[STORIES] How did you find Bitcoin?

[Rogozhin]

I'd love to hear your stories.

We all must have some interesting stories about how we came to find Bitcoin.

Please share!

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[lemfuture]

from my younger brother, that he heard from my another younger brother, and that he heard from rtnews in youtube(provably)

[grifferz]

Heard about it in 2010, probably on Twitter. I got fascinated by the ideas and read up on it some more. I finally bought £25 worth in late 2010.

I've never considered mining because electricity costs are quite high in UK and dealing with buying ASICs just seemed like too much risk (high cost items in a new market) for me. Also the care and feeding of that hardware just seemed like an extra job I didn't want.

Since then I've bought and sold a few items/services for bitcoins. Late last year I added a bitcoin payment feature to my dayjob's web site. I've sold the majority of my initial bitcoin purchase in the various highs, so have made a nice profit out of it, but I feel the need to keep some in order to keep an interest in what goes on with Bitcoin.

[Bit-Gods]

New to BTC, only 3 months ago

[CoinRocka]

Two Libertarian techie buds early 2013 told me about mining and this thing called bitcoin and I shrugged it off then.  One buddy sent me .125 bitcoin and he said "just watch it grow".  Early this year I heard about Gox and watched closely how bitcoin refused to die and was garnering more media attention when I realized that this is a train that has just left the station, I jumped on...  BTC

[Beliathon]

I first heard about about Bitcoin back in late 2011 / early 2012. As a gamer, I happened to have a GPU that was good for mining (6950) and mined a few coins (now lost) back then just out of curiosity. I came back to it around September 2013 with real interest as I learned it had gone over $80 / Bitcoin (and I remembered when it was $10 / coin!). That's when I traded my first fiat for BTC.

Before Bitcoin reached $150 / coin, 90% of my net worth was divested from fiat. I have never looked back.

[TheFootMan]

A friend told me in 2011.

[TopherB]

I was fairly involved in Libertarian circles. A friend brought bitcoin to my attention in 2010. And I have to admit I didn't play too close attention nor invest that much time in research but I liked the general gist that I got. With the same friend's help I bought $25 worth of bitcoin at just over 15 cents each. I was thinking of it more as supporting an idea more than anything else. I didn't think much about it after that.

Many computers and hard drives later those keys are long lost. Yeah, I feel pretty stupid.

[MiningSensei]

My best friend did an art gallery on the darkweb back in 2010 and he mentioned Bitcoin.  I looked all through the dark web, which, back then was like falling down the rabbit's hole.    Unfortunately, I didn't see the potential or try to figure out how to mine.

[Wolf_Pack]

I first heard about it right about the time people were starting to mine with gpus, so late 2009 early 2010.  I'm sure it was on a forum, but I don't remember where.  I downloaded a wallet, but couldn't figure out how to mine and gave up.  Probably the worst financial mistake of my life.

[teukon]

I first heard about it right about the time people were starting to mine with gpus, so late 2009 early 2010.  I'm sure it was on a forum, but I don't remember where.  I downloaded a wallet, but couldn't figure out how to mine and gave up.  Probably the worst financial mistake of my life.

You probably mean late 2010, early 2011.  Late 2009, early 2010 was when this forum was established and bitcoin 0.2 came out (TOR support).  I don't recall seeing anyone toy with the idea of using GPUs for block generation until April of 2010.

I didn't get involved until the release of bitcoin 0.3, in mid 2010.  I was pleased to get some bitcoins below 1 cent per coin (barely, the price was about 0.0086 USD/BTC when I started and, little did I know, was about to rise very quickly); I guess I should have kept more.

[Wolf_Pack]

I first heard about it right about the time people were starting to mine with gpus, so late 2009 early 2010.  I'm sure it was on a forum, but I don't remember where.  I downloaded a wallet, but couldn't figure out how to mine and gave up.  Probably the worst financial mistake of my life.

You probably mean late 2010, early 2011.  Late 2009, early 2010 was when this forum was established and bitcoin 0.2 came out (TOR support).  I don't recall seeing anyone toy with the idea of using GPUs for block generation until April of 2010.

I didn't get involved until the release of bitcoin 0.3, in mid 2010.  I was pleased to get some bitcoins below 1 cent per coin (barely, the price was about 0.0086 USD/BTC when I started and, little did I know, was about to rise very quickly); I guess I should have kept more.

You are correct, it was fall of 2010.  Sorry about that.

[Taras]

I was looking for ways to sell Realm of the Mad God items, so I looked through the local forum and I saw someone selling items for... what's this, "bitcoin" you speak of?
I looked into it. March 31, 2013 early early morning near midnight. I figured it was some central server trying to avoid the governments, got a couple faucet dispensals, then forgot about it. (I did check the exchange rate, saw it was $96, said damn that's high.)
Later on May 28 a friend showed me BitVegas, then a very popular enterprise. Oh yeah, bitcoin! I saw that the price was now around $140 and showed a friend, and we discovered that bitcoins were decentralized, that they had to be mined.... Oh, how we tried to mine them! We spent about 24 hours with our laptops collecting satoshis before throwing in the towel on that one. Then came the bit mines... Made a lot of friends and money there.
(Maybe someone from the bit mines is reading this. My ign is cossacksson)
I'm happy to have found bitcoin when I did. I wouldn't have chosen a different time, for I probably wouldn't have met all these people

[hodlmybtc]

Found out about it in 2011-2012 because of SR news, unfortunately I didn't invest some time/money at that time. Bought some since 1 month ago after the decline since the ATH and hoping we've bottomed out now, to the moon

[teukon]

You are correct, it was fall of 2010.  Sorry about that.

No problem; I'm glad I didn't offend you.

I didn't get involved in GPU mining until after the peak of the 2011 June bubble (I did a bit of CPU block generation when I first started, found 5 blocks with 140 khps ).  It must have been fun mining through early 2011.

[str4wm4n]

January 2011, I forgot exactly how but I stumbled upon bitcoin.org at like 2am one night and from the instant I read what it was all about I knew it was going to change the world.

It was all I talked about to my friends for about 2 weeks, most were extremely skeptical as I couldn't explain it to them as well as I can now.

I bought a couple hundred via paypal for 40 cents each and proceeded to gamble all but 20 away.

I then forgot about them for a few months and the next time I checked the price they were $8 and I was shocked and really mad at myself.

[zolace]

I found it cause I was looking for Prepaid debit cards for a stealth paypal account.  Also I was getting messages in my spam for BM CCs

[Rogozhin]

A few years ago, one of my friends said he was "buying drugs with his graphics card" by running some open source software, I thought that was so utterly ridiculous I just had to check it out. Spent months reading up on all the finer aspects of Bitcoin and finally bought in. It's been a wild ride ever since!   

[Rulishix]

I was surfing the web in early 2013 and somehow stumbled onto something talking about bitcoins and once I bought my first coin, I didn't look back. It's been quite an adventure this far and it's not nearly ending yet!

[Light]

Read about it in a tech article in 2010. Wish I actually bothered to buy some then, wasn't sure whether it would actually get anywhere. Clearly it has, so better late than never.