People who mined bitcoins between 2009 to 2012

[ascqrwasc33]

I had tried compiling the bitcoin-daemon in 2009 back when it was new and could not do so on FreeBSD. Thank you beastie. I think there was no windows release back then. I was unable to mine any coins since quickly by 2010-mid or something only people with lots of computing power  were snatching / solving away all the blocks. I recall by 2011, LTC was the recommended altcoin to be mined since it was  "GPU-resistant". That too I could not using solo mining to switched to pool.. My question is during the earlier phase between 2009 to 2012, those who mined lots of BTCs, especially using their laptops in 2009 when the rewards were high and difficulty was less, what are they doing now? Since not many understood or had the vision or foresight (how could they?) that this would blow up massively, not many would have retained those mined coins - sure some bought pizzas and I have myself bought some electronics in the past, how many people do you think have those 1000s of bitcoins with them now?
What are they doing? Did they sell? Is there  any place I can read about them? Any documentary? No, I do not need names, I am just curious as to how many people's lives were actually changed. How many were able to go back and successfully dig out their old CDs and hard disks to get their wallet.dat files back - get both BCH and BTC. Many of us can't stop and feel sorry how we missed the bus, a lot of us were alive and alert back then, read about bitcoin in 2009, knew it is money in some form and knew people were buying / selling goods in exchange for it yet we did nothing. By 2011 there were online wallets available, many were storing their coins online, 3rd party custody.
I think it should be possible to look at the initial blockchain entries and check which addresses which were rewarded have moved coins.
Those who did successfully mine 1000s of BTC easily, where are they now? What are they doing? HODLing / sold/ both ??

[1714642559]

1714642559

[AndrewWeb]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=7REN3yYPY6E

https://youtu.be/cZr97E5PgzQ?t=131

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j28hkTJMuTA

[ascqrwasc33]

These are known stories, lots of people have lot the originally mined coins - hear it all the time - how many of those who mined still go it? From those who did not lose it, but sold them, where are they - where are the ones who did not sell them - or woke up too late to realize its value when the price was 10k or 30k and were lucky to still have them. No such stories.. not even anonymous ones. I feel nobody who mined during the initial years is not without some regret.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Those who did successfully mine 1000s of BTC easily, where are they now? What are they doing? HODLing / sold/ both ??

Kinda hard to tell what are they doing now but those who sold at top must be doing some pretty good fortune right now. Possibly they are doing some trading with altcoins with the profits they make with mining bitcoin or establish a business in real world, or ecen purchase assets like real state or land. One thing Im sure that they are rich now and thankful on discovering bitcoin on their early days.

[Faisal2202]

These are known stories, lots of people have lot the originally mined coins - hear it all the time - how many of those who mined still go it? From those who did not lose it, but sold them, where are they - where are the ones who did not sell them - or woke up too late to realize its value when the price was 10k or 30k and were lucky to still have them. No such stories.. not even anonymous ones. I feel nobody who mined during the initial years is not without some regret.

I read your main post, and I liked your questions, but there are already many success stories has been shared on the Internet, and a few days ago I also made a post on my local section about successful Bitcoiners. You can read many success and failure stories, and can also know how they got into BTC, when, and what makes them believe that they should hold it, sell it, or dump it. Some mistakenly dumped them already, some kept track and made efforts to excavate those hard drives even from piles of dump.

Let me share some website links here, that after reading you might get your answer, but if you want what's the main reason, behind a person selling in early time and holding till now, that's cannot be known.
12 Bitcoin Success Stories: Meet Bitcoin Millionaires
Quora

[Die_empty]

Those who did successfully mine 1000s of BTC easily, where are they now? What are they doing? HODLing / sold/ both ??

It will be difficult to get the answer to your questions because most Bitcoiners prefer to remain anonymous. Bitcoin is decentralized hence getting the information about these individuals will be hard. I am not one of them because I got to know a few years ago but even if I am one of them I will never reveal it. Privacy is important for security reasons because those who have such an amount of Bitcoin would be targets of criminals since they will be rich.

However, I guess that many of them would have sold their coins when the price increased. Some of them might still be hodling and making a profit from their coins. Others might still be mining, while a great number of them might have lost interest in Bitcoin when they suffered from scams or hacks.

[m2017]

Kinda hard to tell what are they doing now

This is true, but it is easy to say what they are not doing for sure - they are not reading this topic and it is unlikely that we will wait for a response from at least one of them.

Unless there were old miners among the forum administration (and old users) who could tell their story.

but those who sold at top must be doing some pretty good fortune right now.

To sell at a profit, first need to be able to save bitcoin until then. Many of the original miners sold off (or lost wallet access to) their mined bitcoins for cheap, which eventually (changing owners multiple times) ended up under the ownership of whales like Winklevoss bros., Tim Draper and other.
 
And there were also users of the Mt.Gox exchanger, whose bitcoin were stuck there for many years. Considering that in those days there were few btc wallets and storage methods (buy / sale), I assume that quite a few miners lost their bitcoins in that exchanger (and subsequent ones).

Possibly they are doing some trading with altcoins with the profits they make with mining bitcoin or establish a business in real world, or ecen purchase assets like real state or land. One thing Im sure that they are rich now and thankful on discovering bitcoin on their early days.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Probably, some of them are among these lucky ones, but in those days few believed in the future of bitcoin and therefore were negligent and careless about the issue of preserving it.

[Yatsan]

Those who did successfully mine 1000s of BTC easily, where are they now? What are they doing? HODLing / sold/ both ??

Recalling those who 'made' it early is indeed nice but for sure we know the answer on where they could possibly now with that instance. Most of them for sure sold too early and some even lost their wallets or their private keys. One reason behind this is not believing to Bitcoin's potential. Are they wrong from doing so? Well, the present would say yes but if it is from the past point of view, we really cannot blame them; the market value of Bitcoin only moved drastically starting 2016 up until the present. We heard stories of people who lost a hard drive containing large amount of BTC,  a guy who traded it to a pizza, and the likes. Regret is a normal reaction on them simply because we now see what it is capable of, at this point. And for me, things are the same with present investors; afraid that something bad could happen to this industry or that its market price could fall in a sudden. Between earky and present investors, we do share the same ground. No one knows of the future and if you are one who hesitates to invest then just be sure to avoid regrets in the future because of the possibility that its price could still go up if it would be fed by demand as years go by.

[ascqrwasc33]

Let me share some website links here, that after reading you might get your answer, but if you want what's the main reason, behind a person selling in early time and holding till now, that's cannot be known.
12 Bitcoin Success Stories: Meet Bitcoin Millionaires
Quora

Sneaky advertising. Do you own some part of the business or does the exchange pay you only to market them?

[Medusah]

I had tried compiling the bitcoin-daemon in 2009 back when it was new and could not do so on FreeBSD. Thank you beastie. I think there was no windows release back then.

Pretty impossible.  Satoshi released the first client in Windows.  Even the screenshots were from Windows XP:  https://web.archive.org/web/20090722011820/http://www.bitcoin.org/.

Those who did successfully mine 1000s of BTC easily, where are they now? What are they doing? HODLing / sold/ both ??

Likely, many have either sold or lost their coins.  The truly fortunate aren't the hodlers, but those who were locked out and later recovered their wallets after 10+ years.  No stress, just brief regret followed by retirement!

But read my personal text.  It's none of our business. 

[Upgrade00]

Anyone who kept Bitcoin from 2009-12 till now and have hundreds of bitcoins will want to keep that as quiet as possible, so there's no real way to get to know their stories except they share them.
Those who lost their bitcoins will also not want to go public with how they sold too early.

If you dig hard enough you'll get a handful of stories, but that will just be individual stories.
Why would you be interested in what private people are doing with their lives?

[Faisal2202]

Sneaky advertising. Do you own some part of the business or does the exchange pay you only to market them?

What you mean by sneaky advertising, I shared two websites with you one is Quora and other is cointree, I don't own or have any kind of share in them. I am not getting thousands or penny from them just tried to give you an idea of where you can start to know the answers to your questions.

Did you even understand the point of my post, I suggest you to read it again. Or it is just you mentioned me by mistake and wanted to quote someone else.

[GbitG]

Those who did successfully mine 1000s of BTC easily, where are they now? What are they doing? HODLing / sold/ both ??

Hmm, maybe just nothing  .  Only just joying to watch the Bitcoin price rise.
 
Anyway, your answer is a bit subjective because no one likes to talk about how much Bitcoin they have, etc. (Privacy)
And as far as your question is concerned, I think many miners would have sold their Bitcoin when Bitcoin last made a new ATH in 2021. Or maybe someone would have held it until now, and lastly, many miners may have been victimized when the big exchanges stole people's bitcoin in the early days. like Mt-Gox etc.

If the rest of are old members, he can tell you some stories.

[ascqrwasc33]

Sneaky advertising. Do you own some part of the business or does the exchange pay you only to market them?

What you mean by sneaky advertising, I shared two websites with you one is Quora and other is cointree, I don't own or have any kind of share in them. I am not getting thousands or penny from them just tried to give you an idea of where you can start to know the answers to your questions.

Did you even understand the point of my post, I suggest you to read it again. Or it is just you mentioned me by mistake and wanted to quote someone else.

I looked up some of your replies on other posts and you have somehow managed to mentioned that website in many of your replies to other people as well, in different contexts. For Example here too you have mentioned that website:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=232519.msg63865934#msg63865934
I think you are advertising this exchange without realising it. I do not have a problem with you marketing, I was just curious about the why.

Anyone who kept Bitcoin from 2009-12 till now and have hundreds of bitcoins will want to keep that as quiet as possible,

The real paranoid ones still have the coins but still come out and say they lost  it at MtGox or the disk.

[nakamura12]

The real paranoid ones still have the coins but still come out and say they lost  it at MtGox or the disk.

That's because they didn't think that Bitcoin will become successful or many people are now using it and it's price increasing more compared to the year that you mentioned. It's true that some lose their wallet because they lost their disk or forgotten the password of their wallet.dat. Who would have thought that the Bitcoin price would even reach 40k and this year even much higher which has now a new ATH. If you make a research then you'll know the difference of btc price before and this year.

[ascqrwasc33]

The real paranoid ones still have the coins but still come out and say they lost  it at MtGox or the disk.

If you make a research then you'll know the difference of btc price before and this year.

If you read my original post you would know that I am already following it since 2009. Thank you.

[yazher]

Anyone who kept Bitcoin from 2009-12 till now and have hundreds of bitcoins will want to keep that as quiet as possible,

The real paranoid ones still have the coins but still come out and say they lost  it at MtGox or the disk.

That's right one of the huge hacking incidents that happened back then was the Mt. Gox Exchange incident where many lost their bitcoins and probably didn't get it back again since hackers back then could easily escape in the eye of the public due to the lack of resources to track them but right now, with everything is almost centralized, only the mad genius hackers are only capable of escaping without getting tracked by the authorities. as for those who successfully preserved it until they witness the great bull runs, then they are surely living their life to the fullest right now in private.

[nakamura12]

If you read my original post you would know that I am already following it since 2009. Thank you.

I know that you already know that but that's not my point. My point is that people didn't think that Bitcoin will reach today's price of bitcoin hence why I said if you make a research of btc price compared to this year and the year before. If you read my post then you'll understand my point instead of just focusing on what you have quoted in my post. If it is what you think then I would have just post that alone and won't have to say about people losing BTC like what happened on mt. Gox and people losing their wallet which is in the disk or forgotten the password of their wallet.dat.

[ascqrwasc33]

Thank you everyone for your inputs.

[PX-Z]

Those who did successfully mine 1000s of BTC easily, where are they now? What are they doing? HODLing / sold/ both ??

Kinda hard to tell what are they doing now but those who sold at top must be doing some pretty good fortune right now. Possibly they are doing some trading with altcoins with the profits they make with mining bitcoin or establish a business in real world, or ecen purchase assets like real state or land. One thing Im sure that they are rich now and thankful on discovering bitcoin on their early days.

Not really sure if they still have bitcoins from that time. Probably some of them were eager to sold those coins when bitcoin got an attention from the world. It might be the ATH in 2017 or even earlier when they were be tempted to sold since they got it just like for free then boom after waiting it becomes hundred of thousands.  Well, if they able to hold till now, they must be millionaires already.