I am an early adopter and I only have a few Bitcoins.
In early 2011 I mined ~1,000 Bitcoins. Before we had paper wallets and encryption I had my wallet on a Bitlocked harddrive. Well that harddrive completely crashed.
My Ghost backup sadly turned out to have backed up corrupted data due to Bitlocker. New Bitlocker technology and old Ghost did not work well together I learned. At that point it also wasn't easy to export private keys and I didn't know that much yet.
There went around 1,000 BTC.
I came back and mined more with GPUs this time. I have an illness and even though I'm a brilliant PHP programmer, holding a steady job is hard. So the Bitcoins I mined had to pay for the GPUs and electricity as I mined them. I wasn't left with much even though I was a diehard believer and wish I could have held them.
Part of what I had left, 100 BTC was spent on Butterfly Labs. This was right after their good FPGA delivery. I donated what I had left to the newly launched Sean's Outpost, donated to projects, faucets and purchased from all the Bitcoin merchants I could to support the economy. I bought Alpaca socks for 30 BTC! When I didn't have BTC I bought them to buy what I needed if there was a merchant who took BTC. I thought I'd make it all back. Well their ASICs were years late and I only made a couple of BTC.
I am very glad I was part of the early people to prove Bitcoins were great for commerce and to show new merchants there was a market. I am proud to be part of the early Bitcoin economy.
This year I got a loan and bought 2 KNCs. Delivered perfectly. However, I again had to sell BTC to pay for electricity. I had to pay back the loan and sold one KNC on this forum for 17 BTC.
So with the couple thousand BTC I could have right now, I only have a few. It's sad because I was there, at the right time, in the right place and a total believer. But oh well.
What makes me mad though is Butterfly Labs turned out to be scum bags and now have even more Bitcoins they took from us. I wish I was able to generate that many early on legitimately.
Lessons learned: It is still the early period! If you are here right now, you ARE an early adopter. I should have bought the BTCs I could have but then again I had to take care of my family and don't have a steady income stream. The few Bitcoins I have I will hold on to as much as I can as long as my family is ok.
$700 is nothing. Buy 1 Bitcoin and sleep on it. Come back in a few years and you will be well off. Some early adopters are in my boat so don't fret. You are still here at the right time, in the right place. Help the economy! Find a merchant that accepts what you want and buy and send the BTC instead of money. Or buy gift cards on Gyft for almost anywhere.
PS. I love you guys and I love this board. I've never actively been involved in a forum before or after this forum. Sometimes I know I may be abrasive but I try to be helpful and I'm always honest. Can't wait for the years ahead!
My goal is to set you at ease. Otherwise people look at all the early members and assume thousands of btc which I wish was true. But those early adopter conspiracy theories aren't true. There's very few of us that still have many of the original bitcoins. Those that have the most just bought them. Not many early adopters went out and bought 50 Xeons to mine. There's no pyramid scheme.
Tldr; Hodl. Do not mine, trade, altcoin, invest, gamble, etc.
Only thing that I can do is to hug you. I'm serious, really. That's not easy to accept a lost of this type. But you have a great reason, we're here in the right place and in the right moment. So, HODL and sell when Bitcoin will reach a value of 20.000$ !
