Share your story.
Realize this is probably another troll-post but I'll still bite for the sake of telling my story. This is in my form of short-speak so I can get straight to the point:
So early/mid June 2011 I'm at my sister's wedding reception and I've got some coin. I'm talking to a friend about how Bitcoin hit $30 "earlier this week" and he's got double digits in Bitcoin himself so we've been joking about it's going crazy. This friend's wife overhears us and she says, "Yeah, my husband says that someday it'll hit $100, but it's falling now."
I say, "Well, honestly it doesn't matter what the price is now, it's got a fixed cap, so someday, maybe in a decade even, it'll hit $1000, we just have to hold it that long."
She says, "but it's falling right?". So I load up my crappy smartphone and show her the price on the only Android app available for Bitcoin pricing.
Oh shit, she's right, it just hit $12 and falling. Fuck. Buying opp!
I kiss my sister and congratulate my bro-in-law then head home early around 10pm (they partied till 6am I find out later). I hop on Gox, see the price, it's like $11. Buy about $500 worth, put in an order to sell at $18. Pass out drunk.
Wake up next morning, check app, it's $13. Well, damn, I think, volatility might have finally killed this thing. Check price history. Wait, it went to $18 after I passed out? Check Gox, I'll be damned, hit my sell order. Nearly doubled up my money in less than 6 hours. Got like ~$1k chilling in my account.
Price falls over several months. See this huge-ass buy wall on Gox for like $185k that slowly moves down. I keep putting in new measly buy orders just above it, they never get hit. Meanwhile, I've been mining like a badass (I brag to friends I run the biggest Bitcoin mining OP in the Midwest even though I know a guy in KC that's running 20+ GPUs). I have 6 GPUs going 24/7. Every single person I tell except my friend from the wedding calls me a 'fool'. Spent most of the summer of 2011 sleeping in 90 degree heat even with the A/C on. Utility bills of $200ish/month. Just losing money all over the fucking place. Frankly don't care, I know this is the real deal and I got a new computer with awesome GPUs I can resell, anyway.
November 2011 comes around, I figure "fuck it" and put in a buy order for all $1k at $2.01 above the buy wall at $2. Order
goes through. Fuck yeah! Next day it hits $2.50. Buy wall disappeared. Bubble starting up again, I know what's fucking coming...
(In all honesty, I sold along with many others as the price increased throughout 2012 and especially 2013. I also bought FPGA miners and ASICs and generally supported the blockchain and community instead of focusing on just making coin and hoarding. As an example, I remember
spending 7 BTC (5BTC worth of expedited shipping) on this and to be honest, even today it was worth every coin. Still have them hanging on the refrigerator, in fact. Bitcoin is best spent after you've made your profits instead of trying to pick highs and lows, IMHO. I got lucky, don't plan on Lady Luck.)