!!!! Wow, sometimes it's better not to remember, right? lol
If it makes you feel any better, I think there were very few that got in as early as you did that had the guts/courage to hold all the way up to the ATH. Win some, lose some.
Thanks.
The above is just a sample of the old wallets transactions (longtime 0 balance ofc). I had another 2 (sometimes 3 PC's) CPU mining to individual Bitcoin wallet's quite sometime before the first transactions to this wallet.
I also briefly ran the first and what is/was considered a hobbyist exchange service for BTC <> LR. Although, realize that I'm referring to around less than $100 in total for about 5 or 6 individual transactions, before I decided to close the service because it simply wasn't worth my time running it !
Here are the first BTC exchange rates (calculated against electricity usage in producing BTC) -
http://newlibertystandard.wikifoundry.com/page/2009+Exchange+Rate (not my website).
I remember that NewLibertyStandard had some charge back issues with customers using PayPal. So, we separately sought to use individual 3rd party exchange services that didn't do charge backs such as Liberty Reserve (now defunct) and Pecunix.
Almost all of my original BTC was sold (by myself) on another early automated exchange (as personal funds) which I transferred mostly into various Forex trading brokers through LR. I chose to do this as I had decided I would probably make more money trading financial markets before any significant price rise in BTC. At that time I could still CPU mine more BTC although that quickly changed and I was priced out of the mining game well before BTC reached over $1 - Ironically, it didn't seem worthwhile investing in new GPU mining equipment for myself at that time, plus regretfully a few personal reasons meant I didn't really have the time for it.
Fast forward a few years and when my Forex trading had started to become less profitable ( although I had very good success trading gold against USD and some other pairs ) I decided that I would move funds back into BTC when it was at around the $100 to $250 mark, as I was fairly certain that we would start to see a big run up with BTC hitting the main stream news.
LR was increasingly reported to be shady and mostly criminal in its wider exchange activities. However, it was also used by many honest citizens for legitimate deposits to Forex Trading accounts and for general internet payments. I personally never used LR for any 'illegal' or malicious activities whatsoever and mostly for personal funds and to pay hosting bills etc. Personally I never had an issue with it until it got shutdown.
Unfortunately (yet again), I started making transfers at exactly the time that LR got taken offline (as well as some other exchanges running of with my hard earned capital) and so I 'lost' over 3 years worth of trading profits and missed the BTC price increase from $250 to $1200 - which again would of given me a nice income and some surplus BTC to perhaps start some good projects. Unbelievable, right !?
...
Anyway, the above even more strongly reaffirms my belief in decentralized money and ownership of money by the individual and not by government, banks or any form of centralized issuing institutions. Satoshi was always way ahead with all of this.
The very early adopters, such as myself, had to find ways to determine and create value in Bitcoin as well as to increase the user base. We believed in the technology (still do ofc) and wanted to promote it. TBH I perhaps became somewhat disillusioned before it really started to take off as against my calculations it just seemed to be taking to long. I'm just unlucky perhaps.
Finding this wallet through is giving me a very interesting incite into early transactions and as to who mined what on the blockchain.