Topic: My First Encounter with Bitcoin in Central Park-October 2010 - page 2. (Read 388 times)

Haha, you and me both my friend! If only I would have had the sense to take action there. Why didn't I write it down? Or why didn't I think to look it up online and check it out more in depth after the fact? I had a few chances too. Surely I would have found this place and the rest would have been history. But I too was focused on girls and school, since then I've also also grown much wiser. At least we didn't spend 10k worth of bitcoins on a pizza. LOL, man I feel bad for that guy.

I don't have such a big story. Mine is small story. I got into bitcoin when I went abroad in search of job. By the time I met a person, and later we turned to be friends. He's completely into cryptocurrency and he gave a suggestion to buy as much and hold bitcoin. By the time the price of Bitcoin was around $250.

Myself blindly believed and made plans of buying one bitcoin every month from the salary. Finally I didn't got job, so missed by buying plans. If I've gotten the job I would've started buying it regularly. Right now for sure my wallet would've got 10+ bitcoins

The same guy suggested me to buy ETH, and it was mere a dollar by the time. I didn't buy at that time. Now I feel bad of doing the biggest mistake of my life.

Interesting story. My story is quite similar to yours. I heard about bitcoins in my last year at university in 2011. Just like you, I did not attach any importance to this, since it was a story from my older brother, a programmer and a computer system security specialist. I was more worried about my thesis and the girls. How wrong I was)) I had to go on academic leave for a year and take up cryptocurrency and forget about girls for a while. But unfortunately I was in love and worked on my diploma. Also in 2017, I was angry with myself and those girls. Since then I've become smarter

I was a Sophomore in high school at the time. I had become great friends with a foreign exchanged student from Spain named Pablo. I showed him the ropes and how to fit in with the American kids and I got him plugged in at school. In turn he helped me cheat in my Spanish 2 class in online virtual school LOL. It was hilarious, for the oral exams over the phone the teacher would ask the questions on speakerphone, I'd then mute the phone and Pablo would tell me what to say, the teacher was amazed with how great my dialect was and would keep telling me this, every time Pablo and I died laughing and we've never pressed the mute button any faster jajaja- good times. Anyways Pablo's US Family hosts went to our church and my mom was good friends with them so naturally we just became good buds, plus Pablo was just super cool.

After a couple of months passed by Pablo was picking up English very quickly, his hosts decided it was time they take him on a trip to show him some of our great cities in the US. I tagged along as his best friend, & also because I have never been to the North East US. My birthday was during this trip, so the trip was also a birthday gift from my mom.

Our first stop was Philadelphia, where I raced Pablo up the Rocky steps! We had a blast and of course hit up the main market there for the best Philly Cheese Steak we've ever had in our lives. The next day we went over to Baltimore, Maryland where we witnessed Joe's son get discharged from the Navy aboard the USS Constellation, later we went to the amazing aquarium there & finished the night off with dinner at the Hard Rock right in the harbor there before retreating to NJ for some B-day fun and staying at Joe's sons house for the night.

The next day we were in NY. I had never been to the city before and I was really excited! We took the NJ Transit in.  We had a great time checking it out & I met up with an old friend who had moved there, and then in the afternoon we went to Central Park. It was there in the park that someone had approached me asking me if I wanted to buy Bitcoin. I had of course asked what it was, they gave a vague explanation and so I figured, why not! I preceded to pull $20 from my wallet and started handed it to the girl. In that moment, Joe intervened and took the $20 from my hand telling me not to waste my money and that Bitcoin is nothing but some scam. I told him "well what if its worth something someday" Carol jumped in and told Joe not to tell me how to spend my money, Joe handed me my $20 bill back and the girl looked at me and asked me again if I wanted to buy, and I said I guess not. I remember right after that Joe and Carol went off ahead of me walking in the park preceding to have an argument about what just took place amongst each other. Pablo had no clue what was really going on, and I kept telling him that we had to find that person again! A few minutes went by and I was trying to find that person again & purchase the bitcoins, but I never could find them and that was that. At that time bitcoin was around 6 cents. Today I still remember that so vividly, it kills me to think of all the "what ifs".

If I did purchase those coins there is no telling if whether or not I would have remembered to keep that little piece of paper that stored the private keys. I could have lost all my funds by misplacing that paper when my parents moved out of state, or maybe they would have been stolen in the MT. GOX hack, or maybe, just somehow I would have actually held onto them and realized that I was filthy rich with internet money. Well, none of that ever transpired because I made a very big mistake and I listened to someone shoot me down, and didn't follow through with my purchase.

In hindsight I can't blame anyone but myself, always trust your gut! That day I didn't trust my gut and I learned a huge lesson. The funny thing is that the 200 coins I would have gotten is small change compared to all the early adopters, but that could have been me. Bitcoin evaded my thoughts up until 2014 when my friend messaged me and a ton of random people from my college on Facebook about it, I didn't pay any mind as I was focused on my studies at the time. The next time I had really started paying attention was August 2017 when my friend Ian started telling me about ICOs and BTC and ETH. One day in my office, you could hear a pin drop, I got up from my seat and preceded to ask my colleagues "what do you guys think about Bitcoin" Instantly like 20 people got up from their desk and I sparked a huge office wide discussion. I remember watching Bitcoin trading in the thousands at the time and we kept talking about it, I kept seeing the price going up thinking I had already missed the boat, this was right as its first huge bull run ran into December and January hitting 20k for the first time. I was so mad at myself. Towards the end of the bear market in 2018 is when I made my first initial purchase and have been stacking SATs ever since.

Does anyone else have any bitcoin stories like this? I know that i'm definitely not the only one who lost out on this! Please feel free to share as i'd love to hear your stories, too!