I've been collecting Satoshi since my early days as a member of Bitcoin Talk ( my first coins were obtained in 2016 ). I had a lot of attempts to purchase Bitcoin, but due to the high incidence of fraud in online and exchange transactions, I didn't acquire as many as I would have liked. I picked up a bit from selling domain names through Name Silo, and I exchanged a bit for Sterling with trusted members in this forum. Due to my caution in acquiring Bitcoin, I still haven't been able to spend any coins. The closest I got was sales whilst I was scalping on a major exchange. I don't think that counts though, as of course my wallet was owned by the exchange, and I didn't have the private key. I've got my small holdings littered over a number of hard drives in wallets created by running nodes. I really need to consolidate those, as I don't know how much I actually control.

In the early days, I experimented with a faucet. This was useful as a learning tool, but probably not a brilliant use of my time. Recently I've got interested in the dice gambling game on Free Bitcoin. I have had some minor success without having to invest anything, but again it is not very rewarding when one considers the time involved. I guess I use it as a background intellectual exercise, rather in the same way that some people do crosswords. I got interested in that, because I own the domain name "Free Bitcoin Bets". My long term interest in domain names, was probably the stimulus that attracted me to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the only virtual medium of exchange that has a hard value, and very few people seem to understand the basis for this.

I do have some regrets though. I invested £3,600 in UK premium bonds, and so far I have only won £150 after over 2 years of investment. That just represent a loss of interest, as, of course, I still have the principle. Had I invested this in Bitcoin, I would have seen the value increase from £3,600 to almost £20,000 at current prices. I suspect that we are going to enter a period of high price volatility, so maybe I should have another go at price scalping.