How did we do at the beginning to have bitcoins? (2010-2011 ...)

[Becassine]

Hello,

Today there are a thousand and one ways to obtain bitcoin, CEX, PtoP exchanges etc ... I read that the concept of seed and BIP39 was proposed later. This is all a bit confusing to me.

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

Thank you

[lassdas]

It's always been easy, or at least not hard, or complicated at all.

How we got them?
We bought/exchanged them from people who owned some, like right here in this forums marketplace-section, in exchange for some pizza for examle, the irc-channel was also a place to meet fellow bitcoiners,
or we just mined them ourselves, which in 2010 was quite easy even on low-end-CPUs.

How we kept them?
Bitcoin QT, the wallet known today as Bitcoin Core, was the only wallet around in 2010.
In late 2011 Electrum came around and lots of others followed.

We had no seeds back then, but a backup of our wallet.dat-files, or even just the private keys did the same,
seeds are just more convenient to handle.

[Faisal2202]

Hello,

Today there are a thousand and one ways to obtain bitcoin, CEX, PtoP exchanges etc ... I read that the concept of seed and BIP39 was proposed later. This is all a bit confusing to me.

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

Thank you

You pointed out a great question but i think the previous member has already answered your query. But, i think many member used to create their own wallet address using their computing power and then they use that same Wallets which is aforementioned to send and receive BTC.

I also sometimes think, why the adoption rate was lower back in days because it was so difficult to use and keep the BTC in your wallets and on any exchanges (like MT GOX) but as of now many exchanges and Wallets have User friendly interface which every buddy understand easily and liked too.

Just like in your last Topic you just created, where you share your experience like how newbies prefer to use CEXs just because they sometimes do not like the technological terms included in Hardware wallets or in DEXs (as most of the DEXs have no User Friendly Interface). The point is, what if the current people who find current apps and technologies still hard to learn due to their interfaces then how would these people will survive or able to use the same technology back in 2010?

Well, thank God to all developer who came into market with such software like SVP wallets and User friendly, CEXS and DEXs.

[Upgrade00]

... I read that the concept of seed and BIP39 was proposed later. This is all a bit confusing to me.

A BIP is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal and they are implemented to improve the Bitcoin network. BIP39 was implemented around 2013.
There are many BIPs which were implemented later on after the creation of Bitcoin.

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

In the really early days there were no exchanges and people for Bitcoin by mining them, this could have been eaisly done using a mobile device. And it was possible to transfer bitcoins from wallet to wallet before BIP39.

[ImThour]

If I have to guess How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept, it was simple that most of them preferred to mine and keep it in their wallets which were installed in their systems that were supposed to mine. Every Mining tutorial asked users to install a Bitcoin Wallet and that Bitcoin wallet was used to store the Bitcoins which they received after mining. Some of the users which joined a bit later had to buy it from an exchange called Mt.Gox which literally ran away with the user funds. So I guess those who mined themselves are bit safer and might have more chance of holding them since 2011-12.

[lassdas]

I also sometimes think, why the adoption rate was lower back in days because it was so difficult to use and keep the BTC in your wallets and on any exchanges (like MT GOX) but as of now many exchanges and Wallets have User friendly interface which every buddy understand easily and liked too.

No, it wasn't so difficult to use,
Bitcoin Core is basically still the same as Bitcoin QT,  it hasn't changed much in terms of user friendlyness.

Sure, there's a lot more Wallets today and some of them might be more user friendly than others,
but that doesn't mean it was difficult to use in the early days, using it was always as easy as using email. Do you think email is difficult to use?

The difficult part in bitcoin was never its usage, but to understand it, what it is, how it works,..
to wrap your head around it, that's the hard part and that didn't change at all.

... mining them, this could have been eaisly done using a mobile device.

Mobile device? When did anyone actually use a mobile device to mine bitcoin?
As a proof-of-concept ....maybe, like that guy that mined with a pencil and a piece of paper.

In 2010 "mining" was just an optional setting within the Bitcoin QT wallet that you could activate.
If you did, your CPU mined blocks working in the background.

Some smart people tried (and succeeded) to optimize that process and wrote their own mining software, which was faster than Bitcoin QT.
If I remember correctly the first public GPU-mining-software came out around october 2010, GPUs were a LOT faster than CPUs so people started to use those.
Then in 2011 came FPGAs, not that much faster than GPUs but a lot more energy-efficient
and in 2013 the ASIC-era began.

I've never heard of mobile mining devices,
every "app" that tricked people into "bitcoin mining" was a scam.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

I did not join the Bitcoin space too early, and by the time I joined Bitcoin, there was no better way to earn Bitcoin unless you were buying from CEX or via P2P. My first Bitcoin was bought in around 2019/2020, and I bought the bitcoin on a centralised exchange with my Debit card. I can't remember the name correctly of the CEX, but still back in 2020, I also bought some Bitcoin on Binance.

[mk4]

Before centralized exchanges, I assume these are the most common ways.

• Faucets
• Mining
• Buying/selling through forums

[Myleschetty]

Hello,

Today there are a thousand and one ways to obtain bitcoin, CEX, PtoP exchanges etc ... I read that the concept of seed and BIP39 was proposed later. This is all a bit confusing to me.

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

Thank you

I started out by purchasing a little amount of bitcoin through CEX and later transferred it to my personal wallet.
That being said, You are mistaken in thinking that Bitcoin is only for people who are computer literate because Bitcoin was created for anyone who is willing to take advantage of the opportunity it presents. However, one crucial aspect of Bitcoin is that it requires reading and understanding its fundamental components, including its concept, how to use an exchange or wallet, and how to safely store the cryptocurrency.

[dkbit98]

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

Many early Bitcoins with private keys ended up on hard drives after mining, and some of them got lost and thrown in trash.
I remember several stories from people who lost a fortune like this, and they tried to organize and pay other people to help them find old drives with bitcoin.
James Howells lost 8000 BTC back in 2013 and I think he is till looking for his old drive:
https://fortune.com/2022/08/01/he-lost-8000-bitcoin-launching-11-million-dollar-campaign-newport-james-howells-landfill-trash/

Invention of seed phrases changed things a lot, thanks to Trezor developers, and it's now much easier to backup things on paper or metal plates.

[sheenshane]

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

IMO, it comes from mining and might also from the faucet which is very common at the early stage of Bitcoin.
Because as I heard, mining was relatively easy and could be done using regular CPUs or GPUs that were commonly found in personal computers.  But now, mining became more competitive, leading to the development of specialized mining hardware (ASICs) that has higher computational power and energy efficiency.

I assume that early miners typically stored their Bitcoins in software wallets or paper wallets, employing offline backups and secure storage practices.  But now, we have a hardware wallet that offers more security than any software wallet.

When did get easier?
It might be when CEX arrived like Mt. Gox. 
These platforms acted as intermediaries, allowing users to trade fiat currency for Bitcoins and vice versa.  It was made easier without even having knowledge of mining.

[MusaMohamed]

Before centralized exchanges, I assume these are the most common ways.

• Faucets

A first and biggest Bitcoin faucet ever is from a senior Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen.

Get 5 free bitcoins from freebitcoins.appspot.com in June 2010.

Solve the captcha and claim 5 BTC. https://web.archive.org/web/20100703032414/https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/

First topics in Marketplace
World's FIRST Bitcoin Lottery!
Purchase Proxy

Current Exchange Rate
1 Bitcoin = $0.005
1 US Dollar = ฿200.00

Current Transaction Fee: Zero

[sunsilk]

I remember when Xapo was still popular and I was still a beginner by that time. IIRC, I was still not yet part of the forum but then I've seen faucets were almost everywhere.

So, it's too easy to do it like you just copy your bitcoin address and paste it on those faucet websites and repetitively doing it for so many times after a few minutes. I've got a lot of time during that time because I was hype of what I've known.

But this was later on 2015 IIRC.

It was like life was too simple before and a few exchanges in existence and miners that have a lot of Bitcoins were likely to give it away.

[Merit.s]

Hello,

Today there are a thousand and one ways to obtain bitcoin, CEX, PtoP exchanges etc ... I read that the concept of seed and BIP39 was proposed later. This is all a bit confusing to me.

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

Thank you

I am new into bitcoin but from the little information that I have gathered so far,in the early days bitcoin was gotten through mining because mining was easy and one can mine directly from his phone. Another way is through faucet. In my country then how one do sell his bitcoin use to be through watsapp group,where people exchange crypto for our local currency. Although, sometimes you might get scammed and your coins is gone. It wasn't easy then to sell your bitcoin due to lack of trust but if you have a trusted person,it is no problem. CEx came in later and made life very easy for buying and selling of bitcoin.

[FatFork]

When did it get easier?

Based on what I've learned from old threads on this forum, I believe the opposite to be true. It seems that things were much simpler back then compared to today. The Bitcoin Qt software served as both a wallet and a mining tool, all addresses started with "1," and the main security concern was safeguarding your wallet.dat file and private keys. In the early days, there were no altcoins (except for a few), SPV wallets (until Electrum came along), seed phrases, or SegWit addresses,... and scams were also far less common than they are now, mainly due to the smaller size and tight-knit nature of the early Bitcoin community.

So yes, there are a thousand and one ways to acquire bitcoin today, but there are also just as many ways to lose it permanently.

[nakamura12]

To start, you have to learn how Cryptocurrency and Blockchain works before you create a wallet to store your Bitcoin. You should also know which you should use and how to keep it safe. Learning about the importance of seed phrase, private key or mnemonic phrase will help you secure your assets. Being informed about the ways that the hacker use to steal your wallet is helpful to stay away from such schemes.

[Dunamisx]

How did you do at the beginning to have bitcoins and how were they kept? I guess it was reserved for the rather computer-savvy people? When did it get easier?

If only you could read through the Satoshi Nakamoto mandates on bitcoin that prompted him to make such discovery and the white paper more better to have a clearer understanding why it was created and the purpose it served and the protocols that guided the network entirely, since we are almost not part of the early users of bitcoin right from inception before it turns a global currency, you can get this on Satoshi profile maybe or the history behind the establishment of bitcoin right from the beginning.

[Becassine]

To start, you have to learn how Cryptocurrency and Blockchain works before you create a wallet to store your Bitcoin. You should also know which you should use and how to keep it safe. Learning about the importance of seed phrase, private key or mnemonic phrase will help you secure your assets. Being informed about the ways that the hacker use to steal your wallet is helpful to stay away from such schemes.

Thanks for your advice, but that doesn't answer my original question at all. In fact, it doesn't even have anything to do with it.

[Aikidoka]

I think that by that time people were buying Bitcoin using P2P services or directly from CEX. I believe that some other people will acquire Bitcoin from faucets which used to give out a huge amounts of Bitcoin. I recall seeing a faucet that could give you 1 BTC every 5 minutes which was incredibly generous back in 2010 I think.

In addition to that, there were people who mine Bitcoin or engage in freelance work on forums to earn Bitcoin. They may also trade Bitcoin against fiat currencies.

[lovesmayfamilis]

As far as I remember, it was very easy to get bitcoins for the most ordinary questionnaire. There were many survey sites that offered Bitcoin as one of the payment methods. My boss also offered me payment in Bitcoin for maintaining a group on social networks. While people were learning to understand the value of Bitcoin, it was quite easy to get it, and you can remember that some simply burned it because they did not know its further use.
Good times that will never come back.