Questions to BTC Holders 2011 And Before

[jerry0]

I heard about btc in 2011 when someone told me about it online and they said it would be big.  I looked at it for a bit and then thought this seems stupid as its like a joke.  I believe price at the time was 10 dollars or so.  But i believe it was 1 dollar earlier in the year etc.  I never thought about buying it because it just seemed fake to me etc.


Now for those of you who bought or owned btc in 2011 and before...



1.  Was it easy to buy btc?  How did one that in the US?  Was it through the exchanges and which ones?  Mount Gox i believe was most popular one?  You had to connect your us bank account to it right?  Or did ppl buy it through certain sites and pay via paypal or underground sites or things like that?


2.  Where did you store your btc back then?  Was it in exchanges?  Did most do that?  I asked and someone mentioned electrum came out in late 2011 or so.  So did a small percentage kept in in wallets like that?  What other wallets like electrum existed back then?  What about ppl that got btc in 2009 or 2010?  Where they did they store it?  Were there very few that bought like 1k or 10k btc since price of it back then i heard was like 1 cent or so?  I mean, there is no harm in buying that if well its one cent.  And if so, where did they store it?


3.  Was it easy to acquire btc free back then or something?  Like were people giving them out as bonuses or for doing things etc?  The other thing is back then, were there any btc online casinos or sportsbooks like there is now or there was none around 2011 and before.  I assume there were none?  And was btc used as a form of payment much or not?  If so, like for what type of things?  Like imagine someone wants a website built and someone was willing to do the job... did those ppl offer btc or accept btc as oppose to say cash or paypal or bank transfer?  Did you or many point treated btc like it was nothing?  Like oh heres 100 btc, thats 1 dollar so nothing?

[LeGaulois]

On MtGox, you could deposit money via Paypal and credit card. After they added bank transfers, Liberty reserve and Dwolla. After the Liberty Reserve scandal, they removed it and replaced with Paxum(?) and then Okpay.
I had given bitcoins to users on a forum just as a Christmas gift. I don't see them anymore so they must be rich now.

(Electrum came in 2013)

[jerry0]

So with Mtgox, you mean send funds from paypal to mtgox?  Like if you are making a purchase similar to ebay purchase?


What do you mean liberty reserve and dwolla?


So was it pretty easy to buy btc back then based on what you described?  Because if its paypal, that seems simple.  But do most ppl just keep the btc in mtgox back then?  Or did they have their own wallet?  So if you wanted to sell btc, you could do it via mtgox and get paid via paypal similar to how you pay for it?

[arakosta]

I used to live in Eastern Europe back in 2011, and Bitcoin was just beginning to gain reputation among tech-savy young adults, my demographic mostly.
I didn't buy any BTC back then, although I remember mining for a few days. Buying was mostly done on local forums if my memory serves me right. A year or so later, BTC Atms started popping around, and exchanges gaining traction as well.
People used to tip with bitcoin on some forums back then, but I can't seem to remember if it was in 2011 or before.

[cryptjh]

I think most people most have seen some article or have some friends who was talking about bitcoins, in bitcoins first few years, I remember trying to figure out have to buy bitcoin and hold bitcoin or mine bitcoins, but it all seems so complicated. So I never got on the train back when bitcoins was really cheap and new, and I think most people missed that chance also, even tho they knew about bitcoin in the early days.

[bitbunnny]

I'm one of those who got involved in Bitcoin back then. It was the very beginning and Bitcoin wasn't nearly so popular and known as it's now. The price was relatively high for my income I had then but I decided to give it a try and didn't regret.
Opportunities for storing Bitcoin were very limited and I remember that I kept mine on blockchain wallet. It was much harder then from my point of view so I think todays' Bitcoin users are spoiled.

[ipanks]

I don't buy bitcoin in that year because I knew bitcoin at mid-end of 2013 when the price is at $200-$300. In that time, I don't know how to buy bitcoin because I only collect satoshi from faucet only and keep it in the local exchange. While I collect and save, I am trading to trade bitcoin against altcoin or bitcoin against local fiat, and I make a profit because of that. I know about bitcoin-qt and multibit to save bitcoin I have, and I try for a while until I decide to store it in the exchange.

[LeGaulois]

So with Mtgox, you mean send funds from paypal to mtgox?  Like if you are making a purchase similar to ebay purchase?


What do you mean liberty reserve and dwolla?


So was it pretty easy to buy btc back then based on what you described?  Because if its paypal, that seems simple.  But do most ppl just keep the btc in mtgox back then?  Or did they have their own wallet?  So if you wanted to sell btc, you could do it via mtgox and get paid via paypal similar to how you pay for it?

Yes a lot of people were storing their bitcoins on MtGox since they trusted this exchange (it doesn't change in 2019 lol).
Liberty  Reserve was a payment processor, its story is long you didn't have to verify your account, it was popular to use it for scammers, especially HYIPs (admin-victims). The site has been sized suddenly by The US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Reserve and they arrested the owner in Europe. This news was all over the world for some weeks/months
Dwolla is for Americans citizens to make ACH transfers (a legit biz.)

[chicken65]

Much easier to buy BTC back then and on this forum you could literally get them free. There's a lot of people out there (early adopters) who must have had hundreds and thousands of BTC passing through their hands. Imagine they kept their BTC. Most didn't, they were being traded for anything from CD's to gold. I got in to it early, was even mining BTC with a PC. left and came back a cpl of years later.

[audaciousbeing]

In 2011, I was fairly young which means it was university education that was the priority then and every activities that does not support that get to have less attention but that does not remove the fact that I got aware of bitcoin at the time because when I visit some sites, you get to see the symbol popping up here and there but I could not buy as the process was not as simple as it is theses days. Although, other people I know who were able to go against all odds made a fortune out of it at the time.

[Lyana]

I only found out about the Bitcoin in 2013. And then I collected it on faucets. They gave it very well and 1 bitcoin was easy and fast to get. Only the value of Bitcoin was very low then, and I didn't think about storing my Bitcoin somehow, I spent it on stupidity in the form of hype ((

[Tstar]

Interesting times

On your questions:

1. It was much more harder than now. The only place I knew for buying was MtGox but I only used it for selling and trading as I was mining mine coins as funny experiment.

2. MtGox and the Core wallet. Back then the chain was relatively small and I had it on few computers.

3. It was easy if you are going to mine it yourself. I think most people was getting their coins from mining and then trying to do other stuff out of curiosity.

[jerry0]

Interesting times

On your questions:

1. It was much more harder than now. The only place I knew for buying was MtGox but I only used it for selling and trading as I was mining mine coins as funny experiment.

2. MtGox and the Core wallet. Back then the chain was relatively small and I had it on few computers.

3. It was easy if you are going to mine it yourself. I think most people was getting their coins from mining and then trying to do other stuff out of curiosity.

Okay so when people did mining, how much did that cost?  So basically it was creating btc with your computer?  So back then if you wanted to make 1 btc, how much would it cost?  So it was electricity cost?  Like if you wanted to make 100 btc, how long that took and how much did it cost you in terms of electricity?


So back then, people were just giving btc as in buying/sell them like it was nothing back then?  If that is the case, wouldn't that mean ppl would be trading or selling like 100 btc each time as if its nothing if it was like 0.01 or so?  Once btc hit 1 dollar, did ppl still treat it like it was nothing?  I assume once it hit a certain price, say 10 dollars, thats when many ppl started taking it seriously?  Im trying to imagine when it was like 10 cents and ppl pay like 200 btc to buy something like it was nothing.

[jerrison]

the thoughts that becloud my mind and i want to ask the holders of bitcoin that ever got to know of bitcoin before 2012 is this: it is known that once in a while, a certain technology comes and dominates and creates an atmosphere technologically where other technologies can leverage upon there by making it an avenue for business. how did the holders get to know that blockchain and bitcoin is that technology.

[BurgerCash]

2012 here, but I think I can answer.
1. Was it easy to buy BTC - the first easy way was Mt Gox which was already up when I joined, but not so much in the early days. It was super easy to mine them, though.
2. Where did we store BTC then - Bitcoin Core wallet was all I needed. I understood how it worked so I knew not to leave anything on exchanges.
3. Free BTC - Gavin Andresen's faucet gave away 1BTC for a single click, so yeah, pretty damn easy.

[BitHodler]

the thoughts that becloud my mind and i want to ask the holders of bitcoin that ever got to know of bitcoin before 2012 is this: it is known that once in a while, a certain technology comes and dominates and creates an atmosphere technologically where other technologies can leverage upon there by making it an avenue for business. how did the holders get to know that blockchain and bitcoin is that technology.

In general, before the fundamentals were as strong as they are today, you are taking a risk by allocating a certain part of your net worth to something you think might take off, but on the other hand could also fail hard.

In most cases it's a fairly small (5-10%) allocation, which is a risk worth taking, so people get over it pretty quickly in case it's a complete flop. I'm glad to say that those who did invest back then, have been generously rewarded.

Investing in Bitcoin today is way easier than it was years ago, so my respect goes out to any early bird that held through bear and bull markets believing in Bitcoin despite all the hate and trash talk it went through.

[Herbert2020]

the thoughts that becloud my mind and i want to ask the holders of bitcoin that ever got to know of bitcoin before 2012 is this: it is known that once in a while, a certain technology comes and dominates and creates an atmosphere technologically where other technologies can leverage upon there by making it an avenue for business. how did the holders get to know that blockchain and bitcoin is that technology.

In general, before the fundamentals were as strong as they are today, you are taking a risk by allocating a certain part of your net worth to something you think might take off, but on the other hand could also fail hard.

In most cases it's a fairly small (5-10%) allocation, which is a risk worth taking, so people get over it pretty quickly in case it's a complete flop. I'm glad to say that those who did invest back then, have been generously rewarded.

Investing in Bitcoin today is way easier than it was years ago, so my respect goes out to any early bird that held through bear and bull markets believing in Bitcoin despite all the hate and trash talk it went through.

when talking about early years (specially the first couple of years when mining was possible with CPUs alone) you should also consider the fact that the only way of obtaining bitcoin was not buying or investing a lot in mining equipment. the easy way was to simply mine it with your computer. so it was easier to get some BTC by just running bitcoin-qt and get some block rewards.
so many of those who got bitcoin in early years weren't exactly taking big risks of "investing" money.

[Tstar]

Interesting times

On your questions:

1. It was much more harder than now. The only place I knew for buying was MtGox but I only used it for selling and trading as I was mining mine coins as funny experiment.

2. MtGox and the Core wallet. Back then the chain was relatively small and I had it on few computers.

3. It was easy if you are going to mine it yourself. I think most people was getting their coins from mining and then trying to do other stuff out of curiosity.

Okay so when people did mining, how much did that cost?  So basically it was creating btc with your computer?  So back then if you wanted to make 1 btc, how much would it cost?  So it was electricity cost?  Like if you wanted to make 100 btc, how long that took and how much did it cost you in terms of electricity?


So back then, people were just giving btc as in buying/sell them like it was nothing back then?  If that is the case, wouldn't that mean ppl would be trading or selling like 100 btc each time as if its nothing if it was like 0.01 or so?  Once btc hit 1 dollar, did ppl still treat it like it was nothing?  I assume once it hit a certain price, say 10 dollars, thats when many ppl started taking it seriously?  Im trying to imagine when it was like 10 cents and ppl pay like 200 btc to buy something like it was nothing.

I don't think that most people are counting stuff like electricity cost and is it effective. At least I wasn't thinking. It was more like a way to experiment and try something new.

For every amateur miner like me back then the price doesn't matter. A 10c or a dollar wasn't a game changer, it wasn't a commercial venture, it's was a fun venture. For example, I remember sending 100+ BTC to a friend of mine just to show him what it Bitcoin and to have some to play with.

[jerry0]

So basically back then lot of ppl did have 100s and 1000s of btc and traded it and sent it like it was nothing then right?  But when btc was say 10 cent or less... i assume that was when less ppl got involved... but once it was 1 dollar... more ppl looked into it right?


Also was it pretty easy to sell btc back then?  So mount gox ppl talk about... So for example.  Say you bought btc at 10 cent each.  Price went up to 1 dollar.  You want to sell all the btc.  You sell it at mount gox exchange right and when you do... you get a usd amount in your account?  Then if you want to send that money to your us bank account... you did an ach transfer or wire transfer?  If so, what were the costs?  Thus its similar to like coinbase now etc?  Or was it a bit different?

[pixie85]

I know a guy who mined BTC at work. He was working night shifts in 2011 and brought a pc from home that mined for free while he was working. In 2011 with a decent setup you were able to mine several bitcoins every month. Not many people were buying their coins but since you could mine on your normal gaming PC there was no reason not to.