Poll - How did you obtain your first BTC / satoshis?

[GazetaBitcoin]

After a debate with a Romanian centralized exchange owner, which was trying to impress me with the huge advantages of centralized exchanges, while I was trying to point out the opposite, I decided to open this poll. The idea came up during our discussion, which you can read here: Ce v-ati dori de la un exchange centralizat? (which translated in English means "What would you expect from a centralized exchange?"). Unfortunately, the topic is in English, but you can understand the debate if you'll use Google Translate.

I'm thinking to keep the poll opened for about a month but, if there will be too few answers, I'll keep it opened for a longer amount of time.

Please avoid signature spam, I don't want to be forced to delete irrelevant posts.

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[Charles-Tim]

I was a novice then and I thought there could be big gain from faucets, not knowing they are all not profitable, I registered on cointiply and freebico and made just a single withdrawal on both and left both faucets.

As for mining, I have never earned on it before.

Let me just cut my story short, I have not earned from centralized exchanges before, I use binance and hitbtc and I am currently losing almost $50 on both sites. I do not think they should be listed at all.

You suppose to include signature and bounty campaigns, or forums and publishing sites.

[Daniel91]

If I remember well, my first bitcoin came from the signature campaign.
It happened a long time ago, so I'm not entirely sure anymore 
Maybe even faucets

[Maus0728]

I voted for "Others"

Back in the days, shitposting and replying to any thread that is related to any "Airdrop" activities is my primary motive why I join this community. Fortunately, after signing and shitposting to hundreds of ICO and Scam threads, I manage to find and received a legit airdrop worth @200 USD equivalent to bitcoins. After receiving that amount I was happy but then I realized that this kinds of acts ain't helping me to progress and learn.

[yazher]

I got my first BTC from faucet way back 2016 and it was the hardest job I've ever done in the industry of crypto where I managed to earn $1 in a week, yes it was that low in a week. considering it was my first time trying to earn with the multiple faucets that you can find on the internet at that time. I thought that's the only way you can earn BTC for free except cloud mining. I didn't land to this site at that time because all I was searching is how to earn BTC for free. But that's just another experience for me to grow in this industry if I never have such experience, I won't get my chance to explore more further about BTC.

[ice18]

I got mine from tons of bitcoin faucets including the legendary freebitco.in I remember I can collect atleast 0.1usd per day at this faucet sites Im doing this while working in office the whole day lol.

[mocacinno]

Virwox...
I still remember getting payed using paypal for small jobs, and i used virwox to buy linden dollars (at least, that's the name of the digital "token" i remember) on virwox, then exchange those linden dollars to BTC.

It took them several days to approve my account, they charged a deposit fee (iirc), and exchange fee for eur <--> linden dollars, an exchange fee for linden dollars <--> btc and to top it off, a withdrawal fee for BTC.
Also, at any point in the process, it was impossible to trade or withdraw the full amount... So you had to leave some eur, some linden dollars and some btc on virwox.
At least, that's how i remember it.

If memory serves me right, i exchanged like €400 and i finally got €340 in BTC in my wallet... But at that point i think that was allmost a full BTC...

How times are changing. Eventough they ripped me off, i should have converted my full paypal balance, if i did that, by now i would have had enough money to buy a small house...

[hatshepsut93]

I got my first 0.005 BTC from a faucet in 2012, but then I traded them for Dogecoin in 2014 and left the doges on an exchange that pulled exit scam later on. Then in 2016 I found a small job on this forum thus beggining my real BTC journey, because since then I started taking BTC seriously.

I think it's reasonable that nowadays more people with Bitcoin through exchanges rather than earning it, because earning opportunities became more scarce while awareness of Bitcoin as an investment option only grew in the recent years, and even mainstream media report big BTC movements.

The idea came up during our discussion, which you can read here: Ce v-ati dori de la un exchange centralizat? (which translated in English means "What would you expect from a centralized exchange?")

Can you make a short summary of the stance of that exchange owner on how centralized exchanges are important for obtaining your first BTC? I don't trust google translate.

[GazetaBitcoin]

Can you make a short summary of the stance of that exchange owner on how centralized exchanges are important for obtaining your first BTC? I don't trust google translate.

I'll try The context was that in Romania the law regarding crypto earnings was modified this year, during the pandemic. Our govern managed to solve all the nation's problem thus it had nothing better to do in March than changing that law (you may laugh here). The law was changed in a manner that the exchanges are licensed to operate only if they are selling their users for 0.02BTC willing to offer the state all the customers' private information. Practically, making an easy job for the govern to catch the traders. Before, it was needed a decision from a Court of Law, but with this change the things became more simple for the govern.

In this context, the exchange owner gave inside the topic a few details about the change of the law and he also asked what expectations the users can have from a centralized exchange. He also tried to convince us that his exchange uses high security techniques. Besides, he also asked the reasons for this hate against centralized exchanges, because he said that he feels like the users' hate is actually headed towards the exchange owners. He mentioned here that not the exchange owners make the laws and that they have to obey to the laws. Furthermore, he alleged that he is a huge fan of Bitcoin, that centralized exchanges give a huge help to Bitcoin by making it more popular and that if the centralized exchanges wouldn't have made Bitcoin so popular, it would have been sold only on forums and between friends.

I tried to dismantle all his statements, because I felt they were erroneous. I am a notorious fan of privacy and of control over my own funds and I tried in several times to open people's eyes about the dangers associated with centralized exchanges. A topic of mine on this matter can be found here: Governs are coming for the traders!.

1. Regarding "why people hate centralized exchanges", I said the following: you, among other thousands of exchange owners, try to change the quintessence of Bitcoin, being only determined by greed, as you try to centralize something that was meant to be decentralized. You contribute to ruining Satoshi's work! You could have chosen to sell cucumbers, to run a farm or a factory. But instead you chose to destroy Bitcoin and users' privacy, which is an abomination. If we take this example: a doctor cloning human beings. This would be an abomination, because the man was conceived to be unique on this world, not to be cloned. That would be something against the nature. The same is true for centralized exchanges: because of the owners' greed, they are trying to do this abomination to Bitcoin, breaking its spirit. This is the reason for the hate towards exchanges and also towards the owners. If you would have sold newspapers there was no hate towards you. But for doing this abomination, you have to take this hate. You don't make the laws indeed, the govern makes them. But you chose to act in this field and to follow these laws, which force you to give your users on govern's hands! It was your decision, not someone else's.

2. Regarding "he is a Bitcoin fan and the exchanges actually help Bitcoin by making it more popular": I said that is is not a Bitcoin fan, otherwise he would not try to destroy it. He is a man drove by greed, trying to make a living from centralizing Bitcoin. And I gave him a few examples, using his words, in parallel with Satoshi's words. And I said that I accept that exchanges were useful in the past, when they were not asking for KYC / AML, but not anymore. Now they are dangerous for the users.

The following is a sort of quote from the other topic, translated by me in English, for you:

Let’s remember some of Satoshi’s words.
“I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.
We very, very much need such a system. For transferable proof of work tokens to have value, they must have monetary value.  To have monetary value, they must be transferred within a very large network - for example a file trading network akin to bittorrent”.

“ The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.”.

Question 2: do you think that your allegations confirm or deny Satoshi's statements?

To be more precise:

If the centralized exchanges wouldn't have made Bitcoin so popular, it would have been sold only on forums and between friends || What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.

If the centralized exchanges wouldn't have made Bitcoin so popular, it would have been sold only on forums and between friends || The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone.

If the centralized exchanges wouldn't have made Bitcoin so popular, it would have been sold only on forums and between friends || I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.

If the centralized exchanges wouldn't have made Bitcoin so popular, it would have been sold only on forums and between friends || With e-currency based on cryptographic proof, without the need to trust a third party middleman, money can be secure and transactions effortless.

Question 2.1: What sort of Bitcoin fan are you? How can you comment your words placed in the same line with Satoshi's? Do you think that you are helping Bitcoin or that you actually contribute to ruining it?

At question 3 I asked him about the security systems of the exchange. How can he ensure the user that the exchange is not vulnerable to hackers, if so many exchanges were hacked already, including Binance, the biggest one (not to mention Mt. Gox lol). I told him: "what do you think that CZ would have told the users if he was asked a while ago <<Hey CZ, ma man! Is your exchange safe?>>" - obviously, he would have tried to ensure his users that Binance is secure. Oh well, it wasn't. Then I asked: honestly, can you say that your exchange is more secure than Binance? Or than Cryptopia, Bithumb, Poloniex and all the other hacked exchanges? Lol.

I also asked him how he can comment the sentence "no private keys no funds" and why would a sane person choose to place his private keys on the hands of the exchange, knowing that his funds may be gone or knowing that his personal information would arrive on the govern's desk in the next day after registering with the exchange. Still related to that and to the hate headed towards exchanges, I asked him: if you were a Mt. Gox client, would you look at Karpeles / Mt. Gox with sympathy? You ask the reasons of this hate. If you would have lost your own money, how would you feel? And here I also mentioned exchanges' hypocrisy, as none of them try to attract the clients with real facts, such as: "Come to us! We'll sell your name to the govern in no time!" / "Come to us! We may get hacked and you'll remain without any money, but be our client!" // "Come to us! We may do an exit scam, but be our client!" // "Come to us! We may freeze your account for no reason, but be our client!" and so on.

If you need his answers, let me know. They are mostly irrelevant, as it is obvious that he is trying to defend his business. Nobody running a business would ruin his work through his own words. What's certain is that he was curious how people obtained fist BTC / satoshis, being convinced it was through centralized exchanges. And if it was so, on his opinion, it would be another reason for considering these exchanges a huge help to Bitcoin. I doubted that people got first satoshis from centralized exchanges and from here we got to this topic

[Lucius]

I think most came into possession of their first satoshi through faucets, and so it was in my case. But if we compare the time 5-6 years ago and today, a lot has changed not only when it comes to faucets, but also in the minds of people who have accepted the advice that faucets are a waste of time and that it is still much better to buy Bitcoin.

We all know that today crypto trading is going almost entirely towards full KYC/AML, and that all big players will have to accept it sooner or later. As you can conclude, the owner of that crypto exchange is just defending his business based on the conditions imposed on him by the government. There are only two options, obey the law and continue doing business or put the key in the lock and let someone else work according to the law.

Personally, I do not agree with the direction in which Bitcoin is going when it comes to the centralization of funds, because it is a shocking fact that Coinbase has in its possession approximately 1 million BTC. Well, it's beyond any logic that stems from the very idea of the creator of Bitcoin that everyone should be their own bank. And as things stand for now, we failed that test.

It may be OT, but as far as I understand looking at the world, people seem to have an incredible propensity to take advantage and destroy everything they touch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happens with Bitcoin. The idea is great, technology allows it to exist, but still people are the biggest obstacle to our success.

[mk4]

Quite a controversial opinion, but while I'd personally like to stay away from centralized exchanges as much as possible, centralized exchanges have their place in this world. It's simply going to be the first sort of "introduction" of people to bitcoin. I think it would be quite unrealistic to expect the masses to immediately start using non-custodial exchanges such as Bisq unless the person has a Bitcoiner friend to help him/her navigate into this "foreign" industry. People have been spoiled by great UI/UX of modern services such as PayPal/CashApp/Coinbase that it would be difficult for most to suddenly handle private keys and such.

Anyway, to answer the poll, I started with faucets as I had no money back then.

[cryptoperkele]

I bought mine from a coinbase if i recall correctly and still keep buying more from time to time. I never understood why should i waste time on faucets, even if they would be a lot in the future, i can just buy way more and save a lot of time (that's also valuable).

[20kevin20]

Mine was mainly faucets and through "free offers" (like those websites you could earn points for viewing a quick YouTube ad and then redeem stuff with points). If I count all the money I got back then from just this, it'd most likely account to more than $1k today.

Things have changed though, mostly because of the price but I wouldn't necessarily say that faucets are a big waste of time today like @Lucius said above.

Faucets gave very small payments back when I used to claim them too and I probably earned only like 500k satoshis overall in a matter of weeks but today that's $50 and in 5 years it could be $500! It all depends on what's going to happen in the future but there are obviously better ways to earn a satoshi than having to complete 100 captchas every 5 minutes.

It all goes down to your expectations and how well you research ways to earn BTC before rushing in to get that little satoshi in your FaucetBox. In the end, although you'd earn less, long-time faucet earnings could be worth it in a matter of years too!

Quite a controversial opinion, but while I'd personally like to stay away from centralized exchanges as much as possible, centralized exchanges have their place in this world. It's simply going to be the first sort of "introduction" of people to bitcoin. I think it would be quite unrealistic to expect the masses to immediately start using non-custodial exchanges such as Bisq unless the person has a Bitcoiner friend to help him/her navigate into this "foreign" industry. People have been spoiled by great UI/UX of modern services such as PayPal/CashApp/Coinbase that it would be difficult for most to suddenly handle private keys and such.

True. But unlike Bisq, Komodo's Atomic DEX (this is for crypto-to-crypto exchanging only!) doesn't require much of a knowledge besides knowing the basic stuff about using a wallet, which is very newbie-friendly! They're also launching a desktop version now and I really have a good feeling about it. All you basically need to know is how to receive & send some coins and the exchange part is very simple: you say how much BTC you want to sell and how much XCoin you want to receive and that's it

So in the end, as a newbie without much of an experience you could buy BTC from a KYC-less ATM or through Bisq and then use Atomic DEX to swap between some of the most popular cryptos out there - they even have some stablecoins.

[cygan]

i voted for 'centralized exchanges'

bought my first Bitcoins in spring 2011 on the legendary mt.gox exchange - a big part of the BTC is still on this exchange... 

[mk4]

True. But unlike Bisq, Komodo's Atomic DEX (this is for crypto-to-crypto exchanging only!) doesn't require much of a knowledge besides knowing the basic stuff about using a wallet, which is very newbie-friendly! They're also launching a desktop version now and I really have a good feeling about it. All you basically need to know is how to receive & send some coins and the exchange part is very simple: you say how much BTC you want to sell and how much XCoin you want to receive and that's it

Sounds good. Introducing people to other cryptocurrencies is probably the last thing I would do though. Knowing that most people I personally don't know a single crap about investing, I wouldn't want to bait them into investing in high risk assets. I'd personally stick to initially recommending reputable centralized exchanges, and slowly get them to learn non-custodial exchanges once they get a grip on how wallets work.

[durilup]

I sold an steam account and the only method the buyer could pay me was bitcoin . I am still sad that I did not keep that bitcoins till now

[20kevin20]

Sounds good. Introducing people to other cryptocurrencies is probably the last thing I would do though. Knowing that most people I personally don't know a single crap about investing, I wouldn't want to bait them into investing in high risk assets. I'd personally stick to initially recommending reputable centralized exchanges, and slowly get them to learn non-custodial exchanges once they get a grip on how wallets work.

It's still got too low volume (and very bad offers sometimes) to rely on it, but it could turn out to be a great BTC <-> stablecoin exchange. The thing is, most people choose comfort over utility and safety anyways - otherwise, there wouldn't be millions of BTC sitting in centralized exchanges as I'm writing this post.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if moving from centralized exchanges to a decentralized one where you're exchanging BTC into a stablecoin is the best thing one can do, lol. The only advantage in this case is that you're holding your stablecoins in your own wallet instead of someone else's. Kind of a double-edged sword when you think about it.

[mk4]

On the other hand, I'm not sure if moving from centralized exchanges to a decentralized one where you're exchanging BTC into a stablecoin is the best thing one can do, lol. The only advantage in this case is that you're holding your stablecoins in your own wallet instead of someone else's. Kind of a double-edged sword when you think about it.

I'm thinking more of Bisq and Hodl Hodl style of non-custodial exchange, rather than the Binance "DEX" type; whereas people could transact in a non-custodial manner, and pay with(and receive) fiat instead of stablecoins. I don't like stablecoins either, besides probably using them for short-term trades.

[Assface16678]

I voted for Others

One of the very first own gets of my Satoshi is on the cryptocurrency wallet because here in the Philippines we have the cryptocurrency wallet coins.ph that allowed converting your money into cryptocurrency and by that, you can now have BTC, etc, xrp and bch and especially I choose the use of the btc that's why I have my very first own cryptocurrency. The reason behind this is because I just want to have an investment only because I'm getting curious before some of the people get a lot of earnings with the use of this coin. Until now the same process buy dip then hodl

[The Cryptovator]

Very hard to remember, but I strongly believe I had bought bitcoin peer to peer from local seller. At the beginning I wasn't much interested on bitcoin nor I had used it. During revshare session so many people used bitcoin and buy sell. First time I have created coinbase account due to escrow reason since so many scammers popups locally. So some guys only trust me and ask me to make deal for them with resellers. On the other hand resellers also trust me. So I create coinbase because peer to peer transaction is free and instant. So after make couple of deal I thought why I am not using bitcoin and likely that's how I bought some bitcoin but I can't remember date exactly. So day by day I learn more about bitcoin and start use it.