I was heavily involved in trying to get Ron Paul elected in 2008 which involved keeping up to date on most things going on on Ron Paul Forums.

After the 2008 elections we moved forward with the liberty movement (which was usurped by the corporate Tea Party) and kept each other informed on various projects related to liberty and freedom. Bitcoin was mentioned early on, then mentioned more. I'd been a big gold bug and had always tried to figure out how to convert all of my money into gold while still being able to spend it. I figured if I could at least demonstrate how one person can do it, then it would allow others to do the same. Problem was that gold requires storage which costs money. Any gold credit/debit card charged a fee per use and a monthly storage fee.

When someone first mentioned bitcoin and speculated that in the future we would use a basket of currencies as our every day currencies I pushed back because I felt that gold was the answer to future currencies. But after I saw that bitcoin hit dollar parity I downloaded the wallet. It had a button you could click to start mining so I tried to mine. It crashed my computer so I was like...screw Bitcoin, this thing sucks. And went on with my life.

Then I read about the jump from $2 to $32 and I decided it was time to get in. When it came back down to $17 I cashed out my Roth IRA and bought $10k worth (as it spent 2 years slowly falling down to $2). I sold it all when it came back up to $12.