Quote from: wwzsocki on June 25, 2019, 07:33:13 AM

I would like to hear some stories from you Bitcointalk members. Share your Bitcointalk or BTC story if you have one!

i think ive posted it a couple times but no idea when or where.

soo.. around mid 2011 on a tech forum, anandtech, there was a thread about this bitcoin thing. "mine" btc coins with (at that point) your graphic card. since i was familiar with distributed computing (folding@home, had some nvidia cards and a cpu aimed at it) i hunted some info down on bitcoin mining and such and finally aimed my ATI HD4850 on my daily driver rig at it. well it took a few tries between setting up the mining program, the core wallet and a pool account up, but finally, i got a payout in btc to my wallet.

now, the fun part. convert that to dollars in my bank account and see if this whole thing could work. much more reading, and finally mtgox and dwolla are set up. aaaand presto. money in the bank.

at this point i was much more aware of what bitcoin was really about.. not making money, but redefining money. and being your own bank, with all that entails. i was hooked.

but now to get the wife on board. since i had proved to both her and myself it really worked end to end (mining to meney in the bank), i convinced her to let me buy an ATI HD6870 (as ATI cards were the goto cards back then) i remember when i got it and proudly showed her the card she was like "WHAT?? $200 bucks for THAT??" she thought i was nuts. I thought it was a thing of beauty.

anyway i put it to work, showed it could put actual dollars in the bank if needed, and my btc journey began in earnest. later added a HD5830 and HD6770. ran those cards for years between btc and ltc mining. and i still have the cards. i will never get rid of them, and am tempted to gold plate the 4850 and 6870.. basically those two cards changed our lives.

of course then there were things like the lost coins due to stupidity on my part, the mtgox debacle, occasional scams, the crazy price rise and falls, all the stuff that makes crypto such an exiting place.

wouldnt of missed this for the world. well worth the admission price just for the entertainment value alone. and it did change our lives.

thank you bitcoin.

and thank you bitcointalk forum of course. without this forum and its members helping a total noob out my journey would of been much harder or may not of even happened.