Hi everyone,

I want to introduce myself: my name is Caitie Lustig and I am a graduate student in the Informatics department at the University of California, Irvine.  I am just beginning my research on the bitcoin community and am excited to be a member of this forum.  It seems like there's a lot of research about the bitcoin community that's been focused on the technical aspects of bitcoin but not the community aspect, and there's been a lot of news articles about bitcoin that are a bit sensationalist.

So, I want to do something different.  I really want to learn from you guys about what's actually happening in the community and why you're drawn to bitcoin.  I really want to hear your stories and what you like about it.

Anyway, I'll also be making another post in the next day or two that links to my survey about bitcoin.  It's for the first part of my research project and if you have a chance to fill it out, it'll help me a lot.

Looking forward to getting to know all of you here