What's the maximum amount of bitcoins you ever held?

[bryant.coleman]

I had around 800 once.

once

Damn, but you lost them? Or gambled them away?

Bought $10k worth at $17/BTC in June 2011 before the slow decline. I did some buying and selling to get it up to 800 as the price fell below $10/BTC.

Then it kept falling, my goal was 1000 BTC. So I put it all on Bitcoinica, where I could short the price. My biggest short was when it was at $4/BTC and falling, I was ready to stop the short at $3.50 but it fell to $3.60 then climbed over $4.50 squeezing me out. I lost about 300 BTC on that one short.

It seemed sketchy that each of my big shorts was squeezed out just before I could make money so I pulled my 400 BTC out of Bitcoinica. A week later they were "hacked".

I needed money for a downpayment on a house from every money source I could come up with in 2012 and sold it all at $11/BTC.

So you don't have any coins now?

[1713856753]

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[1713856753]

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[1713856753]

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[superfastkyle]

I had around 400 at one time as well... This was after IOcoins were taking off the exchange and I was close to half of the hashrate for a while. I mined 100's of thousands which I sold for several hundred bitcoin when they eventually came back from the dead.

[hyphymikey]

300 in Feb'13
-120 for a car
-80 stolen
-50 margin trading
-50 on random purchases
=0 coin now 

Should have put them all on a paper wallet and not margin trade… ugh

[EvilPanda]

Only double digits, but I first heard about it a year ago. Made some mistakes as well, like selling at ~$500 when I thought it couldn't get any higher  

[Melbustus]

...
What a story, I wish I had gotten in bitcoin back then

One thing I think a lot of newbies fail to fully appreciate is that "back then" bitcoin was a small, fascinating topic that not many cared about. Plenty of us saw the potential, yes, and really believed early on that it could change the world....but in terms of investment, I think many of us thought we had A LOT more time to accumulate. The speed at which price/adoption/impact/awareness has grown has completely taken me, at least, by surprise. I remember in Q1-Q2 2012 when bitcoin was <$5 for months thinking (and saying to my wife) several times "we should buy a lot more bitcoin", but not pulling the trigger cuz I just didn't feel any urgency and had other things going on in my life.

I thought it would take 5-10yrs to get from 2011/early-2012 to where we are today.

Add "viral adoption dynamics" to the "things bitcoin has taught me" column (already a very long list).

[gentlemand]

Aye, that's a very valid point. It's now a totally different landscape and it's easy to think that you would've bought 100,000 in 2010 and just sat there until now or beyond. If that had been the case the price probably would've reached $100,000 within the first week.

I wonder what people will be writing about this period of time in five years or so.

[kaysersoze]

...
What a story, I wish I had gotten in bitcoin back then

One thing I think a lot of newbies fail to fully appreciate is that "back then" bitcoin was a small, fascinating topic that not many cared about. Plenty of us saw the potential, yes, and really believed early on that it could change the world....but in terms of investment, I think many of us thought we had A LOT more time to accumulate. The speed at which price/adoption/impact/awareness has grown has completely taken me, at least, by surprise. I remember in Q1-Q2 2012 when bitcoin was <$5 for months thinking (and saying to my wife) several times "we should buy a lot more bitcoin", but not pulling the trigger cuz I just didn't feel any urgency and had other things going on in my life.

I thought it would take 5-10yrs to get from 2011/early-2012 to where we are today.

Add "viral adoption dynamics" to the "things bitcoin has taught me" column (already a very long list).

Damn its so futuristic to read all the stories from you "veterans" I wish I had been in the game earlier... or maybe not cause either you are banging your head every day for have lost a once in a lifetime opportunity or you are very very happy... I think its pretty safe bet that Hollywood will make a movie about btc in 5y+ time when its 10k+ and basically has been widely accepted

With that in mind do you think the price acceleration will slow down now?

How did most of the very early adopters like 2011 get into the game? Where did you read hear about it

[gentlemand]

I first read about it in 2009 on a website devoted to economics. I forgot about it completely for a long time.

I occasionally checked up on it in the subsequent years but didn't buy any until October. All throughout that time I had lots of fiat parked doing effectively nothing. No idea why it didn't occur to me as I'm fond of insane risks.

Despite that it feels far easier to bear than having had thousands run through my hands.

Dunno about prices rises. It sure as shit is still a once in a lifetime opportunity.

This has been posted in a similar thread recently. It's still quite a read if you missed it. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=388169.0

[kireinaha]

Damn its so futuristic to read all the stories from you "veterans" I wish I had been in the game earlier... or maybe not cause either you are banging your head every day for have lost a once in a lifetime opportunity or you are very very happy... I think its pretty safe bet that Hollywood will make a movie about btc in 5y+ time when its 10k+ and basically has been widely accepted

With that in mind do you think the price acceleration will slow down now?

How did most of the very early adopters like 2011 get into the game? Where did you read hear about it

what would the hollywood movie about bitcoin be focused on? a lot of geeks sitting in dark rooms reading reddit and other online forums? who will play the winklevoss twins?

[kaysersoze]

Damn its so futuristic to read all the stories from you "veterans" I wish I had been in the game earlier... or maybe not cause either you are banging your head every day for have lost a once in a lifetime opportunity or you are very very happy... I think its pretty safe bet that Hollywood will make a movie about btc in 5y+ time when its 10k+ and basically has been widely accepted

With that in mind do you think the price acceleration will slow down now?

How did most of the very early adopters like 2011 get into the game? Where did you read hear about it

what would the hollywood movie about bitcoin be focused on? a lot of geeks sitting in dark rooms reading reddit and other online forums? who will play the winklevoss twins?

dunno I know how I want the end of movie to look like.... the winklevoss buying back facebook from zuck with btc =)!

[Melbustus]

With that in mind do you think the price acceleration will slow down now?

It has to slow down at some point, but I think we can get into the next order of magnitude on the same fundamental adoption dynamics that have brought us this far. Bitcoin's total "market-cap" is about $8B-$9B today. That's equivalent to the M2 money supply of a lot of small/medium nations, the personal net worth of the world's richest individuals, and there are lots of publicly-traded companies with higher market-caps. At a "market-cap" of $50B, those statements are all still true. Bitcoin today is a toy in terms of global economic influence, and that would *still* be the case at a "market-cap" in the $50B range. To me, that implies fairly unencumbered rise potential for a bit longer.

Start scaling another order of magnitude after that, though, and the dynamic changes, for the first time. In the 100s of $B, bitcoin is worth far more than any individual, many nations' M2 money supplies, almost all publicly-traded companies... I think the change in the scale of global influence at that point is material to adoption velocity. Bitcoin will *really* be disrupting incumbent systems and governments at that point. While I think better technology and systems ultimately win, I also think it'll take time to meaningfully change some of humanity's fundamental means of interaction (money) from the ground up.

That said, I was wrong about how quickly we'd get to where we are today, so who knows...

How did most of the very early adopters like 2011 get into the game? Where did you read hear about it

I saw a story on Slashdot.org in spring 2011, I think.

[wayneyoyo]

I use to have 800 coin for a month when its $8 , i was digital game trader before and i think i am the first who accept bitcoin as payment but who knows the price would ride so high when i already sold them :*(

[CryptoPanda]

yeah I bet so many people sold most of theirs when it hit $30 for a second time in 2012.
Because back then nobody thought it will go much over that all time peak.

Less than year later it's $1100.....

i'm pretty sure nobody imagined that

[qwk]

yeah I bet so many people sold most of theirs when it hit $30 for a second time in 2012.

It never hit $30 in 2012.

[Lauda]

yeah I bet so many people sold most of theirs when it hit $30 for a second time in 2012.

It never hit $30 in 2012.

This is correct. This has not happened in '12. It did in '13.

[CryptoPanda]

ah ok, i stand corrected

[grifferz]

It's trick question. You cannot hold virtual currency.

You can only HODL it.

Which apparently is what everyone who isn't currently preaching doom while simultaneously begging for btc in their signature is doing right now.

[Its About Sharing]

I actually have a friend who has his own pizza story. In Hamburg Germany a few years ago it was in fashion at this one place (?) to buy pizza with btc. He said many people did that. Anyway, he swears he spent over 5000 btc on a pizza. He is actually pretty noticably upset by it and won't really tell me how many. They really (obviously) had no idea about what btc was. I say that at least in part because he said he has 1 btc now!

[jongameson]

I actually have a friend who has his own pizza story. In Hamburg Germany a few years ago it was in fashion at this one place (?) to buy pizza with btc. He said many people did that. Anyway, he swears he spent over 5000 btc on a pizza. He is actually pretty noticably upset by it and won't really tell me how many. They really (obviously) had no idea about what btc was. I say that at least in part because he said he has 1 btc now!

hopefully he got Papa's dipping sauce with that

[drawingthesun]

My peak was about 600.

Now my entire net worth is less than 10 bitcoin.