3 years ago...let's reminisce

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

3 yrs ago, you were trolling Bitcoin hard, just like you do now.

But he never shilled for a scamming mining rig vendor.

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[TooDumbForBitcoin]

We lived in a pretty small
 house at the time

I had to put a <CR> in that quote.  Coming from an early adopter, there's a lot to read between the lines.

[okthen]

It's inspiring to read all this old folks!
I hope in three years we're all here and kicking! And that bitcoin surprises you as much as it has the three previous years

[isov]

I first heard about btc in september or october of 2011. It was when news papers were writing about tor-network and the online drugstores there so I downloaded the browser and went to look what it's like. Saw some people talking about btc there and looked it up a bit. I was also trying to buy some back then but found it too difficult to get money in to an exchange and forgot about it. Saw some news headlines last years spring but didn't pay too much attention. Then at the fall of 2013 I saw a headline of that norwegian guy who bought an apartment from Oslo with money made by buying some 25$ worth of btc back in the day. Got angry that I didn't buy btc when I first heard about them and thought that better late than never and started buying in. I started buying in when price was around 200$ piece and bought all the way up. Now that price is around 650$ I'm little bit on the side of making profit but sure was quite miserable when it was somewhere in the low 400's this spring and I didn't have any money to buy me some more and just had to be sad and hope some day my losses are not going to be so bad. I truly hope that next few years are going to be amazing and I can come back and laugh at these posts Hope everything went nice and smooth for you, future me!

[johnyj]

Finally I understand why proudhon is always bearish about bitcoin. That kind of experience is difficult to wipe off from memory

[Elwar]

I pulled $10,000 out of my retirement account and put it into Bitcoin when MtGox re-opened at $17.

Then I spent the summer watching as the price went down...down...down

Lost most of it getting short squeezed at $3.50

Sold the rest at a loss at $12 just before the jump over $100.

[db]

I just held during the whole 2011 bubble cycle. I agreed with the then already widespread opinion on this forum that if Bitcoin catches on (a huge if at the time) there would be several bubbles on the way up. At the same time I knew I had no particular talent for picking tops and bottoms.

[DrG]

Proudhon, you forgot to mention the "Winter is Coming" of 2011/2012 when I watch the few BTC I had at the time drop from $15 to $2 and eevrybody including me was considering jumping ship.   I held onto my coins but but dumped at $5 for the quip profit - and got trampled by a bunch of bulls... 

[Raize]

Lost most of it getting short squeezed at $3.50

Ouch man. I remember when Bitcoinica hit the market I was hearing tons of people having made a boatload on various short sales, but it seemed just too much like a bucket shop to me. Turned out I was wrong on what it was, but still right to not get too invested in it.

I think my worst trade was a huge sell I did somewhere in the hundreds of BTC on Bitfloor @ $9-10 after it fell from $15 (as pirate defaulted) in August 2012. Then the price slowly rose to $12 over several months from there before the crazy shenanigans in 2013. I've since learned that if an only-Bitcoin-based business fails, it's best to hold through the bad news and sell when it inevitably spikes. Both the pirate default and Silk Road going down were like the best things to have ever happened to Bitcoin for hoarders...

I just held during the whole 2011 bubble cycle. I agreed with the then already widespread opinion on this forum that if Bitcoin catches on (a huge if at the time) there would be several bubbles on the way up. At the same time I knew I had no particular talent for picking tops and bottoms.

I *mostly* held, too, though I kind of doubled-down as it fell to ridiculous lows. $30 to $2 was quite ridiculous.

I've found I'm really good at picking bottoms, but not so great at picking tops. That's why I put in really low buys and sell slowly when the price is increasing. After my horrible Bitfloor trade, though, I've learned I need to sell very very slowly as the price is increasing, instead of thinking "Well, this is as high as it could possibly go!" and then finding out only months (sometimes days) later that I was very very mistaken.

[DolanDuck]

I pulled $10,000 out of my retirement account and put it into Bitcoin when MtGox re-opened at $17.

Then I spent the summer watching as the price went down...down...down

Lost most of it getting short squeezed at $3.50

Sold the rest at a loss at $12 just before the jump over $100.

I enjoyed something similar, but the loss wasn't so high.
Entered when the value was around 160$ and the April 2013 bubble was just exploded, sold at 80$ with a nice -50% in few hours.

[Tzupy]

Almost 3 years ago bitcoin price recovered from 6$ to 12$, and probably many thought the bear market was over. 

[Piper67]

3 years ago, give or take a couple days, I was sitting at a Father's Day BBQ, having just hurt my back a few hours before, watching in shock as the price of BTC plummeted while everyone around me was enjoying the day, blissfully oblivious. Over the next few days I went from disappointment to joy when I realised I was able to buy BTC at $2 again. Ah, the good old days :-)

[JohanM]

I started mining CPU somewhere in 2010 and then GPU mining with a 5870 and 5770 end-of-2010.
During 3 months I mined 24/7 with the cards. In the beginning I was winning a block (50 BTC at the time) every 30 hours.
After the 3 months, stopped because it would take about 1 week to win a block and didn't feel like entering a pool (hehe).
Forgot about the whole thing up to the point where BTC > 20 USD. Saw the crash happening and really forgot after that.
When the price recovered I had already reinstalled my pc twice (reformat vista and then win 7). Wallet was gone but fortunately could get it back from my 2 rolling backups.
Finally got an account on Gox, sold some in the rise to 1000, cashed out (and received) quite a bit, bought some gold coins, a trip to Florida, and lost 25k€ in the Gox affair.

[DurbanPoison]

Three years ago I was buying silver and gold like an idiot.

Oh well, lesson learned. Don't buy into all the hype.

Yup, I was in the exact same boat. If only I had reversed the percentages of my portfolio for metals and bitcoin.

[silversmith]

Three years from now in 2017 people will be wishing that they had bought bitcoin in 2014 when it was "only" $650!

[okthen]

Three years ago I was buying silver and gold like an idiot.

Oh well, lesson learned. Don't buy into all the hype.

Yup, I was in the exact same boat. If only I had reversed the percentages of my portfolio for metals and bitcoin.

Hmm, won't people buying bitcoin now be considered "buying into all the hype"?
Or maybe in a few years...

[wachtwoord]

Three years ago I was buying silver and gold like an idiot.

Oh well, lesson learned. Don't buy into all the hype.

Yup, I was in the exact same boat. If only I had reversed the percentages of my portfolio for metals and bitcoin.

Hmm, won't people buying bitcoin now be considered "buying into all the hype"?
Or maybe in a few years...

Nope

[bitrider]

Nope.

[MOB]

Three years ago I had around 22 HD6870s (with lifetime warranties from XFX) mining away.  Of course, getting into Tier 5 with my electricity company somewhat ate those profits...

Anyway, ended up with several hundred BTC that I promptly sold for a pittance on the dead cat bounce from the first bubble ;p  I was left with some minor amount, around 30BTC or so, when the market fell to under 5 USD.

At least I killed every single one of those 6870s and XFX turned them all into HD7870s for me to eBay away.  May have made more profit there than from the BTC sales.

[shmadz]

2011 really set off a strange series of events for me.

If my brother hadn't been living in Japan at the time of the Fukushima thing, I might still have been asleep to the world. Instead, I now had a vested interest in the situation, so I started to try to find some real news about what was going on.

That started a trip down the rabbit hole that inevitably led to bitcoin. I think by June of 2011 I was telling everyone I knew about how cool bitcoin was and how it would kill the banks and topple governments. I couldn't figure out why everyone just laughed or looked at me funny. 

and then I found this place