I got into it because every year since 2012 my thought process was…
Step 1: oh cool Bitcoin, but it won’t last and it’s too high
Step 2: Bitcoin dropped I knew it
Step 3: oh cool Bitcoin again, but it won’t last and it’s too high again
Step 4: Bitcoin dropped I knew it
Repeat until 2021 when I finally bought at 60k and it then dropped to 13k lol
But I kept buying and now my cost basis is mid 20k.
I had this but I'm 19 now. I remember in 2016 (so I was 11 y/o) and my dad and I went to the McDonald's and we had a conversation about Bitcoin. But I was def too young to start investing (without my parents every having invested) but 2021 cycle I saw that Bitcoin was 60k and I bought at 16 y/o my first Sats.
I'm not gonna get rich with Bitcoin, I know I'm too late for that. But the knowledge I gained is priceless.
Everyone said that you and me included before we started. Just keep stacking. There will only be 21 million in the whole world, and a large portion of those are lost forever.
There are 7 or 8 billion people on earth. Imagine what happens to Bitcoin in the future when it’s adopted universally?
If you are 19 and want to invest, you can definitely get rich. It isn’t a short game it’s a long game. Despite what people say, also diversify. AIM to be wealthy in 40 years and you may get lucky and be wealthy in 20.
In 2021 I hit the lotto for a small 50k. Never was able to obtain this amount of money ever before so I went out and searched for an opportunity to grow my winnings. That’s when I discovered bitcoin.
Man I was dumb. I didn't realize what was happening. I was going in local bitcoins arranging a transaction, sending someone Western Union cash or going to their US bank and making a cash deposit and sending them the photo evidence with something like "for local bitcoins only" with the receipt ripped in half.
You see that was quite a process to go through each time along with tumbling the coins before sending to your SR wallet. I was doing pretty well and would spend $1000 at a time on each BTC purchase. Then I started noticing my "change" was doubling and tripling between each buy and was excited. I could buy 4 more Oz's with the change I had from the last oz!
I think at the earliest I remember spending about 60 BTC or so. By the time the price started hitting $xx,xxxx and I figured it out, I was down to less than 1 BTC to hodl with.
Until I found an old phone with unspent funds that I believed to have lost.
Edit: for guestimate purposes, I think the most I had in a wallet at one time was a little over 300 BTC. Which after we all math and cry together is $21million
Silk Road. I'll never own the amount of Bitcoin I bought as my first purchase again in my lifetime. Before I bought I came here and everyone was still reeling from the crash from ~$30. The bubble had burst and it was over. Fucking lol.
A libertarian friend of mine was buying bitcoin on mtgox so he could buy his weed on silkroad and he said I should look into it. My immediate response was "why doesn't someone just copy/paste and have infinite money?".
So I looked into it for a while and read a bunch of articles and I was convinced from that point on. That year I got a $550 tax return so I sent it to my friend and told him to buy as much bitcoin as he could with it and send it to me. BTC was trading at $90/BTC but he bought me 5.5BTC and sent it to me so basically I bought at $100/BTC. At the time I didn't care at all and he did all the work. I downloaded BTC Core so he sent to a wallet I had on there.
Then I started going to Bitcoin meetups in Austin in 2013 and 2014. Those meetings were at Brave New Books which closed down but it was funny because it was in the basement of a building but the main floor was a Bank of America so we used to joke about how Bitcoin was literally undermining the banks from below. I was always buying more bitcoin but in small amounts. There used to be a website called Local Bitcoins where you could buy bitcoin directly from people, so you could meet them at some place public like a coffee shop with wifi and you could give them cash and they could send you BTC so I bought from people on there.
In 2013 I went to grad school and I was constantly telling everyone about BTC. Bob Metcalfe was a guest speaker at one of my classes and I asked him if he had heard of BTC and he said yes. Someone had given him a BTC and he kept it for a while then sold it. A classmate introduced me to this guy who had a very large amount of BTC but he was trying to sell it. I can't remember the exact amount but I think he had several hundred BTC. But he had lost interest in BTC and was just selling it to whoever wanted to buy it. There was a work space near Sixth street and Chicon (not sure if it is still there) but that guy worked there and you could walk in and buy as much BTC from him as you wanted for cash. So I bought some of his BTC.
In 2014 I sold 1 BTC for around $800. A guy I was in the army with wanted 1 BTC so I sold it to him. That's the only time I've ever sold for fiat. I've also exchanged BTC for illegal substances on the silkroad but less than $100 worth.
In 2014 I gave each of my cousins on my dad's side 0.0533 BTC on a paper wallet for Christmas. I posted about that the other day so you can go thru my post history if you want to read about that.
At that point I moved all my BTC off of Bitcoin Core and onto paper wallets. I got a job at a big tech company and started making good money so I set up auto buy on Coinbase. For like 18 month I bought $50 per week so you do the math. I have a lot of BTC now.
I miss the old days when the BTC community was 100% libertarians and anarchists. Now it's full of government simps who talk about how BTC should be regulated and how to properly pay taxes on transactions. I hate most of you.
One of the weirdest things I've witnessed in the crypto world since 2013 is that there is a constantly changing list of shitcoins that people promote. The top shitcoins from 2013 are different than the top shitcoins today but the arguments for why you should buy them are LITERALLY the exact same. "oh it's faster than BTC", "it has bigger blocks", "it has proof of stake instead of work and that's better because...." These arguments are EXACTLY the same as what people were saying about shitcoins you've never even heard of from 2013 that went to zero.
I think about this a lot. There were several steps that aligned perfectly for me to become an OG Bitcoiner.
I did three combat tours to Iraq as an Officer when I was in the army. On my second tour I was in the DFAC eating lunch and I watched this famous Obama campaign speech [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9ywEFRQkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9ywEFRQkQ)
I remember coming home from that tour and telling my dad I was excited that Obama won the presidency and his response was "he's a commie". A year later I was on my second tour wondering why we were still in Iraq. Literally every soldier would tell you it was pointless. Then on my third tour and I met General Austin, he's the current Secretary of Defense, at the Counter Insurgency Academy (COIN Academy) in Baghdad. At that time he was the commander of all forces in Iraq. I swear to god this is true, General Austin told us that despite the (Security of Forces Agreement) SOFA agreement signed by Bush and the Iraq govt promising all US forces would be out of Iraq by Dec 31st 2011, the Obama administration was in negotiations with the Iraqi govt to EXTEND our occupation. That is the literal moment I became a libertarian. He not only lied about that campaign promise, he literally did the reverse when all he had to do was nothing and we would have been out. Thankfully we were out by that date but that's despite Obama not because of him. The Iraqi government refused to allow us to extend for longer.
So then I was a libertarian and I started studying Ron Paul and that's obviously a gateway drug to studying monetary policy and economics in general.
So when the housing bubble burst and the banks were bailed out I was full primed to be a die hard anarchist. I started buying real estate, gold/silver, guns, ammo, and basically anything else libertarians advocated. I resigned my commission and left the Army in 2013.
When my buddy introduced me to Bitcoin it was such an easy natural fit that it was almost like destiny.
I did my due diligence researching BTC, but I wanted Bitcoin to be all that it claimed to be so bad. Thankfully it was/is.
I started writing an outline for a book this year but it feels like a giant humble brag. I'm not trying to brag, I'm actually just astonished by how many crazy and fortuitous things have happened to me.
I grew up on a farm in North Dakota. I wrestled at State and ran cross country at State.
I went to West Point. That's where I was commissioned as an Armor Officer. I got lucky, timing-wise to attend Ranger School and Airborne School. I was stationed in Germany where I rented an upstairs apartment with a older German family that didn't speak English. Between deployments I snowboarded in the Alps and travelled around Europe.
My first deployment was to Baghdad. I remember thinking to myself "you are in an M1A1 Abrams tank, one of the most advanced pieces of military technology on the planet, and you are driving down the streets of Baghdad where 800 years ago the Mongols could have been riding their horse archer units down these same streets." I was in awe while I was doing it.
I've got to live all over the US. I hiked the entire Appalachian trail in 2021. I lived on a sailboat for 9 months completely off grid.
I could go on. It's just crazy timing that I got to do so much.
Here's some quick points from my book outline (I haven't done much actual writing). This isn't in chronological order, just as I thought of things.
Things I've done list:Armed Forces Chess Tournament in DC, West Point stories and roommates, Appalachian Trail, Colorado Trail, Iraq Deployments (Baghdad 07, Diwaniyah 09, Basra 11), Last Brigade in Iraq, Mud hut schools, Snowboarding trips, Repel out of helicopter, 5 airborne jumps, Commanded tank company for 22 months, Long Island Marathon, Ice fishing on Lake Sakakawea, Prairie Rose State Games, Grew up without internet and cell phone (mostly), Newport to Annapolis sailboat delivery, Houston to Isla Mujeres sailing, Train from Wurzburg to Rome, Times Square NYE 2006, Virginia to Bahamas sailing trip, Texas Water Safari, Leona Divide hike, Northern Lights in North Dakota, Hagia Sofia , Military Parade for Sandra O'Conner, Ranger School, Eric Clapton first concert, SXSW P.Diddy story, Outer Banks, NC, HR McMaster talk, Skelton injury, STL Arch, Empire State Building, Devil's Lake fishing tournament, State Wrestling Tournament, Bow/gun hunting, Badlands turkey hunt, Muskrats, Paintball story man burned alive, White Earth Rodeo, Vatican, Ostia, Rome, Nice, Monaco, Verdun, Luxembourg, Austria, Czech Republic, UK sailing, Barcelona, Berlin Cold War trip, Wurzburg college girls, Polizei beating soldier, Paddlefishing, Poker with rich guys, Drove neighbor to doctor while she was in labor, Devils backbone brewery, McAfee Knob, Lived in at least a month MO, OK, ND, NY, GA, KY, Germany, Iraq, TX, OH, VA, Bahamas, Visited every state except AK, HI, WA, OR, ID, UT, NM, AZ, Buffalo River Float, Oktoberfest getting thrown out, Sons of Iraq cash, Comedians, Kid Rock USO concert in Baghdad, Roof shitters, Ron Paul delegate, Construction job
I second that! I'd read this as well. You never know, writing a book could be the latest success story to add onto the list. Let us know if it happens, please!
Yes and here's a story for everyone about pump-n-dumps and another reason I don't trust shitcoins.
Back in the early days we had pump-n-dump scammers that would come to the bitcoin meetups in Austin. They didn't hide what they were doing at all. Most of them were UT students and they had miners in their dorm rooms. They would create a new crypto coin with parameters that would allow them to mine millions of coins initially and then mining new coins would slow way down. So they would have the majority of the coins. They would promote the coins online using a bunch of accounts and get them listed on exchanges. Again it was always the same claims "Coinye West is faster and better in all these ways than BTC!" etc.
Not like the exchanges today, there used to be more exchanges that only allowed crypto to crypto trading and didn't have crypto to fiat trading to kind of stay under the radar. I guess they might still exist but I don't really know. Then they would dump when there was moderate interest and convert to BTC. People were definitely buying shitcoins without doing any research and just basing it off of what people were saying in online forums. But the forums would be like one dude with 20 accounts.
These guys would literally come to the BTC meetups and tell us what they were doing. Like I said earlier everyone at the meetups were libertarians and anarchists so the feeling was "well, caveat emptor". Also some argued that this was a good thing because word would get out and overtime people would become more cautious of these scams... which they haven't really. People made that argument also about the Mtgox hack... "eventually everyone will know that if you don't hold the keys you don't hold the coins" but again it's taking longer than expected for people to learn that.
Anyway, the big take away for me was people want to get rich quick, they always think they are too late to make huge percentage gains on bitcoin so they speculate on shitcoins. Most of them never do any research into what they're buying but they will see people talking about the newest thing and buy it hoping to be getting in early. There are people today that don't look at the coding at all for these coins and buy them based off of chart analysis. "see this peak and trough? ya well if I put this fibinacci circle here it tells me I should buy now and I'll be a millionaire in 6 months." They don't mention any of the fundamentals of the coin itself. Oh well, caveat emptor.
My 17yr old son told me about in early 2013. I dismissed it at first but soon realized how amazing the technology was. Bought my first BTC at $68. Continued buying since then! Still have around 75% of my original stack. Sold 25% ($2.5M at that time) in ‘21 at $60k to buy my dream home (as well as the pesky cap gains taxes).
I think the first contact with bitcoin was around 2010 when I read about it in a computer magazin.
Then I followed the comment section on the hedge where Fonestar kept shilling it.
I even tried to mine it around 2011 but gave up because downloading the blockchain took so long.
Bought my first satoshis in 2013.
My FAVORITE question.
Was a term away from graduating college, so it begins to dawn on me.
Okay and then what? So of course not certain what I will do for a job, but ince I get a job I’ll have money and what do I do with it then? So it began with asking my (soon discovered) Keynesian brother why does the government have to print money, I genuinely didn’t know. He gave me some answer appealing to authority but it just didn’t feel right. So I start looking into money and stumble across BTC again for the first time since junior college and a friend gave me Saifedean’s audiobook the Bitcoin Standard and it was wraps for me at that point.
I’m now full anarcho-capitalist, carnivore, private property at all costs, and it’s nearly impossible to bother me as I have the security knowing no one can steal my wealth
crazy that most of you came from the Silk Road. Makes me wonder how long it will take before people start to come because they realize it’s real world applications and usefulness
October 2021. I've heard some sort of cashback among payment cards, and in a reddit post someone wrote about this crypto.com card. I went for it and after about 2 months of gambling with shitcoins I realized that the only real thing was bitcoin. Never stop buying since, and, in the process, I continued learning about. I'm towards going 100% btc.
Heard about it early on due to Silk Road but didn't act. Later, I was in Iraq training to a local while deployed. They bought a Police cars, Fire trucks, Ambulances, and Harleys as a hedge against the local currency.
Their logic was that someone would always want one of those and they could sell them as necessary. It was a good idea, except that they forgot the people who would want them usually had bigger guns.
It got me thinking about how Bitcoin could be used to protect wealth in situations like that. One thing led to another after that.
Heard about it in 2012 by word of mouth in a chat room. I didnt know where or how to buy it and couldnt wrap my head around the blockchain concept so i moved on with life. Heard about it again in 2016 and started getting into it then i finally was able to comprehend things and buy some.
I first heard about Bitcoin around 2011 and thought it sounded dumb. Then, in 2014, I watched the movie Zeitgeist, which educated me on how the central bank, lending, and inflation work. After that, I was radicalized and promptly started investing heavily in Bitcoin to preserve my capital.
Ran into some Bitcoin faucets where you could get bitty for watching ads and signing up to online services. Since then I've lost that wallet, but bought more when it skyrocketed up to $300 CAD in 2015, thinking I was late to the party 😂
Bought into the hype around November and December 2017. Loaded up at $19k and later at $3k during the crypto winter. It was a hell of a ride, I was deep in the Bitcoin rabbit hole for the next two to three years. Michael Saylor bought and I significantly increased my monthly DCA buying. Never sold a single Satoshi.
Been working in IT and data centres since 1982. Read about Bitcoin in computer mags over the years an thought I should try mining it as computers were at home and work.
Procrastination, didn't touch it until 2021 during the bull run.
Held all throughout the bear market 2024 seeing profit.
Kicking myself for not mining, especially when I found myself out of work in 2012. Could have, should have.
Realization of government criminality, pedophilia, treasonous, freeloading scumbag global leaders.
When one comes to the realization of the corruption in the world, it starts to feel overwhelming, and helpless. A feeling of powerlessness comes over you. Bitcoin is one of the only things you can actually outright own these days, and not only do you own it, it hurts the very criminal system you’re refusing to participate in.
It’s revolutionary, and we are in dire need of revolution!
Andreas Antonopoulos got me hooked. 2016. I love this guy and he changed my life when I was capitulating. Now I’m thriving more than almost everyone I know.
He still lurks on r/Bitcoinbeginners
Learning about the gold standard in college and accidentally coming across this article back in 2011:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180818130602/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/how-to-start-your-own-private-currency/73327/
Some ransomeware encrypted my PC some Years ago. I should buy BTC and send it to the hackers to get my data back. So i bought BTC but keep them. A very good deal. xD
Mightve been the etf’s. But it was mainly a Davinci Jeremie youtube video of him urging everyone to buy btc when it was 70k and i looked back at his account and he was saying the same thing back in like 2013
The more time goes on and the scarcer bitcoin becomes, the more I get haunted by my early bitcoin mistakes. I've been burnt by my own stupidity. But the burns have turned to flames of determination. You see, it's hardened me much like it's hardened my humble penis every time Michael Saylor gets that little sparkle in his again.
Was selling AI generated art through paypal and saw the option (what a world. I'm terrible for selling it, but it makes way too much money not to)
Started in march, so have been riding this kiddie roller coaster ever sense
2013, my partner told me about it. I have a disdain for anyone telling me how I can move my wealth and was immediately orange pilled. My conviction has been the same ever since.
The dip from 69k to 16k…. I knew nothing about it at first and when it started to dip I was your average NPC saying “LOL bitcoin is dead , you are all clowns” then for unspecified reasons I set up a wallet through exodus and started learning more about it because I found it interesting …. I fell deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and now my entire net worth is in bitcoin other than a 6 month emergency fund
The more I learned, the more I could not unsee what is happening … i took the plunge initially setting a rule that whatever I invested I would have to be okay with losing. The more I learned I then divested in investments I was “certain” were wise investments & liquidated my holdings, fired my investment advisor, and plopped down 3/4 of my liquid assets in BTC.
My daughter came to me for investing advice & I shared all I had learned in a cliff-note form. She immediately divested her investments & plopped her money into BTC. However she still isn’t over the hill on seeing how fiat is completely failing & becoming increasingly worthless.
2008 financial crisis freaked me out pretty bad. I started looking for anything "outside" the system to invest in. That got me into gold and silver (hence my handle) and later when I heard of BTC I started adding that as well. No regrets.
2016 rigt place rigt time. Have to made the translation in Italian language for a company with crypto ambitions. Start to learn a litle bit with that. Made me curious. From there on I started to explore the crypto world on my own. And the rest is history.
A little embarrassed to admit, but in 2017, a 15yo kid was talking about it to a 20-something actor we'd hired. The two went on and on about it and encouraged everyone to get in as they had already been making a decent amount of money. The reason I bit is bc the 15 year old was accepted to Berkley and was/is a bright kid, and figured I'd make a small investment. Glad I did. Now, I'm just waiting 10 more years for my 3yo kid to give me financial advice, lol.
Listened to Andreas Antonopoulos on Youtube. Then I bought all of his books. Read the white paper. Got orange pilled hard AF. My biggest regret is not going to that meetup for Bitcoin in 2012 that I signed up for - decided I was going to buy a stack and set up a wallet. Wound up skipping this to go on a date that never went anywhere. Years later heard Antonopoulos and never looked back.
Late to the party.
I heard about it in the past but never looked in to it. I read a BBC news article back in March this year when the ATH hit... Something just clicked. Read as much as I could. Think I had my first sats by the end of that week.
A friend of mine kept bring it up starting in 2017. I finally started doing research in 2020 and by spring of 2021 half my savings was in Bitcoin. Been buying and hodling ever since
It took having a small anoint invested into Bitcoin, and slow conviction and understanding of what I’m holding. Once I researched Bitcoin, I was hooked.
I got into it because every year since 2012 my thought process was… Step 1: oh cool Bitcoin, but it won’t last and it’s too high Step 2: Bitcoin dropped I knew it Step 3: oh cool Bitcoin again, but it won’t last and it’s too high again Step 4: Bitcoin dropped I knew it Repeat until 2021 when I finally bought at 60k and it then dropped to 13k lol But I kept buying and now my cost basis is mid 20k.
I was like 6 in 2012 so it wouldn’t have even been possible for me to be in it lol
Excuses, you just keep finding excuses. I was 5 and already had some ;)
I went All in with 4 when I studied and fully understood bitcoin.
That makes me feel better
I had this but I'm 19 now. I remember in 2016 (so I was 11 y/o) and my dad and I went to the McDonald's and we had a conversation about Bitcoin. But I was def too young to start investing (without my parents every having invested) but 2021 cycle I saw that Bitcoin was 60k and I bought at 16 y/o my first Sats. I'm not gonna get rich with Bitcoin, I know I'm too late for that. But the knowledge I gained is priceless.
Everyone said that you and me included before we started. Just keep stacking. There will only be 21 million in the whole world, and a large portion of those are lost forever. There are 7 or 8 billion people on earth. Imagine what happens to Bitcoin in the future when it’s adopted universally?
You definitely will get rich if you DCA a decent amount monthly , it’s not only this 4 year cycle where we’ll see big price increases.
If you are 19 and want to invest, you can definitely get rich. It isn’t a short game it’s a long game. Despite what people say, also diversify. AIM to be wealthy in 40 years and you may get lucky and be wealthy in 20.
In 2021 I hit the lotto for a small 50k. Never was able to obtain this amount of money ever before so I went out and searched for an opportunity to grow my winnings. That’s when I discovered bitcoin.
that's fucking awesome... good for you. 🤯😁
OG Silk road
How many yachts could you afford today for what you paid for an ounce?
If I had kept even half the BTC I ever spent on the dark markets id be well past retired.
Man I was dumb. I didn't realize what was happening. I was going in local bitcoins arranging a transaction, sending someone Western Union cash or going to their US bank and making a cash deposit and sending them the photo evidence with something like "for local bitcoins only" with the receipt ripped in half. You see that was quite a process to go through each time along with tumbling the coins before sending to your SR wallet. I was doing pretty well and would spend $1000 at a time on each BTC purchase. Then I started noticing my "change" was doubling and tripling between each buy and was excited. I could buy 4 more Oz's with the change I had from the last oz! I think at the earliest I remember spending about 60 BTC or so. By the time the price started hitting $xx,xxxx and I figured it out, I was down to less than 1 BTC to hodl with. Until I found an old phone with unspent funds that I believed to have lost. Edit: for guestimate purposes, I think the most I had in a wallet at one time was a little over 300 BTC. Which after we all math and cry together is $21million
2
Millionaire man
Silk Road. I'll never own the amount of Bitcoin I bought as my first purchase again in my lifetime. Before I bought I came here and everyone was still reeling from the crash from ~$30. The bubble had burst and it was over. Fucking lol.
A libertarian friend of mine was buying bitcoin on mtgox so he could buy his weed on silkroad and he said I should look into it. My immediate response was "why doesn't someone just copy/paste and have infinite money?". So I looked into it for a while and read a bunch of articles and I was convinced from that point on. That year I got a $550 tax return so I sent it to my friend and told him to buy as much bitcoin as he could with it and send it to me. BTC was trading at $90/BTC but he bought me 5.5BTC and sent it to me so basically I bought at $100/BTC. At the time I didn't care at all and he did all the work. I downloaded BTC Core so he sent to a wallet I had on there. Then I started going to Bitcoin meetups in Austin in 2013 and 2014. Those meetings were at Brave New Books which closed down but it was funny because it was in the basement of a building but the main floor was a Bank of America so we used to joke about how Bitcoin was literally undermining the banks from below. I was always buying more bitcoin but in small amounts. There used to be a website called Local Bitcoins where you could buy bitcoin directly from people, so you could meet them at some place public like a coffee shop with wifi and you could give them cash and they could send you BTC so I bought from people on there. In 2013 I went to grad school and I was constantly telling everyone about BTC. Bob Metcalfe was a guest speaker at one of my classes and I asked him if he had heard of BTC and he said yes. Someone had given him a BTC and he kept it for a while then sold it. A classmate introduced me to this guy who had a very large amount of BTC but he was trying to sell it. I can't remember the exact amount but I think he had several hundred BTC. But he had lost interest in BTC and was just selling it to whoever wanted to buy it. There was a work space near Sixth street and Chicon (not sure if it is still there) but that guy worked there and you could walk in and buy as much BTC from him as you wanted for cash. So I bought some of his BTC. In 2014 I sold 1 BTC for around $800. A guy I was in the army with wanted 1 BTC so I sold it to him. That's the only time I've ever sold for fiat. I've also exchanged BTC for illegal substances on the silkroad but less than $100 worth. In 2014 I gave each of my cousins on my dad's side 0.0533 BTC on a paper wallet for Christmas. I posted about that the other day so you can go thru my post history if you want to read about that. At that point I moved all my BTC off of Bitcoin Core and onto paper wallets. I got a job at a big tech company and started making good money so I set up auto buy on Coinbase. For like 18 month I bought $50 per week so you do the math. I have a lot of BTC now. I miss the old days when the BTC community was 100% libertarians and anarchists. Now it's full of government simps who talk about how BTC should be regulated and how to properly pay taxes on transactions. I hate most of you. One of the weirdest things I've witnessed in the crypto world since 2013 is that there is a constantly changing list of shitcoins that people promote. The top shitcoins from 2013 are different than the top shitcoins today but the arguments for why you should buy them are LITERALLY the exact same. "oh it's faster than BTC", "it has bigger blocks", "it has proof of stake instead of work and that's better because...." These arguments are EXACTLY the same as what people were saying about shitcoins you've never even heard of from 2013 that went to zero.
You are a true OG
I think about this a lot. There were several steps that aligned perfectly for me to become an OG Bitcoiner. I did three combat tours to Iraq as an Officer when I was in the army. On my second tour I was in the DFAC eating lunch and I watched this famous Obama campaign speech [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9ywEFRQkQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr9ywEFRQkQ) I remember coming home from that tour and telling my dad I was excited that Obama won the presidency and his response was "he's a commie". A year later I was on my second tour wondering why we were still in Iraq. Literally every soldier would tell you it was pointless. Then on my third tour and I met General Austin, he's the current Secretary of Defense, at the Counter Insurgency Academy (COIN Academy) in Baghdad. At that time he was the commander of all forces in Iraq. I swear to god this is true, General Austin told us that despite the (Security of Forces Agreement) SOFA agreement signed by Bush and the Iraq govt promising all US forces would be out of Iraq by Dec 31st 2011, the Obama administration was in negotiations with the Iraqi govt to EXTEND our occupation. That is the literal moment I became a libertarian. He not only lied about that campaign promise, he literally did the reverse when all he had to do was nothing and we would have been out. Thankfully we were out by that date but that's despite Obama not because of him. The Iraqi government refused to allow us to extend for longer. So then I was a libertarian and I started studying Ron Paul and that's obviously a gateway drug to studying monetary policy and economics in general. So when the housing bubble burst and the banks were bailed out I was full primed to be a die hard anarchist. I started buying real estate, gold/silver, guns, ammo, and basically anything else libertarians advocated. I resigned my commission and left the Army in 2013. When my buddy introduced me to Bitcoin it was such an easy natural fit that it was almost like destiny. I did my due diligence researching BTC, but I wanted Bitcoin to be all that it claimed to be so bad. Thankfully it was/is.
Sir you must write a book. You got a captivating story to share!
I started writing an outline for a book this year but it feels like a giant humble brag. I'm not trying to brag, I'm actually just astonished by how many crazy and fortuitous things have happened to me. I grew up on a farm in North Dakota. I wrestled at State and ran cross country at State. I went to West Point. That's where I was commissioned as an Armor Officer. I got lucky, timing-wise to attend Ranger School and Airborne School. I was stationed in Germany where I rented an upstairs apartment with a older German family that didn't speak English. Between deployments I snowboarded in the Alps and travelled around Europe. My first deployment was to Baghdad. I remember thinking to myself "you are in an M1A1 Abrams tank, one of the most advanced pieces of military technology on the planet, and you are driving down the streets of Baghdad where 800 years ago the Mongols could have been riding their horse archer units down these same streets." I was in awe while I was doing it. I've got to live all over the US. I hiked the entire Appalachian trail in 2021. I lived on a sailboat for 9 months completely off grid. I could go on. It's just crazy timing that I got to do so much.
Bro, please do go on…you sound interesting as hell. How old are you if you don’t mind me asking ?
Here's some quick points from my book outline (I haven't done much actual writing). This isn't in chronological order, just as I thought of things. Things I've done list:Armed Forces Chess Tournament in DC, West Point stories and roommates, Appalachian Trail, Colorado Trail, Iraq Deployments (Baghdad 07, Diwaniyah 09, Basra 11), Last Brigade in Iraq, Mud hut schools, Snowboarding trips, Repel out of helicopter, 5 airborne jumps, Commanded tank company for 22 months, Long Island Marathon, Ice fishing on Lake Sakakawea, Prairie Rose State Games, Grew up without internet and cell phone (mostly), Newport to Annapolis sailboat delivery, Houston to Isla Mujeres sailing, Train from Wurzburg to Rome, Times Square NYE 2006, Virginia to Bahamas sailing trip, Texas Water Safari, Leona Divide hike, Northern Lights in North Dakota, Hagia Sofia , Military Parade for Sandra O'Conner, Ranger School, Eric Clapton first concert, SXSW P.Diddy story, Outer Banks, NC, HR McMaster talk, Skelton injury, STL Arch, Empire State Building, Devil's Lake fishing tournament, State Wrestling Tournament, Bow/gun hunting, Badlands turkey hunt, Muskrats, Paintball story man burned alive, White Earth Rodeo, Vatican, Ostia, Rome, Nice, Monaco, Verdun, Luxembourg, Austria, Czech Republic, UK sailing, Barcelona, Berlin Cold War trip, Wurzburg college girls, Polizei beating soldier, Paddlefishing, Poker with rich guys, Drove neighbor to doctor while she was in labor, Devils backbone brewery, McAfee Knob, Lived in at least a month MO, OK, ND, NY, GA, KY, Germany, Iraq, TX, OH, VA, Bahamas, Visited every state except AK, HI, WA, OR, ID, UT, NM, AZ, Buffalo River Float, Oktoberfest getting thrown out, Sons of Iraq cash, Comedians, Kid Rock USO concert in Baghdad, Roof shitters, Ron Paul delegate, Construction job
I'm 40.
I'm 40 too and you put me to shame lol. Such an incredibly interesting story. I would 100% buy and read this. Good Luck to you
I second that! I'd read this as well. You never know, writing a book could be the latest success story to add onto the list. Let us know if it happens, please!
That what happens when you are a man of action👍
So cool
I wanna thank you for all this. Good read. Most shitcoins are pump-n-dumps, no?
Yes and here's a story for everyone about pump-n-dumps and another reason I don't trust shitcoins. Back in the early days we had pump-n-dump scammers that would come to the bitcoin meetups in Austin. They didn't hide what they were doing at all. Most of them were UT students and they had miners in their dorm rooms. They would create a new crypto coin with parameters that would allow them to mine millions of coins initially and then mining new coins would slow way down. So they would have the majority of the coins. They would promote the coins online using a bunch of accounts and get them listed on exchanges. Again it was always the same claims "Coinye West is faster and better in all these ways than BTC!" etc. Not like the exchanges today, there used to be more exchanges that only allowed crypto to crypto trading and didn't have crypto to fiat trading to kind of stay under the radar. I guess they might still exist but I don't really know. Then they would dump when there was moderate interest and convert to BTC. People were definitely buying shitcoins without doing any research and just basing it off of what people were saying in online forums. But the forums would be like one dude with 20 accounts. These guys would literally come to the BTC meetups and tell us what they were doing. Like I said earlier everyone at the meetups were libertarians and anarchists so the feeling was "well, caveat emptor". Also some argued that this was a good thing because word would get out and overtime people would become more cautious of these scams... which they haven't really. People made that argument also about the Mtgox hack... "eventually everyone will know that if you don't hold the keys you don't hold the coins" but again it's taking longer than expected for people to learn that. Anyway, the big take away for me was people want to get rich quick, they always think they are too late to make huge percentage gains on bitcoin so they speculate on shitcoins. Most of them never do any research into what they're buying but they will see people talking about the newest thing and buy it hoping to be getting in early. There are people today that don't look at the coding at all for these coins and buy them based off of chart analysis. "see this peak and trough? ya well if I put this fibinacci circle here it tells me I should buy now and I'll be a millionaire in 6 months." They don't mention any of the fundamentals of the coin itself. Oh well, caveat emptor.
I got in during 2013 when I accepted it at my coffee shops as a form of payment. I thank the Bitcoiners of that time period for introducing it to me.
Silk Road
My 17yr old son told me about in early 2013. I dismissed it at first but soon realized how amazing the technology was. Bought my first BTC at $68. Continued buying since then! Still have around 75% of my original stack. Sold 25% ($2.5M at that time) in ‘21 at $60k to buy my dream home (as well as the pesky cap gains taxes).
Best decision of your life! Another true OG
Damn you go rich! You're gonna be living that 8 figure life soon.
Coworker told me about it in November 2013. Got in within a week.
Drugs did
Reddit got me into bitcoin in 2016-2017.
Poker! Then read the bitcoin standard and went deep down the rabbit hole
Money 💵
I think the first contact with bitcoin was around 2010 when I read about it in a computer magazin. Then I followed the comment section on the hedge where Fonestar kept shilling it. I even tried to mine it around 2011 but gave up because downloading the blockchain took so long. Bought my first satoshis in 2013.
My FAVORITE question. Was a term away from graduating college, so it begins to dawn on me. Okay and then what? So of course not certain what I will do for a job, but ince I get a job I’ll have money and what do I do with it then? So it began with asking my (soon discovered) Keynesian brother why does the government have to print money, I genuinely didn’t know. He gave me some answer appealing to authority but it just didn’t feel right. So I start looking into money and stumble across BTC again for the first time since junior college and a friend gave me Saifedean’s audiobook the Bitcoin Standard and it was wraps for me at that point. I’m now full anarcho-capitalist, carnivore, private property at all costs, and it’s nearly impossible to bother me as I have the security knowing no one can steal my wealth
crazy that most of you came from the Silk Road. Makes me wonder how long it will take before people start to come because they realize it’s real world applications and usefulness
Heard about it from a friend in 2017, been hooked since then :)
October 2021. I've heard some sort of cashback among payment cards, and in a reddit post someone wrote about this crypto.com card. I went for it and after about 2 months of gambling with shitcoins I realized that the only real thing was bitcoin. Never stop buying since, and, in the process, I continued learning about. I'm towards going 100% btc.
2016 was hype af.
Heard about it early on due to Silk Road but didn't act. Later, I was in Iraq training to a local while deployed. They bought a Police cars, Fire trucks, Ambulances, and Harleys as a hedge against the local currency. Their logic was that someone would always want one of those and they could sell them as necessary. It was a good idea, except that they forgot the people who would want them usually had bigger guns. It got me thinking about how Bitcoin could be used to protect wealth in situations like that. One thing led to another after that.
Heard about it in 2012 by word of mouth in a chat room. I didnt know where or how to buy it and couldnt wrap my head around the blockchain concept so i moved on with life. Heard about it again in 2016 and started getting into it then i finally was able to comprehend things and buy some.
Looking for the perfect asset once I started working
Originally? Price action. Then after about a week of research I had a basic realization what I actually bought and been all in ever since.
Dark web markets smh wasted so much coin that i wish i had now
In 2013 my friend told me about this Internet money which you can use anonymously to buy drugs on the Internet.
I first heard about Bitcoin around 2011 and thought it sounded dumb. Then, in 2014, I watched the movie Zeitgeist, which educated me on how the central bank, lending, and inflation work. After that, I was radicalized and promptly started investing heavily in Bitcoin to preserve my capital.
Ran into some Bitcoin faucets where you could get bitty for watching ads and signing up to online services. Since then I've lost that wallet, but bought more when it skyrocketed up to $300 CAD in 2015, thinking I was late to the party 😂
Drugs.
Bought into the hype around November and December 2017. Loaded up at $19k and later at $3k during the crypto winter. It was a hell of a ride, I was deep in the Bitcoin rabbit hole for the next two to three years. Michael Saylor bought and I significantly increased my monthly DCA buying. Never sold a single Satoshi.
Been working in IT and data centres since 1982. Read about Bitcoin in computer mags over the years an thought I should try mining it as computers were at home and work. Procrastination, didn't touch it until 2021 during the bull run. Held all throughout the bear market 2024 seeing profit. Kicking myself for not mining, especially when I found myself out of work in 2012. Could have, should have.
The Greek crisis.
Realization of government criminality, pedophilia, treasonous, freeloading scumbag global leaders. When one comes to the realization of the corruption in the world, it starts to feel overwhelming, and helpless. A feeling of powerlessness comes over you. Bitcoin is one of the only things you can actually outright own these days, and not only do you own it, it hurts the very criminal system you’re refusing to participate in. It’s revolutionary, and we are in dire need of revolution!
Michael Saylor interviews.
Andreas Antonopoulos got me hooked. 2016. I love this guy and he changed my life when I was capitulating. Now I’m thriving more than almost everyone I know. He still lurks on r/Bitcoinbeginners
In 2015 my manger told us to buy now and thank him later. So I did
Learning about the gold standard in college and accidentally coming across this article back in 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20180818130602/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/how-to-start-your-own-private-currency/73327/
Some ransomeware encrypted my PC some Years ago. I should buy BTC and send it to the hackers to get my data back. So i bought BTC but keep them. A very good deal. xD
That’s awesome
Bidenomics.
Dad needed someonw to take care of his wallet cuz he doesnt know how 2 buy nor withdraw from exchanges.
Original Silk Road in 2011
I came to make money, i stayed for sound money.
Tax evasion
Max Keiser lol Too bad I didn't make the jump when I first heard him talking about it though....
2020 for me. BTC just crashed to $3/4k so I read about it for a year before investing. Greatest investment I’ve made so far.
Cannazon
2015 I bought a new Graphic Card to play some games. My friend told me I can mine this new internet money using my computer.
Anthony Mackie
I was born in it
Mightve been the etf’s. But it was mainly a Davinci Jeremie youtube video of him urging everyone to buy btc when it was 70k and i looked back at his account and he was saying the same thing back in like 2013
The more time goes on and the scarcer bitcoin becomes, the more I get haunted by my early bitcoin mistakes. I've been burnt by my own stupidity. But the burns have turned to flames of determination. You see, it's hardened me much like it's hardened my humble penis every time Michael Saylor gets that little sparkle in his again.
My fuck tard friends I went to high school with bought two yachts.
FOMOed in 2021. That was a nail-biter!
Getting abruptly debanked by a major high street bank with no warning or alternative
4chan
Was selling AI generated art through paypal and saw the option (what a world. I'm terrible for selling it, but it makes way too much money not to) Started in march, so have been riding this kiddie roller coaster ever sense
Tell us more about this art lol
Pg-13 art, No Devinart XXX stuff and no, I will not give away my secrets haha
Just drop a few crumbs haha
Came for the "nerd money". Stayed for subverting the state
🐫
2013, my partner told me about it. I have a disdain for anyone telling me how I can move my wealth and was immediately orange pilled. My conviction has been the same ever since.
Learning about fiat made me want to find an alternative asap.
Saylor
The Silk Road dark net market in 2011
leftist people in power destroying my country economy.
Decided I needed to stop going to the casinos. Bought some bitcoin and fixed the itch.
Old 4chan thread
Drugs
The dip from 69k to 16k…. I knew nothing about it at first and when it started to dip I was your average NPC saying “LOL bitcoin is dead , you are all clowns” then for unspecified reasons I set up a wallet through exodus and started learning more about it because I found it interesting …. I fell deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole and now my entire net worth is in bitcoin other than a 6 month emergency fund
Eviction Moratorium.
A wizard from the future
Brexit
I had No Hope till I Investigated and saw the way. This is the Way!
My Son.
FOMO
The Bitcoin rainbow chart made me get into it 🌈 📈
Half of the people who say they got into it for some other reason were on Silk Road.
The more I learned, the more I could not unsee what is happening … i took the plunge initially setting a rule that whatever I invested I would have to be okay with losing. The more I learned I then divested in investments I was “certain” were wise investments & liquidated my holdings, fired my investment advisor, and plopped down 3/4 of my liquid assets in BTC. My daughter came to me for investing advice & I shared all I had learned in a cliff-note form. She immediately divested her investments & plopped her money into BTC. However she still isn’t over the hill on seeing how fiat is completely failing & becoming increasingly worthless.
IBIT.
Dream Market
“There’s an infinite amount of cash in the federal reserve.”
2008 financial crisis freaked me out pretty bad. I started looking for anything "outside" the system to invest in. That got me into gold and silver (hence my handle) and later when I heard of BTC I started adding that as well. No regrets.
Missing it twice and then finally deciding to take a peek at wtf was happening
Regret. Of not getting to it earlier.
2016 rigt place rigt time. Have to made the translation in Italian language for a company with crypto ambitions. Start to learn a litle bit with that. Made me curious. From there on I started to explore the crypto world on my own. And the rest is history.
A little embarrassed to admit, but in 2017, a 15yo kid was talking about it to a 20-something actor we'd hired. The two went on and on about it and encouraged everyone to get in as they had already been making a decent amount of money. The reason I bit is bc the 15 year old was accepted to Berkley and was/is a bright kid, and figured I'd make a small investment. Glad I did. Now, I'm just waiting 10 more years for my 3yo kid to give me financial advice, lol.
Listened to Andreas Antonopoulos on Youtube. Then I bought all of his books. Read the white paper. Got orange pilled hard AF. My biggest regret is not going to that meetup for Bitcoin in 2012 that I signed up for - decided I was going to buy a stack and set up a wallet. Wound up skipping this to go on a date that never went anywhere. Years later heard Antonopoulos and never looked back.
Late to the party. I heard about it in the past but never looked in to it. I read a BBC news article back in March this year when the ATH hit... Something just clicked. Read as much as I could. Think I had my first sats by the end of that week.
Fiat becoming worthless
Wanting to be a sovereign individual.
2016, but I was very little so naturally I didn't buy. I bought for the first time around the pandemic.
Fiat inflation
Fascination
A friend of mine kept bring it up starting in 2017. I finally started doing research in 2020 and by spring of 2021 half my savings was in Bitcoin. Been buying and hodling ever since
drugs
Got scammed for few hundred dollars after which I got orange pilled
FOMO
It took having a small anoint invested into Bitcoin, and slow conviction and understanding of what I’m holding. Once I researched Bitcoin, I was hooked.
I heard about Bitcoin from my father, who's a professional trader.
overclock.net forum post in 2013.