Topic: 2011 survivors club - page 2. (Read 5075 times)

I will be in the 2013 survivors club thread

I'm better at lurking

Back in 2011, when FPGAs started to be developed on, I proposed to my professor to design a Bitcoin ASIC as my master thesis. It wouldn't have taken a lot of time. Less than butterfly labs, at least! But he refused, saying that digital-only circuits are a solved problem and have no academic value. Which is true actually, if you are a IC-design academic He agreed it would be interesting for economists, however.

I started mining from a machine at home in probably December 2010 or January 2011, for a couple months it was a fun hobby - learning about stuff, hacking on getting automated mining to work under Linux, spending coins all over the place just to see what I could do with them - probably spent/lost/got scammed out of 500ish coins during that period.

Easy to look back on it and say it was stupid, but it was a lot of fun and a learning experience.  Without that trade going I was a small part of, Bitcoin would never have a chance.  My only real regret was keeping a bit too much coin in mybitcoin, iirc it was 50 coins at the time of them ditching.    Keep in mind, at the time you could have a single high-end GPU mine 10 or so a day, and they were worth less than a few bucks each  This was play money, basically.

Given I enjoyed the hobby quite a bit, and felt there was a decent chance of ROI on GPU's at the time (free video cards! sign me up!) - I "invested" in a few mining rigs which finally got on-line months later due to business trips in May/June of 2011 just in time for the huge difficulty ramps and corresponding exchange rate bubble.   By the time they were operational, the price had crashed and it wasn't looking like I'd ever make ROI back on the hardware itself, much less electricity.

2011 bubble happened and burst, and I didn't sell much during that time.  Just kept things mining since then at a steady pace.

This bubble, when it hit $33 I sold enough to cover my original expenses, which was just under half of my entire btc holdings.  Obviously I'm annoyed now I did that, but it was and still is a solid financial decision.  I also cashed out a ~30% profit over my expenses at $174-238, which I've left on the Exchanges so far.  I would have sold more (everything) had price held stable long enough to get money out of the exchanges at $200+.  I simply don't trust them enough to dump everything at once - I'd rather have my coins safe, and do things in small increments without someone holding vast amounts (for me!) of cash on my behalf who might disappear tomorrow.

Not sure what I plan on doing now.  I have just over half my total peak btc holdings safe in cold storage wallet, and have no plans on selling them any time soon.  If the price drops considerably, I would like to re-buy the coins sold to pay expenses and get back to my original holdings in btc.  At that point, I'd simply hold as savings - possibly cashing portions out to USD during any subsequent bubbles.  The buy-in price for me would be low though, sub-$33  Other than that, I plan to simply spend them on things I need.

Overall I'm a "believer" in Bitcoin.  This last bubble was absolutely retarded, and I believe damages the ecosystem more than helps it.  I'm not convinced Bitcoin will exist 10 years from now, but I am convinced something very much like it will, if not it itself.  Either way it's been a fun ride so far, that's probably provided more entertainment per dollar than anything else I could have started messing with

-Phil

Registered: January 26, 2011

What a ride!

I've always been risk-averse and paranoid, and watching this spectacle has sort of validated that attitude for me... Amazing times, I'm starting to think I should have taken notes for a book, although I'm not a writer in any sense of the word.

Look at my user number.. I'm there since november 2010.. Sold more than 5k under 1$ (No regrets at all)..

My first trade was at 0.15 with Slush, (Proud to say that we both do our first trade togheter)  Mining on his pool since it open...

Mining since nov 4th 2010 (never had more than 4.1 Gh/s)  Just bought few weeks ago 2Gh/s with coins valued between 100 and 150 !  Again, no regret at all...

I enjoy the community / forum, but im kinda too much addict to this.. I should leave it alone, just monitoring the mining and take a look back in 6 month...

Will I be able to do so ?

Yeah I remember them but they seemed to be more contained back then.  We had some good discussions in the economics section.  Either that or I'm just getting old and have forgotten all the bad stuff.  I did take a bit of a hiatus from Bitcoin so maybe I missed the peak of the negativity.

Barking dogs don't bite.

I've been here since April 2011. I have only mined, spending a few BTC here and there on video cards and such. Never have I bought any Bitcoins directly, even when they were under a dollar back then (regretting that now, heh), and I have only ever sold 1 Bitcoin, just to see how it worked.  

haha, lol. You must be referring to the first half of 2011. Because during the second half there was almost no constructive discussion to be had on these forums.

Well that's flattering. I only employed my first full-time bitcoin broker exactly 10 days ago, so we have barely started to make money.  

I thought there was a lot more substance in the discussions back in 2011.  I hope those make a return and all the gloating posts die down.  

If I judge rpietila correctly: all of the ones that might remotely make sense at some point.

He's doing it right: fill up the various exchanges with funds. Then you can make the moves you want to make and rebalance. Need lots of fiat for that, though.

As for my "age": I actually found a block solo-mining once.

yeah I hope he has lots of funds.
works for me.  

Yes, and I pay 5-10% over for any codes/funds in the exchanges. Sell your coins and PM me. $10k minimum trade 'cause busy 

I saw the run to $32, then started mining on the tail down to $2.  I bought a few more rigs around $2 and kept mining and sold way too much at $5.  Lost a lot due to greed with Pirate@40 and conman Hashking.  But I held the rest and haven't traded them since (except for buying 2 Avalons and a BFL unicorn).

I could have sold at $250 but I think it's better for my health to not stress.  No point having wealth if you're dead or dying.

Probably all of them. rpietila has more funds than me but I intend to make a lot more than 100 BTC in the next 24 hours

Which exchange you will be on?

I remember pricing the Bitcoin Magazine at 1 BTC for simplicity and being worried about losing money on shipping.  

I watched all the way from $.25 to $32 and down without any bitcoins. I have balls of steel.

But then I slowly started to buy, and buy. Stopped increasing the net position as it crossed $100 recently.

Now I am prepared to make a killing by trading, dealing and arbitrage. I have coins and fiat in the exchanges. No matter where the price goes, I intend to be at least BTC100 richer in 24 hours.

I don't believe in a lasting crash, since at the rate I make money, all your coins are belong to us in less than 20 years.

Got to feel sorry for anybody that recently sunk funds into ASICs... especially the ones that bought them well above price on ebay.

Actually I don't feel sorry for the ebay ones at all, they are greedy cunts and deserve everything they get.