Just have a few questions for those who bought/mined BTC early in the days when things weren't this crowded.
1. How long did it take for a transaction to be confirmed?
2. What were the other issues experienced apart from Hardware complications and energy requirements?
Not sure how early you mean, but in late 2011 my friend brought over 4 gpu's and we built a crappy miner out of a milk crate. I dont remember the specific confirm times, but it was quick and never seemed to be an issue.
Regarding point 2 we stopped mining btc about a year later due to the algo diff increase and the formation/competition of many pools/miners winning the blocks. We never considered the power costs back then, so we then switched over to mining litecoin for a year or so after that.
Did you keep those early mined coins ( both BTC & LTC) or did you sell before the prices got so high?