thought it was a scam for a while then had my Ah Ha moment in late 2018 speculated a bit then dove deep into defi summer then even deeper down the nft rabbit hole now we here
2016 podcast with Marc and Ben after reading Ben’s book (Hard Things)
he may not know this, but I got connected to @dwr for advice when deciding my next career move. the rest is history.
at home on clubhouse when I heard about people buying and selling NBA highlights
In 2013 I did a 6-hour craigslist rideshare with a guy who grew up to be Erik Voorhees. 😂 He spent the whole drive pilling me on BTC, and it was interesting, but I didn't 'get it' until 2017 when I started working full-time for a startup in the crypto industry
Around Halloween 2021; something like this. Cc @interval: https://andrewkingme.medium.com/obits-1331-37563af79e53
A high school friend was making biofuel on his parents farm. He built a pump for it that only accepted bitcoin and would sell it dirt cheap (at that time) to the neighboring farms. It took me a couple of year to dive in, but this was the moment that sparked my curiosity.
First heard of Bitcoin in 2013/2014 during the bull run to $1k but didn’t persist sadly and moved on Then saw ethereum during 2017 run and the “payable” smart contract modifier was a light bulb moment
Learning that ETH was actually internet money that could be used, and self custodying it to buy my first NFT. Then finding some communities where more experienced folks helped me out as a beginner 🥲
Reading this blog http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
i built objective-c sdk for btc-e.com, they even gifted me 2 btc in 2012 little did i know...
kevinrose.twitter talking about ArtBlocks on a podcast, then @balaji and/or naval.twitter in tferriss.twitter 's podcast , then vitalikbuterin.twitter on banklesshq.twitter 's podcast
June, 2014 thru various blogs. (Shoulda, woulda, coulda bought lots, but didn't!)
Learned about Silk Road from a private music sharing site 👀 *skip ahead* Took long hiatus and came back to crypto after discovering NFTs in December 2020
Ran a BTC miner on my dingy comp as a kid Years later, started DCA ETH@$12 Started building a web3 app just after cryptokitties blew up Hibernated until the end of defi summer, DeFi’d hard NFTs after, did analytics work on Dune for projects then was one of first BAYC minters
Used to collect Star Wars cards heavy in the Topps app and was looking for more digital collectibles in 2018. Ran into crypto then shortly after NFTs and never looked back.
Got interested in late 2017 but the real deal was attending Devcon 4 (pic below) where I got to meet many people (technical and non-technical) that shared their vision for a better internet and how blockchains will enable it.
Once you go down the rabbit hole, it’s really hard to get out
Friend using BTC to purchase ‘stuff’ on Silk Road in 2010 introduced me. Price movements made it hard for me to see legitimate use cases at first. Took me 2 years to get my head around it. The full red pill process started taking hold from there.
2015: Extreme fascination with computers, finance and unintentional / intentional path of outlier. It’s like I was made for this.
My friend got smart contract flight insurance for less than $1. Instant lightbulb moment for me
I started my career in crypto in 2013 partly because the company I was interviewing with reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
My Cryptography professor wanted me to explore this terminology he kept hearing “blockchain”, since I was the only student, at that time (2016) who understood cryptography, computer networks, CAP theorem and bit torrent protocol.
I when through a spiritual awakening process and was guided to crypto🦄 I post part of the story in my mirror: https://mirror.xyz/ccisdreaming.eth/JVy0vU5Fqthifinpdfjdyf_7WcsbsCgoslzidAbH8Ic
I was sitting at the offices of a graveyard company in Taiwan, and they wanted to tokenize graves. My mind was blown as I have seen an actual crypto use case request from an established business 🪦🚀
reading about Terra0, a self-owning augmented forest in Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain (among many other good chapters)
Living in Venezuela in 2009 experiencing hyperinflation and a few years later in 2013 a conversation with @barmstrong at Outside Lands SF where he gave me my first BTC - it just made click! If money is software now, we can make it more beautiful ..
Reading the Bitcoin paper while procrastinating for my Financial Law exam in 2013. Coming from that background the concept was so alien that I found it incredibly intriguing.
When I bought $20 of DOGE as a joke in 2020 and woke up to a lot more in 2021 causing me to do some research on tokens and then made my way down the nft rabbithole 🐇
Starting to work after a master from a top tier polytechnical school in Swiss banking as a data scientist and realising I could not have a more comfortable life than the average person (especially considering working hours, responsibilities and pressure).
2017 in Turkey, looking for a way to transport my money to Canada. BTC was $650, said it's a bubble, no way it'll ever be worth more than gold. Bought CAD instead. Sat on my hands all the way up, started buying in 2018 around $8k and doing marketing for ICOs, paid in BTC
Mid 2017: hear about crypto from > 3 people working on a gas plant in Darwin Research and realize this will change the world 2018: Be a permabull and decide to spend next 10 years working on crypto; 1 problem know nothing about computers
concurrent: won 1 ETH from @nick in a twitter giveaway when eth was ATH. discovered alex gladstein’s work on bitcoin + human rights.
2015 driving down i5 with the windows rolled down blasting econtalk, listening to wences casares tell russ roberts all about bitcoin https://www.econtalk.org/wences-casares-on-bitcoin-and-xapo/
2013 Cody Wilson doing Dark Wallet, who intro'd Gav Wood and other early eth devs. Invited them to come stay with me in SF, fed them daily green smoothies not really understanding what they were doing, and then eth foundation gifting me from ICO to say thanks haha. life-changing
I saw this on /. on 2011-02-11 and mined my first few btc in a few weeks. I was in Pakistan w/ choppy internet and no one around me (incl me) understood what I was doing. then I lost them all b/c hdd corrupted ... yolo 🤷🏻♂️
Start of the pandemic, join twitter, Dan Held tweets "I cannot teach people about crypto...", I reply saying I genuinely want to know what it's about. He sends a link to his blog, I go through it and it seems cool application wise.
when I went through a16z crypto startup school and finally understood that crypto is more than speculation
joined an alt token, ended up forming a legal dao in switz. no moar normal life for meeee
I heard a Buddhist Geeks podcast where Kevin Owocki was interviewed, this led to a collab with Gitcoin, which led to a Kernel fellowship, which led to FWB, which led to Chainforest, which led me to the purple app
some great stories here. thanks for sharing, everyone!
Started looking for alternative investment opportunities bc I saw the government printing money in 2020 and came across the Axie scholarship model. Then went down a DeFi / NFT rabbit hole and here we are
Never believed in BTC - took me a long time get it. I loved ETH. Bought some with spare cash in 2017/18. Forgot all about it and got busy writing a book about it 🙄 Friend calls me in Feb 21, and informs me of the run. After 8 panic-ky hours, found the wallet 🔑
Is this the most commented post on Farcaster so far? 👀 @dwr
2014 when bitcoin Jesus was on Rogan. I opened a Coinbase account. I bought nothing because I got side tracked on a project and was annoyed with the UX. Swing and a miss…