel your love and that's great ! really don't change anything mate

[bitpop]

Thanks for your post. New to the forum myself and relatively new to BTC. I appreciate hearing your experiences.

EDIT: And I just looked at your profile page, saw your BTC address, and already feel like I must be doing something wrong. :-)

Lol thats an easteregg

[bitpop]

Sorry about that... that really sucks!

Glad you are still part of the community!

I am interested in the miner you have for sale...

Pm me

[bitpop]

@Bitpop You are just the man because everyday we can feel your love and that's great ! really don't change anything mate

I'm a lover not a fighter

[jpdemoor]

Great story. It's not worth to look back at decisions in the past as the situation was different then and you could not know what was to come. Just try to learn what you can from it and concentrate on the future

[jordanlcn]

Thank you sir for the sharing your story.  I am not an early adopter but I did know about bitcoin since 2011 but I cant call myself a skeptic. Considering where I am from and the income I was getting prevented me from even considering joining "mining".  To be honest the first PC I bought for myself was in 2012 and I got it from Ebay bidding warz.

I get what you mean. Its never to late.  Bitcoin's future is not fixed but the way things are going it just might make it to the moon.

[toolatetoberich?]

Man your post makes me feel so good to read, I hope that doesn't mean I'm a bad person haha.  While not actively using bitcoins that early, I had dabbled into mining a couple of times around 1.5 years ago and thought about seriously investing around a year ago, then had major life situations come up and distract me and put it on the back burner to be forgotten about. 

I hope you're right about if you're seriously investing now you'll still be considered an early adopter, I agree with you on this and hope we're right so I can get that feeling out of the pit of my stomach if nothing else.  Like how could I not have invested last year, I knew about this and was a believer and KNEW it was very time sensitive.  I wish so much I would have desposited enough BTC on sealswithclubs to play some low stakes holdem, which I almost did but didn't.  That situation really makes me laugh/vomit, the total hilarity of putting like 1K to play some low/mid stakes poker for fun, only to have that money sitting in that form in my poker account not only make me so much more then anyone could feasibly ever make at those stakes but enough to make me comfortable financially for life.

I feel like for every bitcoin horror story there's a bitcoin miracle story though.  I decided a few days ago that I am investing every spare cent I have in bitcoin, possibly going to a few extremes to be able to invest more I'm not sure yet.  I honestly thought about selling my car, taking out large loans, etc.  Those seem like bad ideas but only kind of.  Either way I feel your pain man, best of luck to you!

[bitpop]

Man your post makes me feel so good to read, I hope that doesn't mean I'm a bad person haha.  While not actively using bitcoins that early, I had dabbled into mining a couple of times around 1.5 years ago and thought about seriously investing around a year ago, then had major life situations come up and distract me and put it on the back burner to be forgotten about.  

I hope you're right about if you're seriously investing now you'll still be considered an early adopter, I agree with you on this and hope we're right so I can get that feeling out of the pit of my stomach if nothing else.  Like how could I not have invested last year, I knew about this and was a believer and KNEW it was very time sensitive.  I wish so much I would have desposited enough BTC on sealswithclubs to play some low stakes holdem, which I almost did but didn't.  That situation really makes me laugh/vomit, the total hilarity of putting like 1K to play some low/mid stakes poker for fun, only to have that money sitting in that form in my poker account not only make me so much more then anyone could feasibly ever make at those stakes but enough to make me comfortable financially for life.

I feel like for every bitcoin horror story there's a bitcoin miracle story though.  I decided a few days ago that I am investing every spare cent I have in bitcoin, possibly going to a few extremes to be able to invest more I'm not sure yet.  I honestly thought about selling my car, taking out large loans, etc.  Those seem like bad ideas but only kind of.  Either way I feel your pain man, best of luck to you!

Hey it took this far to get you interested and you're still early. Things are looking good to be extreme but always be prepared to lose it all.

Ps the goal was to make you feel good. Otherwise people look at all the early members and assume thousands btc which I wish was true