Bitcoin 2011 : My first tryst with Crypto Money
Hey guys, I'm back with yet another post. Today I'm gonna talk about the first ever time I heard about Bitcoin and the kind of reaction I had to it.
I have been into crypto for a very very long time and it might seem like I am lying but the first time I heard about Bitcoin was early 2011 and then the next time I actually heard about and put some focus on it was somewhere around 2013.
By 2014 and 2015 I was trying to learn more about crypto. I bought some crypto or I was gifted some crypto by friends or clients.
So in this post I'm gonna ponder over everything and I shouldn't be feeling nostalgic but I feel nostalgic about this topic.
So let's go ahead and start this post about the first time ever I heard about Bitcoin.
Before I start telling you about the first time I heard about Bitcoin, let me tell you that as long as I can remember, I have been a geek or a nerd.
I have always loved technology, computers, electronics, and everything that has a screen.
I was perhaps 8 years old or maybe 10 years old when the first time I looked at a computer and I was a fan.
I wanted to know about computers. I wanted to learn about computers.
Then eventually I did my bachelor's and then eventually my master's in computer.
I don't want to boast but I have been a geek and I have known computer technology much much before than other people.
Obviously I read a lot of tech magazines. Yeah, back then in the early 90s and early 2000s, late 90s and early 2000s, we didn't have internet access, but we did have magazines.
We had PC magazines. We had Digit. We had a lot of other magazines and newspapers used to carry small columns about computers and I read it all.
I was so fascinated about each one of it that I started to reach out to libraries.
I reached out to friends who had parents who were into computers or whose parents had a computer at their offices and I just tried to grab as much knowledge as possible.
The first time I touched a computer, it was a Unix operating system and eventually when I started to use the computer on my own, I think it was Windows 95 that I first started to use.
After I finished my high school, I started repairing computers.
I was working with a guy who had AMCs with annual maintenance contracts with banks and officers and companies and I was his little intern.
He never paid me, but I did get to learn and I got to play my favorite game, that is Road Rash and Dave.
I don't know if anyone remembers these games.
Enough about my past. I'm already feeling nostalgic.
Before I start crying, thinking about those incredible, memorable, cute, innocent days, let me jump to crypto.
Bitcoin started as an idea, I don't know when, but they released the white paper in 2009.
And eventually, a few years later, scientists at big universities like MIT and Harvard and Cambridge, etc., etc., started to ponder about Bitcoin.
They started to tinker around and they started to talk about it.
I used to read a lot of tech magazines.
And one of the magazines mentioned about Bitcoin in 2011.
This was the first time I had an internet connection at my home.
And I was reading and researching on different topics about technologies, about products, about hardware, about networking, about software.
Mobiles were still black and white and what we call brick phones made by Nokia.
The first time when I heard about Bitcoin, I was like, damn, this is good.
Because I always, computer geeks always wanted a way to earn money from their computers.
Because our parents were upset that we were spending too much time on our computers, playing games and reading stuff that they thought was worthless.
And some of us were, you know, just spending so much time exploring everything that we messed up our sleep cycles, we messed up our work, and this caused a lot of issues at our homes.
Computer geeks always wanted a way to earn money from their computers.
I dreamt of making money playing games.
I used to hear about gaming competitions in many other countries, but I was never a gamer.
I never was good at it, so it was always a dream that I would play some simple game like Road Rash, or Mario, or Dave, and earn money from the points that I earn in the game.
And the first time when I heard about crypto, or when I heard about Bitcoin, I was like, damn, this is how I'm gonna fulfill my dream of earning money from a computer.
Mining was an amazing concept.
Not many people might be aware of that, but I'll make a post about it someday.
Mining was such a good concept that you just turn on your computers, and use some terminals, use some tools, and your computer, your CPU starts to mine Bitcoin.
Such an amazing concept, but it was ruined by people using specified or customized miners.
It took me weeks to understand the concept of mining.
It took me months to get to know what actually Bitcoin was, how it worked, what it did.
It took me so much time because there were not many guides, there were not many people talking about it, there were not many youtubers back then who were making videos about it, so I had to pick whatever I could, wherever I could find some information, I would grab it.
Eventually, when I got my internet connection in early 2011, I think, or maybe 2010, I don't remember, but I had a Core2Duo computer that I bought with my earnings as a computer teacher at a local institute, and one day I was reading about Bitcoin and I decided that I would try and mine Bitcoin on my computer.
So, when I read a guide, probably on Bitcoin.org, and they told me that I will need to download the Bitcoin wallet, and once I download my Bitcoin wallet, I need to download the blockchain on my computer, so that I can start mining.
I was like, okay, I have a dial-up connection, I have a computer, I have electricity that is paid by my parents, and I started to mine Bitcoin.
Every day, I would turn on the computer at around 8 p.m., because that's when I came home after taking a few computer classes, teaching a few computer classes, and then I would sit down on my computer, start working on it, start the computer, start the Bitcoin client, or Bitcoin wallet as people know it now, and then I would just wait and wait and wait for it to download.
Let me just tell you that my internet connection was a dial-up connection.
People who have never used a dial-up connection will never know the pain of a dial-up connection.
A dial-up connection was the slowest form of internet, and the connection that I had, I think it was 500, sorry, 256 kbps per second.
That's the slowest form of internet you'll ever get.
And it took me more than 3 or 4 months to download the whole Bitcoin blockchain, because point number one, I was never online.
I was not always online.
Point number two, I had other things to download as well, like movies on BitTorrent, and my siblings, whenever they used the computer, they would shut the client down, because it would slow down the computer.
So there were these few problems that I was facing, and that's the reason it took me more than 3 months or 6 months, I don't remember, it took me a long, long time to download the whole thing.
And when it finished, I was happy, and I thought I was ready to earn some Bitcoin.
It took a long time for me to download the whole Bitcoin blockchain.
I think it was like 100 GB back then, and 100 GB was a big deal.
My computer had, I think, 40 GB of hard disk or maybe 80 GB, maximum 80 GB of hard disk on my computer.
And I tried mining, it didn't work.
I wasn't into it, I lost focus, and I never earned a Bitcoin by mining.
I know I had gold, I had some rocks in my hand that just needed to chisel, needed to sharpen and grind it so that they would become diamonds.
But I was a fool, and I was never able to mine Bitcoin.
That's my tragic story.
Imagine if I had just mined 100 Bitcoin.
Let's say 100 Bitcoin, what would it have been?
It would have been such a big thing now.
Now that you have known my story, do you think I was a fool?
Do you think that I missed a big opportunity or do you think that I have regret?
Should I have regret that I didn't download, that I didn't mine bitcoins?
Should I be regretful of my past decisions and my past mistakes?
Well, that's subjective.
I hold no regrets.
But I do take lessons from my past experiences.
Some of the lessons are that whenever I find a new technology that I think will shape the world or shape my future, at least, I should grab it and I should not be lazy with that.
I take this lesson pretty seriously.
It's close to my heart.
And I always try to do the best that I can do to not mess up my future by taking wrong decisions.
I did mine some tokens, but it wasn't until 2014.
I didn't make a fortune out of that, but it did help me buy a few things.
I think I bought a mobile recharge with that.
I paid my mobile bill with that, I guess.
I don't remember exactly, but not much.
But my investment strategies have worked for me and for my friends, and we did make not a lot, lot of money, but a good amount of money that helped me stay focused and helped me in my life.
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