[NOSTALGIA] Share Your Early Bitcoin Experiences (2010-2013)

Hey fellow crypto enthusiasts, I’m putting together an archive project focused on the early days of Bitcoin. It's a nostalgic look back at the 2010-2013 period, remember when we mined with CPUs and GPUs, and 1 BTC was just a few cents? Back then, most folks thought we were totally out of our minds. I want to hear from all the early adopters: - How did you find out about Bitcoin? - What was your first transaction or mining experience like? - Got any funny, surprising, or memorable stories from that time? - What do you wish you had done differently? I’m gathering these tales for an article celebrating Bitcoin's history and the people who were part of it. Every story counts, no matter how big or small. Share your memories below. Let’s keep this history alive.

It's interesting to read shared stories from Bitcoin Ogs or people joined this market recent years, as these stories will become og stories next 10 or 20 years. It's personal choice to share your personal story or keep it privately for your own privacy. If people want privacy, let's be very careful with what they write, share online as it can be archived over the Internet, not only at bitcoinnostalgia.org website.

Maybe it should be extended to 2015 or 2016? Not that I would have anything to share then either, but I wouldn't mind to hear some stories from that era as well.

Don't let me deceive you because this thread is going to be a dry land if you consider only from 2010 to 2013 early Birds investors, moreover only few of them are probably active on this forum and still out of them, some are mostly active on the wall observer thread than even the Bitcoin discussion thread, so you may not get enough reply as you may need it except you consider within 2010 to this time when most of us would have been into Bitcoin.

I think I heard about Bitcoin around late 2012 or early 2013 and started mining. Started mining from my desktop. If I remember correctly, I was pool mining with 50BTC pool until it was compromised and I suffered some losses. After that I switched to multiple other pools like Eligius which had no fees, BTC Guild, P2Pool etc until I shifted completely to alts following the emergence of ASICs. It was a fun and strange ride. Early on everyone was proud to be a pioneer of a new technology, had mutual camaraderie and a goal and then saw huge debates, friends going sour, conflict of ideologies and many more. I made a lot of friends in this space, but majority of them are not active here anymore. When you reach a point in your life, where constant battles and arguments does not mean anything and just drains your mental health, you learn to step away from it. I would change nothing, every experience I had in this space was precious and helped me immensely in what I have in my personal life. Getting rid of all my old hardware junk was a challenge.

Post-2013 was a fully different era because due to the World record that Bitcoin hit (the best profitability measured in usd of all times - around 10 000 % per year in 2013) the mainstream talked about BTC very much and reached everyone who was interested in investing. Even "The Times" wrote about Bitcoin at the end of 2013. BTC went mainstream in 2013, altcoins in 2017.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share all of this, it's exactly the kind of story this project is about. The part about the camaraderie at the start, the ideological clashes, and learning to step away when the arguments stop being worth your peace of mind really resonated with me. That human side is what often gets lost when people only talk about prices and charts. The 50BTC pool getting compromised, Eligius, BTC Guild, P2Pool, then the shift to alts when ASICs arrived, that's a real timeline of the era. And "getting rid of all my old hardware junk was a challenge" made me smile. 😄 Memories like yours are exactly what I'm hoping to preserve. Thanks again for contributing. 🙏

Maybe it should be extended to 2015 or 2016? That's a fair point, and you're right that finding active people from the 2010-2013 window is genuinely hard, a lot of them have moved on or rarely post anymore. But I'd still like to try and gather as many of those early stories as I can while they're still around to tell them. That said, I'm definitely open to any period connected to Bitcoin's history, and I've actually set up a dedicated category for that on the archive so no era gets left out. For now though, I'd like to keep the focus on this early era, since those are the stories most at risk of disappearing. Once that's solid, expanding to 2015-2016 and beyond makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the suggestion. 🙂