How much could the coins be sold for at that time? Surely it was not greed for money....
You're absolutely right, it was the long-term greed of money that got me started, but the immediate greed of money that made me stop. I saw it as something that would be worth something "someday", much like anyone else. But I stopped because it wasn't worth anything *right then* and it was costing me ~$40/month to run the CPUs constantly and that was money I needed for other things. "O ye of little faith" is what I wish I could tell the 2009 version of myself today. In the end, I lost the hundred Bitcoin I had mined anyway, because they had no monetary value and I later formatted the drive.
Also note, I use "greed" as just an emotional state, here. I don't necessarily deem a state of emotion a bad or good thing, as rational greed gives some the foresight to care for their future, while irrational greed could drive others to crime. We should *always* be looking for better opportunities and striving for a better life, though, because as we do, people who are also rationally-greedy will attempt to cater to those desires, and lower the cost of them for everyone.
Put simply, I wanted Bitcoin cause I thought it would be worth something. After a month of realizing it was still worth nothing, I gave up mining it.
Like the 10.000 BTC pizza, a hungry miner would pay 2-3 ounces for a meal.
This is very true. When ngzhang's FPGAs were first coming out, I sold ~250 Bitcoin to purchase two of them. I should have held on the Bitcoins and used cash instead, or simply purchased Bitcoins with cash and held on to what I had. They haven't quite paid themselves off, and they are about to become worthless once ASICs drop. Also, if I would have tried to have made a living off of Bitcoin, as I was seriously looking to do at one point early this year, it would have required ~$14,000 in FPGA devices. I was estimating at the time of ngzhang's second batch that I could buy 35 of them which would have generated me about $1,000/month in February 2012, but after the block reward halving and difficulty increases, would be getting me just over $600/month (I have very low utility costs). Considering the repayment rate on a $14,000 small business loan, even without rent, I was sure to not have made a living off of it. On the other hand, had I purchased $14,000 worth of Bitcoin at $5/coin, I would have owned more coin than mining when the ASICs drop, and obviously I could sell it for about a %150 net gain today.
The people that made money during the Gold Rush were the ones that bought and held or sold goods for gold and held a percentage while people were going nuts after gold. And, of course, the guys selling the pickaxes and shovels.
I know I CPU-mined a couple blocks to get the initial coins for bitcoindarts, this was when mining was all in the official client rather than separate miners. Ran it for maybe 2 weeks and picked up 4 blocks before stopping, wasn't really worth it at that point (could have bought them instead at $3/block) but there was a lack of useful exchanges at that point so was easier to mine for the startup capital.
This is a good point, too, from 2010. The lack of any good exchanges meant most of the trading was on the forums. I lurked here, never made an account, but even after Bitcoin was a couple pennies apiece the one thing I was thinking to myself was "Man, imagine if I had kept spending $40/month mining, I would have been mining for the last 8 months and spent over $360 on stuff that ends up being worth just pennies." I estimate I could have made ~3200 Bitcoin at the time and sold at ~$100 for a loss of $200 in extra utility bills, but if you think I wouldn't have sold it at $1, much less the $13 of today, you'd be fooling yourself, I would have sold much earlier. And as for lazlo's, 10k, it would have to take someone of immense willpower to know they could quit their day job and run the risk of the price someday falling to have held tens of thousands of Bitcoins without selling *some* of them. And therein probably lies the problem. Do you sell now to have enough fiat to make it another month, or hold the coin and stop the leaking and work for your fiat instead? Or do you become an exchange and buy and sell coin yourself? A pool operator and try to operate off the proceeds/fees and live off your saved coin?
I was also lurking when Artforz first "broke" Bitcoin. I think a reasonable number of us thought that was the end of Bitcoin (again, ye of little faith). I actually quit reading the forums after that point because I figured with double-spending risk the network would go nowhere. I came back and started mining with my GPU in November of 2010 when the hoopla around Wikileaks donations using Bitcoin was at its peak. But at that point I was mining only maybe a couple Bitcoin in a day with a cruddy GPU or two.
Honestly, if you want to know what some old miners are doing, I can only really speak for myself, but I won't be participating in the first ASIC wave. And I'll probably skip the second and third, too. I might upgrade my FPGAs, but frankly, I'm done with mining, it's been the least profitable for me. I'll just be buying and probably mostly selling from now on.
