What motivated those who invested in bitcoin in 2012? fate or foresight?

[Charcol]

i am curious to know just as you.
what was the motivating force that made the early adopters of bitcoin to invest in it?

was it due to fate which we can call luck or they had good judgment or foresight to know that it was a good project or they were just risk takers?
i really want to know what was going on in their mind

Many people bought but not all of them believed in one idea. There were also some people who probably bought for fun. Because they did not take care of it after buying, many lost it. Many people bought it because the price was low at that time but did not pay attention. So in their case, just buying was not enough. Because many of them later sold it, lost it or spent it when necessary.

But there were also some far-sighted people who probably believed that the price of Bitcoin would increase quickly. I have read some discussions from 2012-2014 on this forum. Some of them mentioned today's price and believed it. They are still on this forum. Of course, their patience and foresight were terrible. They have strengthened their position today. I just wonder if I had such an opportunity at that time, would I have bought it and kept it or would I have lost it or sold it like others?

[Marvelockg]

was it due to fate which we can call luck or they had good judgment or foresight to know that it was a good project or they were just risk takers?
i really want to know what was going on in their mind

The other question is wether those that invested in 2012 are still holding their asset till this point or that they even held it for a reasonable point in time before they eventually sold off their asset. i think for the different investors that were early enough in 2012, some of them took a bet on the future of bitcoin and bought at the time bitcoin was relatively insignificant. certainly, not a single one of them thought that in not  so long that bitcoin will get to where it currently stands or else, the majority of them would have still held unto bitcoin till present day and maybe there wont be a thing like the bitcoin pizza day.

The faith of old investors especially the ones that held their asset longer than some might dim necessary tells us the importance of believing in systems that are absolutely genuine. what stood out for bitcoinner at the time is just the genuineness of bitcoin and nothing more because there was not a thing that is actually all that clear on what the future holds for those tat were holding bitcoin at the time.

[vapourminer]

Regarding the pizza guy, was it really true that he owned 10,000 Bitcoins, or was it just a marketing ploy at that time? The goal was to spread the word, so that Bitcoin could be widely known and discussed worldwide.

"pizza guy," or laszlo, literally wrote the GPU code for early miners. which was hundreds of times faster than the CPU miner satoshi had in the bitcoin client at that time. so yes, he had waaaay more than 10,000 coins as he did the pizza thing several times.

[Taskford]

Regarding the pizza guy, was it really true that he owned 10,000 Bitcoins, or was it just a marketing ploy at that time? The goal was to spread the word, so that Bitcoin could be widely known and discussed worldwide.

"pizza guy," or laszlo, literally wrote the GPU code for early miners. which was hundreds of times faster than the CPU miner satoshi had in the bitcoin client at that time. so yes, he had waaaay more than 10,000 coins as he did the pizza thing several times.

That 10,000 worth of Bitcoin is commonly known by people but they didn't know that even after laszlo made those famous purchase he actually made more purchase by using Bitcoin.

Actually I read an article about that and will share it here, so maybe people could learn about those things done by laszlo in the past.

Bitcoiners observe this greasy, bitcoin-themed simulacrum of Thanksgiving with commiseration as much as celebration, because those 10,000 BTC are now worth more than $1 billion.

But what most people don’t realize is that Hanyecz may have spent as much as 79,000 BTC on follow-on pizza purchases that year, a sum that would be worth more than $8.7 billion today. And lost still in the gobsmacked reactions to the billion-dollar forfeit is the question: how did Hanyecz acquire all this bitcoin in the first place?

More from Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/colinharper/2025/05/22/the-man-behind-bitcoin-pizza-day-spent-more-bitcoin-than-you-think/