I've decided to finally break the silence and write my first post. This is my story.
I've been a member and a miner since 2011. The last few years have been a rather interesting ride. I can't say I'm in the best place right now because after all this time I have almost nothing to show for...
I first learned of bitcoin when I was looking into ways to make some cash being unemployed at the time, I started out with a 4 card mining rig 3x5850's and 1x5870 (which i later upgraded by adding 2X5970's) for a total of 8 gpu's with money that I borrowed from a good friend. Most of the time I owned that rig it wasn't running due to technical issues that I didn't deal with due to frustration and laziness. I mined about 100 bitcoins then I sold it for parts to pay back the debt. Not yet realizing the value of bitcoins I spent 45 BTC to buy a gift online. I was left with 55.
Soon enough I managed to get a "seemingly" solid government job and things were starting to look up! I still checked up on Bitcoin every now and again. I figured now that I have a job I might as well buy 1000 BTC just to hold in case Bitcoin actually succeeds. I made the mistake of sharing this idea with my mother who knew absolutely nothing about Bitcoin who went on to express her concerns of me wasting my money on silly things and not devoting my time to finishing college (Computer Science student). The end result was that I didn't buy the 1000 BTC which cost 2-3$ each at the time. Instead I focused on college.
Being a newly employed man I went on spending my money without much restraint. Eat out daily, pay for my unemployed friends and girlfriend and just generally had fun. Then the first wave of austerity measures hit Greece. From about 1500 euros a month with overtime included my salary went down to about 1100 euros total. Then the second wave hit. 850 euros.
Somewhere around this point the price of BTC had reached about 25 dollars and what did I do? I spent 53 BTC to pre-order a BFL single 60 Gh/s model. The end result of that was me losing almost all of my investment... Oh Butterfly labs.... Needless to say they did a great job of lying and bullshitting me out of the rest of my btc. At some point I even owned a few shares of ASICMINER which I bought at 1.3 BTC and sold at 2.2 when BFL officially announced that they started shipping. Little did I know what they really meant is that they shipped a few units and that they would go on to stall for a few more months. ASICMINER shares kept rising up to around 5 BTC if I remember correctly. Thanx for that too BFL
In the meantime I decided to invest in LTC so I bought 560 LTC with whatever cash I had. My good friend and I had got hit by a car while on a motorcycle by a lady that passed a stop sign and were expecting to be paid some money for the damages to my bike and to our body. Estimated to be around 5000 euros. Since my buddy had some extra cash I thought perhaps a mining rig for LTC wouldn't be a bad idea so I borrowed some money from my good friend again. 2x6950 + 1x6990. Its been mining away for the past few months until now. I received the electricity bill at 650 euros! Funny how the most I ever paid with my old rig that was twice as energy hungry was 270 euros. Austerity measures seem to have a negative effect on everything lol.
Considering ASICMINERS success up until that point I figured investing in mining companies was a good idea. So I ended up investing all my litecoins (700 LTC) in ciphermine on LTCglobal. I also borrowed 1000 euros from my father to buy bitcoins which I invested in Labrat mining on bitfunder. Bitcoins had just dropped to 80 dollars so i figured it was a good opportunity to buy also. Mtgox lost the transaction for 5 weeks and I ended up buying at 120 dollars. Thanx for that MtGox
At this point Austerity measured keep working their magic and I lose my job along with thousands of other people. A job that was considered permanent, now gone, just like that, overnight. Trying really hard to remain positive...
More news. LTC global is shutting down. Share prices crash. Im stuck with ciphermine shares. Bitfunder shuts down. Share price crashes. I'm stuck with Labratmining shares.
I finally get an email from BFL that they have shipped my Single on october 5th. (which I also paid 400 dollars extra for express delivery as an upgrade some time before when they were lying about shipping soon. Well played BFL). October 9th the package has arrived in Greece. Intercepted by customs. I call them up and they tell me to wait a few days for it to be processed. A few days later same answer. A week later I call them and they inform me that BFL has not included the necessary paperwork for them to process the package so I send them the invoice. A few days later I call and they tell me to wait. A few days later I call and they tell me the same thing, that they need the invoice. Resent the invoice. Almost 20 days later I finally receive the package and pay 260 euros for processing. In the meantime the difficulty of mining has exponentially increased and I lost just about all the ROI that I could have had...
So at this point I'm unemployed, I own a grand total of 2 BTC, I owe money to my buddy and my father, Im selling my Scrypt mining rig to pay the electricity bill and I'm feeling quite down... The only hope I have left is finally receiving that compensation for the motorcycle accident so that I may get out of the gutter. The judge has exhausted almost all the time she has available to rule on the case. 2 months to go...
I tried to keep a positive outlook but bad luck and bad decisions have kicked me in the face. In hindsight I now see that the best strategy would have been to buy and hold. My heart is bitter and full of regret.