The end of 2014 I put all my crypto wallets in cold storage and did not think about crypto until about two weeks ago. Circumstances of life took me to a place where even mobile phone service was a luxury, internet was a pipe-dream. It has been very interesting to step away from crypto for about 2 years and come back.
XMR was brought to my attention by Risto, whom I highly respect as one of the brightest minds on this forum. His posts about Bitcoin Distribution, the '(SSS) - A Sane and Simple bitcoin Savings' plan are brilliant and thought-provoking. I bought 55XMR at 0.004BTC, which is all I could afford, just before I left crypto in Sept. 2014. Since then the price of XMR has down to .001 and up to .025 and back again.
I was disappointed and pleasantly surprised at the same time. Pleased the price had appreciated, but disappointed that in 2 years so little seems to have been done in terms of adoption and software. Nothing seems to have really changed, XMR seems only to exist as a hedge to BTC(and has done it so well that it appears to have dethroned LTC) while daily usage has not really made any real headway. The wallet it still clunky, needing the daemon to be sync'ed before opening a barely improved wallet. Maybe I am being too harsh, but it has been over 2 years, not 2 months or even 6 months.
I was pleased to see that Risto, Smoothy, Icebreaker and a few old names are still here and supporters of XMR.
So in summary, over the past 2 days I have bought 945XMR at an average price of about .0104BTC. I am adding them to the 55XMR in my cold storage wallet.
My only question is... should I go away for another 2 years before checking on XMR again?
Sounds like a very interesting place you have been.
I would have to disagree that "daily usage has not made any real headway".
http://moneroblocks.info/stats/transactions/m/24Improvements since end of 2014:
GUI is very close to being ready.
XMR.to (and shapeshift) allows you to easily spend your Monero at any BTC accepting place.
Mixin has now a network minimum of 2 improving privacy.
Viewkey works and is not just a concept.
Export key images with v.10 and check the balance of a cold wallet.
LMDB means you can run the wallet without sucking up all your RAM.
Ring CT in January.
Trezor implementation also workable but not exactly easy yet.
Probably more that I cannot remember, but XMR is far more usable than end of 2014.