How did you first hear about Bitcoin?

[schnell]

I first heard of it when I friend of mine said(jokingly) that he could get anyone assassinated for 6BTC on silk road. I asked what it was and he said that it was an online currency that nobody uses. I googled Bitcoin..I have not slept since.
:3
How did you first hear about Bitcoin?

[1714902524]

1714902524

[1714902524]

1714902524

[disclaimer201]

A computer magazine in late spring 2011 advertising to make money by running your computer. I thought this is one way to justify all the money spent on computers for the past 5 years ;-)

[kiba]

Some dude refer me to the site on some forum about open source gaming. I dismiss it as an agorist currency that can't possibly work.

That was after the first slashdot coverage. Then I eventually become convinced that it was useful. I was there before the bitcoin price reach 1 dollars. 

[westkybitcoins]

I listened to it being talked about on Free Talk Live as much as 2 years ago. Wish I'd been convinced of how good it was when I first heard of it....

[eleuthria]

Security Now podcast in early 2011.  Wish I had been keeping up weekly.  I listened to it in April 2011, but I think it was dated January 2011!  Those extra 3 months would've made me a lot of money!

[artisbigshirts]

I saw it being discussed on a certain imageboard during the first bubble in 2011.
Didn't actually look into it until after the bubble later in the year.

[EnergyVampire]

ARS Technica article: http://arstechnica.com/

[Hexadecibel]

I was researching ATI's 7970 just before it was released at the beginning of the year. I think it was in the forums of HardOCP that someone said "I wonder how many bitcoins it could mine" or some such thing.

"bitcoins?" I said to myself. "what's a bitcoin?"

[Dalkore]

Slashdot post http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/07/11/1747245/bitcoin-releases-version-03 in 2010 when cpu mining was the way it was done haha.  I remember you could only buy socks back then and maybe some web hosting.     Had my good old Intel E6800 and a pair of nvidia 7950 GT's in SLI on my old Striker II board just cranking away.   What change in 2 years.


Dalkore

[Jointops420]

Drunk one night in late 2010 or early 2011 I stumbled across it on the net and had a cursory glance, deciding in my wisdom at the time it had to be a scam, I woe that night now. Then I saw it at $10 going up and greed got a hold of me but with some reading on btc I decided that my greed was justified in buying into such a top idea.

[Spekulatius]

I think I read some article about it on aljazeera.com. For sure I learned about it in June 2011, JUST after the crash and before the Gox hack.
At least I know about it now (and am thankful for it!)

[bg002h]

I heard via slashdot in July 2010. I hear talk about the first and second slashdotting, but I'm not sure when those two events occurred. All I know is that about a week or two after I started CPU mining, my laptop couldn't keep up with the big boys. But before that, I did ok. I freakishly generated (to repeat myself for the hundredth time) 4 blocks on my laptop in one night.

When the mining got tough, I stopped and forgot about it all for nearlt year. Nearly lost my roughly 500 Bitcoins to a hard drive failure, but thanks to time machine, I inadvertently got it back....and ignored it some more. Then I heard about it again (I think on slashdot...could that be the second slashdotting?). I launched my long ignored client and found all my coins. Worked out well. Thank you Apple!

[mufa23]

From the internet hate machine.

[bbit]

hackernews! 

[SaintFlow]

From the story that gawker media/ gizmodo.com posted about SR which lead to the bubble.

[Gavin Andresen]

I first heard about Bitcoin from this article:
  http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/open-source-innovation-the-cutting-edge-582?page=0,2

[interlagos]

I first heard about Bitcoin in one of the LinuxActionShow episodes on youtube in March/April 2011, but didn't pay any attention.
The name sounded like yet another game of some sort.

It clicked much later in July 2011 when I read an article with profound title "BitCoin: ingenious scam or money of the future?"
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dnews.ru%2Foffsyanka%2F613761%2F

[szuetam]

Heh, I have dreamed about such a currency in 2008/2009 and talking to my friends about to my friends making them bored to death, but I heard about bitcoin in 2011 in some article about some big amount of bitcoin stolen, and then I thought This is it! I'm thinking about it all the time and asking myself should I buy more bitcoins now and if not how much I will regret it in the future!

[paraipan]

An article about bitcoin showed up in 2010 on meneame, spanish version of reddit, and i looked into it, downloaded the client but didn't bother with it more. In June 2011 i've stumbled on it again, and this time I got the "gold fever" like all the other miners out there.

This project is really giving me an opportunity to make good use my resources. It cost me almost a year but now i understand that time is money.

[dooglus]

I first heard about bitcoin here:

  http://identi.ca/notice/61926764

on Monday, 10-Jan-2011.

[pekv2]

Mm, hardocp.com news section last year, they have a huge howto that was very easily, well, how-to.

[World]

I first heard about BTC here:
http://www.fandor.cz/bitcoin-silk-road/
September 2011

[herzmeister]

I'm sure I read the name earlier already and just thought it was another centralized e-cash business.

I'm also sure I saw the proposal on http://area51.stackexchange.com/ in early 2011 but it didn't click for me either. I guess I thought it's just a virtual currency system for games. I read mining and I thought it must have to do with World of Warcraft or something. 

Then a certain German alpha blogger, who pretends to be an old hipster but is so conform and authoritarian on many things, posted around May/June 2011 something like it must be a ponzi. This got me curious because I believe this guy is often quite wrong. And I was right with my impression.  

[AmazonStuff]

I first heard of btc in the news when someone talked about Asange and that all his income is blocked, except bitcoin.

[waspoza]

I first heard about Bitcoin from this article:
  http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/open-source-innovation-the-cutting-edge-582?page=0,2

I see that there was possibility to include message with transaction. What happened to that?

[herzmeister]

I see that there was possibility to include message with transaction. What happened to that?

Would probably be abused and spam and bloat up the blockchain right?

[SimonL]

July 2010, when Slashdot covered it. I effused to my friends for months afterwards about the concept. Many listened patiently, tried not to roll their eyes, etc. Astonishing how it is already two years down the track, things are SO different now. When I first knew about it, getting Bitcoins was actually insanely difficult unless you knew/trusted someone well or mined them yourself. Being in Australia made it doubly difficult. Buying was extremely risky and time consuming. The only real option (and ironically the safest), was to send cash in the mail to an anonymous forum user and wait weeks to confirm receipt of the cash and hope the exchange rate at the time of agreement was honored. Fuck. That. Now, I place an order and can get them in my wallet in 2 hours .

[waspoza]

I see that there was possibility to include message with transaction. What happened to that?

Would probably be abused and spam and bloat up the blockchain right?

This can be easily countered with length restriction.

[foggyb]

Youtube. Steve Gibson as a guest on Security Now #288.

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

Starting at 44:00, bitcoin was on topic.

I know, slashdot covered it months earlier, but I had stopped reading slashdot. 

[rjk]

I see that there was possibility to include message with transaction. What happened to that?

Would probably be abused and spam and bloat up the blockchain right?

This can be easily countered with length restriction.

The message option was only available when sending via IP address, and was never stored in the blockchain. When the send to IP functionality was removed, the messaging system went with it.

[waspoza]

I see that there was possibility to include message with transaction. What happened to that?

Would probably be abused and spam and bloat up the blockchain right?

This can be easily countered with length restriction.

The message option was only available when sending via IP address, and was never stored in the blockchain. When the send to IP functionality was removed, the messaging system went with it.

I see, thanks.

[Dalkore]

I first heard about Bitcoin from this article:
  http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/open-source-innovation-the-cutting-edge-582?page=0,2

My gosh, I was an early adopter.   Why the **** didn't I back up those coins.   doah!


D