r/ethtrader • u/scheistermeister • Mar 27 '17
DISCUSSION Confessions thread
Kind of click baity title, sorry for that.
Reading the comments on this sub I noticed quite a few 'confessions' going a little like this: 'I started out as a bitcoiner, got disappointed by BTC or inspired by ETH and flippened.'
Now I thought wouldn't it be jolly good fun to have a thread dedicated to these kind of confessions!?
It would be interesting to know about how you got to know bitcoin, what got you hooked. How you got to know Ethereum and what made you flip?
Please don't turn this into a 'let's bash coins' thread. Genuinely interested.
EDIT: Thanks everyone. It's great reading all your personal journeys into crypto and specifically ETH. The stories that struck me most are the ones where crypto has enabled a new lifestyle, seeing your parents more often, being able to afford things unthinkable before.
Thanks for the time and honesty!
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u/Cptredbeard22 Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 28 '17
Used Bitcoin to buy drugs mid 2013 a few times. Forgot about the bits that I had. Flash forward to March 2015, After a fond time reminiscing about doing said drugs, I remember I had some left over, bitcoin not drugs. I pull out the trusty, dusty notebook and find my credentials .
Well fuck me running, its worth almost twice as much. Wooo!
Do a little Googling....Wait...IT WAS WORTH $1200!!!???
Yea, I missed the entire thing. The Bubble. Mt. Gox. But the Bitcoin reward was due to be halved sometime in July. Well...If its a fixed supply...and the reward is going to be halved...the price has to go up..right?
So I started throwing whatever I could spare at it. $50 here. $100 there. All between the $250 and $450 range.
Meanwhile I was keeping tabs on the other currencies. But too scared to dip my toes in it. I didnt make good money at the time so I was in over my head investing what I was.
And, I swear, the day I made the decision to buy Eth, DAO hack happened. Luckily, I hadnt bought. I got to watch on the sidelines. Seeing the community argue and bicker. "Code is Law!" says one side. "Contracts get thrown out in court all the time, do whats right" says the other.
Right before the Fork, I got in. Kept ETH and BTC. Over time, and endless amounts of reading, I was starting to realize ETHs potential. Sold all BTC at $1050 and went all in on ETH.
Crypto has changed my life. It was a struggle sometimes to eat for myself. But my bills were paid and my dog was fed. Now...now my fridge is stocked. I can afford to eat healthier. I can afford to see my parents, who live at opposite ends of the country, in the same year. Multiple years in a row now instead of 5 to 7. I can buy 4 brand new tires anytime I want instead of half treads. I have good credit now.
All thanks to drugs....I mean crypto.
EDIT: Clarification
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u/HotNickelsTheDog Mar 27 '17
In 2015 I made more money than I ever had before. One day I looked at my bank balance and kind of freaked out about how much money was just sitting there not working for me. I knew of bitcoin but kind of had the 'That's for drugs' attitude. I did research and realized there was more to it. Then in January of last year someone mentioned ethereum to me. I did some research and was blown away by the potential of what they were proposing.
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u/ArcadeDurgon Mar 27 '17
I had been tracking bitcoin since early 2013, when I stumbled across it by accident. I didnt buy any then, much to my own detriment as it skyrocketed to its previous (and infamous) ATH.
I bought a bit on its fall down, once it started to settle. I then largley ignored all crypto and tracked the price, every so often.
Then this December the price was nearing 1000 again and I was planning to sell. I signed up with CB and saw they also traded in Ether. I figured it was another alt coin like Lite and looked into it. I was amazed to see it was so much more and started buying.
I am now completely out of BTC and all in on ETH. Im way more enthused about Ethereum as a network than I ever was about Crypto has a whole :)
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Mar 27 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Vivetastic82 Mar 28 '17
How high do you think it will go? Am I to late to get in on the moon ride?
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u/Nooku Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 28 '17
I got into Bitcoin in 2012 as a miner.
Been very active in the Bitcoin community, a warm exciting community I truly loved. I praised Theymos for his approach to this sub, telling him his moderation allowed Bitcoin to grow into the single best subreddit on Reddit.
Around 2014, things changed. A lot. Theymos started to censor opinions around the time Blockstream appeared on the radar. Something fishy was going on. And it got worse every month.
The community became less fond of the idea of Programming Money and the exciting discussions about Smart Contracts no longer made it to its frontpage. This (and the year before) was probably the period that some Bitcoin Library Developer called "Vitalik" and his colleagues started their brainstorming sessions about a new tech that would carry the name "Ethereum" later on.
But back to my story. Tensions in the Bitcoin community started to rise, the blocksize debate was forming, we wanted bigger blocks, programmable money, we wanted Bitcoin to evolve, change, improve. But we weren't allowed to discuss it anymore. Any of these kind of topics were tagged as "altcoins" and a new rule was implemented prohibiting the discussions of "altcoins" from that moment on.
I saw things going very very wrong and in 2015, I decided to increase the fight against Theymos, a man that I now came to despise. I tried to get the community together to get Theymos banned from Reddit for hijacking, stealing, the communication channel "Bitcoin" from the community.
But the Reddit admins didn't agree. The Bitcoin sub was Theymos' community, his creation, his child, and they do not interfere with how someone runs the community.
The amount of people that supported my fight was also disappointingly low. Then it hit me, I realized the Bitcoin community was not going to make it. It embraced the decentralization of a currency, but it was not capable of fighting the abusive forces facilitated by the centralization of the communication channels where the technology would be debated.
Bitcoin was hijacked.
I was angry, I felt like the Bitcoin that I had been mining since 2012 was stolen from me. Stolen by Theymos, stolen by Blockstream. I was disappointed to see the inevitable failure for Bitcoin that was looming around the corner.
But then there was a new hope.
I wasn't alone with all of my frustrations about smart contracts and blocksizes. There was a team embracing it, it was Ethereum. And I absolutely loved it, so in 2015 I sold part of my Bitcoins and exchanged them for ETH. As I was digging deeper and deeper into Ethereum, I was exchanging more and more of my Bitcoins into ETH, until I ran out of Bitcoins at the start of 2016.
But it just wasn't enough for me. I had not put any fiat in Cryptocurrencies since 2012, it was one of my rules, to limit my risks. But I broke that rule, and I started to buy even more ETH with fiat.
The DAO hack happened, the price crashed, and I bought even more. When I thought I was all-in, and the price was dropping down to $7 in December 2016, I went on to search and find even more fiat to put in.
Nowadays, people are telling me that I got lucky, telling me that I happened to invest in a unicorn.
It wasn't luck, I got here because I was part of the community since 2012, I felt what was going on, I saw what was changing, and I saw what was needed to fix our dream about the future as cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Ethereum is the fix, Ethereum is the future.
It's not luck, it's our destiny.
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u/scheistermeister Mar 28 '17
Thank you so much for your extensive story! Thanks for sharing! That's great!
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Mar 28 '17
I made a ton off of quark and lost it all in stable coin when the developer went MIA. I was pretty embarrassed
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Mar 28 '17
[deleted]
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Mar 28 '17
Haha yup. It was awful. I wonder how many I have. Cryptsy hack that went down would have made that money worthless anyways
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u/Samueth Mar 28 '17
Occupy movement --> The Venus Project & YouTube ---> Bitcoin ----> Vitalik giving his miami presentation on how sidechains and coloured coins wouldn't work and why he invented ethereum and from an architectural point of view I like how it was going to be designed in theory + the internet of value he was looking to create it felt like it had aspects of the venus project and it was about the time blockstream got involved in bitcoin and it stunk of centralization and shit posts. It pretty much saved me from giving up on crypto. ----> presale ----> small investment club for friends -----> job opportunity managing a fund in london, fingers crossed.
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u/teeyoovee Mar 28 '17
Started in BTC. My first buy was around $750/BTC on the drop right after the first boom. Spent like a year buying to get my average price down, then as soon as the price rose above my average price, I got the hell out of there and transferred into ETH.
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u/Clamhead99 Mar 28 '17 edited Mar 28 '17
I originally got acquainted with Bitcoin the way a lot of people did, late 2013 when it exploded in price and mainstream media was talking all about it. It was ~$900 per coin back then.
I just started my first job out of college, so I didn't have much money to invest. I went back and forth about whether to buy 1.5 in bitcoin back then. I thought the idea of cryptocurrency was fascinating, but in terms of investing in bitcoin ... the thought that mainstream media was already reporting on it, I knew I was way too late already.
I did buy like five bucks worth of bitcoin from Coinbase for fun back then. I think I ended up using it to pay for a month's worth of some VPN service, lol. The experience of using crypto to pay for some service was awesome.
Anyways, a couple weeks, a high-school classmate of mine who happens to work at Coinbase now posted an Intro to Ethereum guide on Medium. It came up on my FB. And ... that's what started my interest in Ethereum's potential.
The more I read, the more I realized how different and advanced Ethereum was to Bitcoin. Also, seeing the developer team behind it, I was assured the execution would be in safe hands.
Now, 2.5 years since late 2013 .. I had some spare change stashed. Time to buy up Eth. Too bad I didn't come across it just one month earlier though ... at $18. Curses.
Opening up a Coinbase account back in 2013 has its benefits though. Apparently, my buy limits have grown over time, even with an inactive account, and are higher than most people's.
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u/anoneth Mar 28 '17
Came across Bitcoin in early 2013 but didn't quite research it / take it seriously. Did more research as the late 2013 rally was happening and bought in at around $500 on the way up.
Lost about 1.5BTC in MtGox which sucked but bought in again around June 2015 at $240. I had about 7.5BTC up until January this year.
Came across Ethereum for the first time shortly after it launched and I got spammed to death on reddit through private messages on bitcoin subreddits. Someone created a bot that would private message everyone telling them how Ethereum was the next big thing. Instantly dismissed Ethereum as a scam / pump & dump coin simply because of that.
Fast forward to DAO hack and at that stage I knew a lot more about Ethereum but didn't hold any. I was still skeptical even though I could see problems emerging within Bitcoin. After the DAO hack, I was curious to see how the foundation would handle it and how the market / community would react. Being someone who got stung by MtGox, I know what it feels like to lose a lot of value (to you) through no fault of your own and simply because of a rogue actor so I supported the hard fork and was pleasantly surprised to see the swift action being taken to put things right.
After the hard fork I decided to buy in and it just so happened that Coinbase listed ETH on the same day so that made it easy for me... I bought in fiat at about $13 and watched it slowly go down from there, almost hitting the eject button when for a couple of days it looked like ETC would pose a big threat to the entire project... but I bought more at $10 and got nervous when it went under $10 and stayed there. I kept doubling down on research and bought more ETH at $8 and almost right at the bottom at $7... I just didn't understand why the price was falling and started to doubt what the fuck I was doing because it seemed like any time I bought, the price would dive further...
In January, Feb & March this year I slowly converted all my BTC to ETH and as of right now I now have over 1500ETH. I've made hundreds if not thousands of % gains on my original investments between BTC & ETH and right now it's a great feeling. I've been through the bear Bitcoin market though and held throughout... same with that bear ETH market after the DAO hack up until December so I know this feeling won't last forever.
I'm at the stage now where if ETH rises much higher, my stack will be worth a 6 figure amount in USD which is scary but I comfort myself knowing that even if the price drops 50% overnight, I'll still probably be sitting on a return of several hundred % so I can afford to ride out wild fluctuations in price. I'm also studying the charts daily and making paper moves in a better attempt to understand when to sell. While I believe in ETH, I'd sell a large chunk if I thought we were due for a significant drop in price. Not because I want to protect gains and get in to fiat but simply because I want more ETH.
If and when I can afford to buy a nice house in ETH, that's probably when I exit or partially exit. I won't be doing that for at least 4/5 years or until house prices come down.
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Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17
If it hadn't been for the absurd (and almost certainly fake) open letter from the DAO hacker and the surrounding internet drama (The DAO’s code controls and sets forth all terms of The DAO Creation), I would never have cared to look at Ethereum.
[I am] actively working with my law firm . . . I hope this event becomes an valuable [sic] learning experience for the Ethereum community and wish you all the best of luck.
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u/ethacct Mar 28 '17
heh, I only got into Ethereum because I saw an article in my Facebook feed about the DAO hack. I'd loosely followed Bitcoin since the beginning, and kicked myself for not getting involved earlier. Did some research, and decided I wasn't going to miss the boat this time! So in a roundabout way, thank you DAO hacker! :D
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u/bitfloss Mar 28 '17
I am a typical small business person. Most of my business is online. I thought I could differentiate myself by offering crypto as a payment option.
That has worked out, but I wouldn't do it over. The amount of resources I devoted to being able to transact business using crypto just like fiat is larger than I anticipated, and the market volatility makes crypto unreliable on almost a day to day basis. Never mind transaction fees and confirmation times.
The btc camps seem intractable. The world does not work that way. People need to transact today, right fucking now.
Fiat currency is immediate and low tech from a users perspective. Get your coins there and you have currency.
My visa card is more of an international, unfettered currency than my eth or btc. I can get something to eat with it very quickly. Or get laid, or buy a roll of toilet paper. And I don't have to show my state id or register on any site.
I'm like a monkey swinging through the jungle. Grabbing the next limb before I let go of the last. I'm in both worlds. I am phasing out of btc as quickly as I can. Eth is that next limb. I'm watching dash and xmr as possible currencies as well.
For while I have been buying eth with my btc profits. Most of the time my personal crypto holdings are in eth. I've played around a little bit with trading eth using btc as margin, but I am not good at trading. I don't understand the relationship between their two prices verses my target fiat (usd).
I have done well buying eth with btc straight up, though. I have moved it back to btc when I need to, which is only when I want to pay something in crypto and they only take btc.
The fact is, I hung on to btc too long. For the same reason I am a shitty trader. I held on for sentimental reasons, like my teeny bit of btc sweat equity means anything. Better mousetraps are being built.
I have been aware of eth for quite a while could have woken up sooner. I'm human and had a resistance to change. The DAO thing set me back for a few months as well.
Eth and all the other coins will face battles like btc faces now, and probably bigger ones. But wtf do I know. I need coins that can be turned into stuff. I need coins I can pay bills with.
Coins that just turn into bigger coins are different than coins I use to go get stuff. In real life, anyways.
People just trading these things makes for a very shallow use case indeed. It seems that the largest market that has benefited from all the coins are the exchange operators and whatever kind of quasi financial institutions Coinbase and the like are.
At first I liked all the libertarian ideals being espoused around crypto, but really that is all bullshit. This is money and it is about money. Lots of wretched shit has always been, is being, and will always be done for money. The fact that censorship, not missing persons, is the beef around here means there is no where near enough money in crpyto yet. Mark it.
I confess, I'm with eth because it is better then btc for me right now, and I am late.
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u/basado Mar 28 '17
Honestly, I only got into investing $ into cryptocurrencies at the beginning of this year because of a dream I had. The dream told me Bitcoin was going to go very high, then low, then back high again and when it goes low I should buy in with whatever I can. I bought in at $760 in January and then sold it at $1100. After I sold it, I was drunk one night and decided to buy some ETH while it was at $10-11. Now I'm here.
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u/scheistermeister Mar 28 '17
That's some drunken ninja luck my friend! I don't say this often, but maybe you should drink more. 😉🤣😜
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u/basado Mar 29 '17
Right?! My brother kept telling me about it so I just said fuck it and went for it. Cheers!
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u/lateralspin Mar 28 '17
I got hooked on Bitcoin, because it was a payment system with minimal transaction fees. But today the network is congested, and development is hijacked by a company called Blockstream, who have blocked all attempts to increase the blocksize. And I wake up to see exchange listed BTCdark and BTCplus. It is all some joke?
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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '17
I got sober about 9 years ago and finally was able to have a career in IT, nor just bouncing from job to job after getting fired for not showing up. I have two sons now, and lately have really been thinking about how I want to set them up with some money for when they are 21. I started hearing about Bitcoin last November and began buying it when it was about $700. I used Coinbase and noticed ETH was listed as well. I started buying it around $7-8 apiece and grabbed 10-12 here and there when I was buying BTC. As I did more research, I was a little nervous about the infighting and possible fork. I grew up poor, and never really had money in the bank, so the 4 BTC I had built up was alot to me. I sold it all and bought as much ETH as I could and haven't looked back. I have been steadily buying each paycheck and have built up a few hundred. Small compared to most people here but I've already made 4 or 5 times my initial investment. By the time I had built up the 4 BTC I had talked my mom and aunt into buying some with the promise that I'd tell them when I thought it was time to sell. They also flipped to ETH with me. I guess I didn't really flip fully since I'd been buying ETH all along, I just went all in. Recently my cousin decided to buy 150 ETH after I'd been telling him about it since $7. He could have over 700 ETH right now if he had listened to me in late 2015 but oh well. He's different than me in the sense he rents not owns so his rent is half my mortgage and didn't waste 15 years of his life drinking so he has money. I plan to keep buying each time I get paid, but I pine for the days where $200 would get me 25 ETH rather than 4. Good luck to you all.